Creating Content on LinkedIn: A Step By Step Guide

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social media platform with over a billion people on it so its potential for your business to be seen and get traction is enormous. This applies to both B2B and B2C. You can promote your brand, generate leads, and much more.

A core part of this is creating content on LinkedIn so to help you we’ve put together this comprehensive guide that shows you everything you need to know about creating content on LinkedIn.

Step 1: Understand How LinkedIn Actually Works

This is the first step and one that a large percentage of business owners seem to ignore. They are busy after all running their business, and not to mention running and managing their life so many things like LinkedIn get put on the back burner. When they do eventually get on the platform they are like a student who hasn’t studied for their exam or pulled in an all-nighty. Perhaps you can relate?

The reality is that you do need to have some understanding of LinkedIn to make it work for you. You won’t be as successful on the platform without a base-level proficiency in how LinkedIn works. The fact is that LinkedIn isn't intuitive and has many moving parts so to understand it properly start with following some LinkedIn experts.

Their job is to understand LinkedIn and dedicate all their working hours to the platform.  It makes sense then to follow them. Sign up for their free classes, newsletter, etc. WORD EMPIRE^® recommends the following LinkedIn experts:

• Sue Ellson: Melbourne, Australia & works globally
• Adam Houlahan: Queensland, Australia & works globally 
• Lynnaire Johnston:  Dunedin, New Zealand & works globally

Insider tip: Pick just one or two of these experts, follow them on LinkedIn, sign up for their newsletters, etc. You’ll learn so much about LinkedIn that you wouldn’t have otherwise or it would take you a long time to find out on your own.

Step 2: Establish Goals for Creating LinkedIn Content

Once you gain some understanding of how LinkedIn works you now need to come up with some marketing goals. Remember creating content on LinkedIn must be part of your overall marketing strategy, encompassing content marketing for business growth.

Start by asking yourself What am I planning to get out of LinkedIn? Other businesses are on there so I should be too is not a good answer! Get crystal clear on your goals for LinkedIn as these will drive your content creation on LinkedIn. Your goals could be:

• Generating more leads for your business
• Increasing brand awareness
• Promoting your products and services
• Connecting with ideal customers
• creating global partnerships and alliances
• Establishing your thought leadership

Insider Tip: Perhaps all of the above are your goals for LinkedIn and hence for creating content on LinkedIn but for each one you need to be clear and have a strategy as to how exactly you will achieve it.

Step 3: Know Your Audience for Creating Content on LinkedIn

After establishing your overall goals for your LinkedIn, you need to identify your target audience on LinkedIn. These should incorporate your existing and potential customers and your ideal customers. You’ll want them to see, read, and hear your content (video content). Don’t just target everyone and anyone. This is a scattergun approach, and your LinkedIn content efforts will be sloppy and wasted at best.

More and more companies are spending money on market research as they know that by drilling down and knowing 100% exactly who their audience is they will get a high ROI (return on investment).

Imagine running an expensive television ad and just targeting everyone and anyone even though your product let’s say is more for males aged in their fifties, your efforts would be wasted resulting in loss of money and time. The same principle applies to LinkedIn as the platform just like all social media platforms is a form of television airtime where you advertise your business.

Insider tip: Research both the demographics and psychographics of your audience to help you better understand them. From this, create your LinkedIn content strategy and incorporate an offering for your audience.

Step 4: Create Content on LinkedIn

Once you’ve done the above steps you are now ready to create content on LinkedIn. If you just skip to this step without doing the above it's like reading a book from the end. You’ve missed out on the beginning and the middle. Not a smart way to read a book! The same applies to LinkedIn.

Content is what will bring your LinkedIn to life and help you get leads, business opportunities, and more but of course, it must be done right, or else there’s no point to it. Start with creating content once a week and then if you can post three times a week.

Part of understanding the LinkedIn platform is understanding what content types perform well. The first rule to keep in mind is that LinkedIn prioritizes native content over external content. That is content that requires users to leave the platform to view it like a sign-up page on your website. Having said that you can still include external content but use it sparingly.

Creating content on LinkedIn is about using a combination of different content types that fall into various buckets to maximize engagement and appeal to different consumption tastes. Consider the following types of content:

• Status updates
• Posts
• Videos
• Slideshows
• Articles
• Newsletters
• Infographics
• Graphs
• Polls and quizzes

Insider tip: Along with following some LinkedIn experts you’ll come to learn what content performs well by watching your own analytics. This is data that tells you how your content is performing. Check in after 7 days to get a more accurate analysis. 

