How to Develop a LinkedIn Content Strategy

#1: Publish on the LinkedIn Publishing Platform

LinkedIn recently made waves by announcing that all members will have access to the same content creation and sharing tools that had previously been reserved for hand-picked LinkedIn influencers. (The feature is currently rolling out in waves. If you don’t have it yet, you will soon!)

Publishing Platform lets you blog right on LinkedIn.

With access to its Publishing Platform, you essentially have your own on-site blog. Like Jason Miller, you can publish your own persuasive, platform-friendly content on the world’s biggest social media network for professionals.

Recent Publishing Platform posts are visible on your LinkedIn profile.

Once published, your content is posted near the top of your LinkedIn profile so anyone viewing it also sees your latest articles. When articles are easy to find, youmake it easy for others to read and share your content on LinkedIn!

#2: Leverage SlideShare

Including SlideShare presentations on your LinkedIn profile or company page is a great marketing play. You can reinforce your expertise in your niche and helpbuild your reputation as a thought leader.

Stephanie Sammons includes SlideShare presentations on her profile through Professional Portfolio.

Add informative SlideShare presentations to your profile.

If you have a premium SlideShare account (which costs around $19 per month) you can add video inside a slide presentation and embed lead capture buttons as well.

Did you know that LinkedIn owns SlideShare? Yep. Because of that, LinkedIn goes the extra mile to make sure your SlideShare presentations display well on both its desktopand mobile platforms. That’s a definite bonus, considering how important mobile is.

#3: Drive Click-throughs

You know the value of good visual content—all of those Instagram and Pinterest users can’t be wrong, right? With access to LinkedIn’s publishing platform, you can bring your visual stories to your professional connections as well.

You can upload images to individual status updates, company pages, profiles and more. The question is how can your story stand apart from the rest? The answer is tocreate images that speak for themselves.

Some of the most popular posts on LinkedIn involve visuals mixed with intriguing text. In the example below, you can see how an interesting picture mixed with concise text is used to encourage people to click through to read the article. I’d click through, wouldn’t you?

Prudential – Bring Your Challenges used this image to create interest in the link they shared.

Pictures will catch the eye of your audience.

Creating an image with text is easier than you think. If you have a desktop application like PowerPoint, it’s easy to import an image, overlay some text and then export the slide as a JPG file. You can also find a bevy of free online tools like Pinwords.

If you want to capture something on the fly, you can use free iPhone apps like Word Swag to instantly create and share images with text right from your smartphone. Word Swag makes it extra-easy by offering dozens of stock photos and cool fonts to choose from so you can create an image with text in just a few seconds.

One important reminder when posting visual content: Ask your audience to dosomething with it! Include a clear call to action (e.g., “Give this a like” or “Share if you agree!”) so viewers help spread your content around LinkedIn.

Because LinkedIn is a professional network, it’s best to share professional content. However, there can be a time for you to share funny or off-topic content as a change of pace from your more career- or work-focused offerings. When done right, entertaining visual content can build engagement and grow your audience. (Just don’t turn into that guy who always posts silly cat photos on LinkedIn!)

#4: Use Video

Video is such a versatile marketing tool. You can use it to share an interview, a snippet of you speaking at a conference, a demonstration of how to use your product—pretty much anything you can think of.

Video humanizes you and your brand. When done well, a video can trigger powerful emotions that lead to increased engagement and trust. That kind of bond is critical to converting someone from stranger to paying customer.

If you’re not comfortable being on camera, you can still create powerful videos that get shared widely. Consider using screen-recording software such as EasyVideoSuite or Camtasia to create how-to videos that walk viewers through a series of useful tips about your product, service or another relevant topic.

Kaplan University included this video in an update from its company page.

Include video in your updates to increase trust in your services.

If you’re going to use video, it’s worth investing in a USB microphone that plugs into your laptop to make sure your audio is high-quality. 

When I create a video, I love to mix in stock video footage. It breaks up the monotony of me talking directly to the camera and can help illustrate my point.

One of the best sites out there to find free or next-to-free stock video is VideoBlocks. You can also find tons of great stock video on sites like Shutterstock, but it costs substantially more.

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Twitter Photo Tagging

Twitter Rolls Out Photo Tagging on Mobile: “You can tag up to 10 people in a photo and still have all 140 characters at your disposal, making it easier to connect with your friends.”

“Tagging people in a picture makes conversations around photos fun and easy.”

LinkedIn to Remove Products & Services Tab From All Company Pages:  ”You have two alternatives for sharing products and services content that many companies are already using and benefitting from: your company’s updates and showcase pages.”

On April 14, LinkedIn will be “removing the Products & Services tab from all company pages. In the meantime, you can edit your Products & Services content, but you won’t be able to add new items.”

Twitter Allows Users to Share Four Photos in a Single Tweet: “You can also share a series of photos that automatically create a collage.”

“Whether you’re on iPhone, Android or twitter.com, you can view tweets with multiple photos.”

Facebook Expands Lookalike Audience Capabilities: Advertisers can now “create lookalikes based on people who visit their websites, use their mobile apps or are connected to their Facebook pages.”

“The new features for lookalike audiences are available to all advertisers worldwide in Power Editor.”

Tumblr Introduces Two-Factor Authentication: “One key is your password, the other key is your cellular phone—and you need both to access your Tumblr dashboard.”

“Two-factor authentication is available as an option in your Settings page as of right now.”

Here’s more interesting news to follow:

Facebook Shares More Detail on Update to Pages: After receiving “lots of questions from people wondering how these changes—like the updated timeline design, easier access to admin tools and the introduction of Pages to Watch—will impact them,” Facebook answers the questions heard most frequently.

“Pages that have activated messages can view them in two locations: the Activity tab at the top of the page above the cover photo; or in the This Week box that runs along the right side of the page.”

Here’s a cool social media tool worth checking out:

UpTo: “UpTo gives you a more complete view of everything coming up that matters to you—without the clutter.”

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LinkedIn Member Blocking

LinkedIn Announces Member Blocking: This new LinkedIn member blocking feature will be rolled out to all LinkedIn members.

Use the drop-down menu to block or report a LinkedIn member.

LinkedIn Redesigns Who’s Viewed Your Profile: “Packed with new visual analytics and actionable insights designed to give you more ways to manage your professional identity and increase your visibility across LinkedIn.”

You will now have “access to more data-driven insights such as the industry your viewers work in, the keyword searches that led to your profile, how they found you and new insights including what regions they live in, what profession they are in and what company they work for.”

Facebook Shows Stories Around Topics You Like: “Now, when a page tags another page, (Facebook) may show the post to some of the people who like or follow the tagged page.”

“For example, this post by the Bleacher Report might be shown in the news feed to people who follow or like Dwight Howard, in addition to people who follow or like the Bleacher Report.”

Twitter Introduces Promoted Accounts in Search: “With this launch, relevant promoted accounts can be presented to users in search results along with recommendations of people to follow.”

Twitter will “automatically select relevant search queries for presenting promoted accounts based on an advertiser’s targeting choices, so no additional action is required for your business to access this capability.”

YouTube Reveals New Look: “You’ll see some changes to make it easier to find what you want to watch on YouTube and collect playlists to watch again and again.”

“YouTube now has a center-aligned look, fitting neatly on any screen size, and feeling similar to the mobile apps you’re spending almost half of your YouTube time with.”

Facebook Introduces New Campaign Structure: On March 4, Facebook is “rolling out a new campaign structure that will make it easier for advertisers of every size to organize, optimize and measure their ads.”

“The new campaign structure will be reflected worldwide across all ad interfaces, including the Ads Create Tool, Ads Manager and Power Editor, as well as third-party ad interfaces built by preferred marketing developers.”

Facebook Improves Core Audience Targeting Options: The targeting features built into their ad-buying interface will start to roll out, “allowing advertisers around the world to reach precise audiences based on four main targeting types: location, demographic, interests and behaviors.”

“Facebook’s targeting features are becoming simpler and even more powerful.”

Facebook Makes Changes to @Facebook.com Email Addresses: “Soon any email messages that are sent to your @facebook.com email address will no longer go to your Facebook messages. Instead, these emails will be forwarded to the primary email on your Facebook account.”

Here’s an interesting infographic worth noting:

The Year of the Social Small Business from LinkedIn:

“94% of survey respondents who use social media said they use it for marketing, and 3 in 5 say social solves for the core business challenge of attracting new customers.”

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Twitter Custom Timelines

Twitter Introduces Custom Timelines: The custom timelines “give you more control over how tweets are organized and delivered on the Twitter platform.”

Watch this video to see how it works.

Click here to see an example.

"Share the best tweets about a topic you care about, or an event—planned or unplanned—that's happening right now."

Twitter Announces Enhanced Mobile Targeting: “Now all advertisers can segment audiences on iOS and Android by operating system version, specific device and WiFi connectivity.”

"This increased granularity in mobile targeting helps advertisers reach users who are most important to them."

LinkedIn Pulse Replaces LinkedIn Today: Pulse and LinkedIn technology has “been fully integrated to offer a more relevant news experience with content tailored to your professional interests, both on the Pulse app and on LinkedIn.com.”