Step 5: Create Content on LinkedIn That’s Interesting

This should be a no-brainer, but the reality is most content on LinkedIn is boring and dry! You’ve no doubt heard the expression ‘’valuable content’’. It’s become an overused expression. But there’s so much truth to it. You see for your content to be read and liked by your audience; it must add value by making it worth people’s time to read it or listen to it if it is audio through the following:

• is educational
• Is inspiring
• Is interesting
• Is entertaining
• Is relevant 
• offers a solution or a different approach to an issue
• has the human touch eg: a personal story

Insider tip: Join the 1% club on LinkedIn which is the people whose content does really well on the platform. Aside from the LinkedIn experts that we’ve mentioned follow and study people like Tim Denning, Justin Welsh, and Dan Koe whose content has huge traction. They are seven figure creators. Learn to reverse engineer their success for your content. 

Step 6: Create Content on LinkedIn of Different Topics

Ensure your content covers a variety of different topics to diversify and keep your audience engaged. Don’t just write about the same topic. This will make you bland and is a sure way to drive engagement down. The exception is you have a weekly series like a weekly content tip, weekly news, etc. But even within these there should be variety in your content or else it will just bore your readers.

Remember people are giving up their time to engage with your content. Make it worth their while.  Time is your most precious resource. Do you want to engage with boring and dry content? of course not! Neither do your readers and potential visitors on your LinkedIn.  Consider some of these topic ideas:

• How to pieces
• Opinion pieces
• Industry news
• Industry trends
• Events
• Announcements
• Life and business lessons
• Knowledge and skills
• Leadership
• Strategies and tactics
• Tips and tricks

 

Insider tip: Don't forget to include SEO for your LinkedIn content. Add relevant keywords/phrases for it to be discovered and ranked accordingly. SEO isn't just for websites!

Step 7: Create a Content Schedule

Even with AI tools like ChatGPt creating original and quality content still takes time as it requires thoughtful planning and organisation. tion. Being consistent and persistent with your content creation is key to your success on the platform.  Create a content schedule where you assign the topic and the days to publish.

Block out time to create content and publish on a regular schedule. LinkedIn now has built-in tools to schedule your content.  Do some market research to establish when the best days and times are to publish your content.  This varies depending on where you live and where your target audience resides. If this is too much work for you just hire a content expert to do it for you.

Step 8: Regularly Engage With Other LinkedIn Users

Building relationships on LinkedIn is crucial for your content’s success so It’s essential to engage with other people. After all, it is a social media platform, and as the name implies you are there to be social, not anti-social. 

But many people treat LinkedIn like a low-maintenance plant. They open an account, do a few posts and that’s it. Then they check back in a few weeks or sometimes months later. You might as well not be on the platform if you are going to do this.

LinkedIn needs commitment, consistency, and persistence. Make this your brain tattoo! When people like, comment, or share your content connect with them, reply to their comments, thank them for their share, and start conversations.

Don’t forget to engage with their content and share it.  It’s a two-way street. Remember that comments, thoughtful ones not just one-liners are one of the biggest drivers of content engagement and visibility.

Step 9: Stay on Top of the LinkedIn Algorithm

LinkedIn frequently changes its algorithm, and this naturally impacts your content. Much of this will be outside your control just like Google and its algorithms. But you can still do your part by following LinkedIn experts who usually announce these changes as they are in the know before a lot of other people.

Not to mention you can sign up for LinkedIn’s marketing blog where sometimes updates are given. Once you know about the algorithm updates and changes you can adjust and pivot your content accordingly.

Step 10: Measure Results and Track Progress

The late economist Peter Drucker said, “You can't manage what you can't measure.” When it comes to pretty much everything in life from losing weight, running a business, creating content, and more you must continuously measure your results. Assess and reassess to see what’s working and what’s not working. Don’t keep doing posts on LinkedIn for six months that get no engagement.

Pivot and change strategy. LinkedIn’s in-built data analytics tool gives you many insights. If you have a LinkedIn Premium account, or Sales Navigator you get even more analytics to track and measure your progress.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of creating content on LinkedIn. Book a Time with WORD EMPIRE^® who can further help you and even create content for your LinkedIn.