"When you download the new Pulse app on iOS or Android, you will be prompted to sign in using your LinkedIn profile. Once you've done this, we will automatically bring in the channels, influencers and LinkedIn content you already follow into your Pulse experience."

Vine Launches Windows App: Vine is “making it easy for even more people to capture and share life in motion.”

"Unique to Windows Phone, you can pin your favorite Vine accounts to your homescreen, and use Pivots to easily switch between your apps."

Other interesting news to follow:

LinkedIn Introduces New Way to Add Certifications: LinkedIn is “teaming up with some of the biggest names in online education to help you seamlessly update your profile with your educational accomplishments as you complete certifications or courses.”

"After the completion of a course with a participating provider, you will receive an email with a link that will present you with an automatically populated certification field, complete with the details of the course you just completed."

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LinkedIn Adds New Features: This Week in Social Media

LinkedIn Adds New Features on Homepage : LinkedIn introduces two new features “to your productivity toolkit: ‘Who’s Viewed Your Updates’ and ‘You Recently Visited.’ Both features can be found on the right-hand side of the Homepage and are intended to provide you with more personalized insights on your activities and engagement across LinkedIn.”

"Who's Viewed Your Updates provides you with one simplified snapshot of what you've shared over the past 14 days, who has seen it and how it has been received (liked, shared)."

Facebook Updates Ads Manager Reports: These recent updates to Ads Manager Reports “will happen gradually, with full availability expected in the coming weeks.”

These Ads Manager Report updates allow marketers to more easily customize, save and schedule reports.

Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

• How are the Facebook hashtags going for you so far?
• Have you added Vine or Instagram to your mix?
• How can you get testimonials?
• What benefits have you reaped as a result of participating in the Networking Clubs?

Foursquare Lets You Check-in Friends: “You can now check-in your friends when you’re out together. Instead of you and four friends each pulling out your phone to check in at dinner, now one of you can do it for everyone.”

When you check in on Foursquare, "you can tap 'I'm with…' to add people you're with. Choose your friends from the list."

Klout Partners With Yammer: “Now organizations that use Yammer (over 85% of theFortune 500!), will more easily discover hidden talent and expertise so that it can be identified and optimized across the company.”

"You now have the option to show your Klout Score and Topics of Influence in your Yammer profile. Klout is also beginning the process of ingesting data from Yammer to create a Yammer-specific Klout Score."Interesting social media news worth noting:

LinkedIn Reaches 3 Million Company Pages: Here are some fun facts about the more than 3 million LinkedIn Company Pages, including the kind of updates that get the most action.

"More than 3 million companies have created Company Pages to connect with 225+ million professionals on LinkedIn."

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3 Business Reasons to Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium

These three useful features include the Advanced Search, Who’s Viewed Your Profile and InMail.

Check out why you may want to upgrade.

While there are a number of different types of paid LinkedIn accounts you can choose from (LinkedIn Premium, For Recruiters, For Job Seekers, For Sales Professionals), LinkedIn Premium is the most balanced paid account type that will generally suit most business owners and professionals.

The LinkedIn Premium account has four different levels of membership that you can choose from depending on your budget and needs:

• Free
• Business Plus
• Executive
• Pro

Here are three of the benefits that may have you wanting to switch from a free account to a LinkedIn Premium account.

#1: Narrow Your Target With Advanced Search

The left section of the Advanced Search is available to all LinkedIn members and includes several fields such as keywords, location and company. In the right-hand section of the Advanced Search are several Premium fields that are valuable because of their ability to help you greatly narrow down and target your searches.

Both paid and free members can use the Relationship, Groups, Location, Current Company, Industry, Past Company, School and Language fields in the Advanced Search.

While several fields (Industries, Groups, Relationship and Current Company) are available to all members, there are eight fields that are available to the different levels of paying members only (all eight fields are available only to the Executive and Pro Premium level members). Premium Members with the Business or Business Plus level membership have access to the following four fields:

• Company Size—This can be beneficial; for example, for businesses that target small businesses and freelancers (select the 1-10 option), members looking for very large businesses (select the 10,000+ option) or any size in between.
  

  You can limit your search by company size.

• Seniority Level—Narrow your search by seniority levels such as VP, manager, senior, owner and partner.
  

  Only search for the seniority level or positions that are useful to you.

• Interested In—Choose from options such as Industry Experts, Entrepreneurs, Potential Employees or Consultants/Contractors to look for specific groups of people.
  

  Quickly search for people like industry experts and entrepreneurs with the Interested In field.

• Fortune 1000—Search strictly for employees at Fortune 1000 companies. There are a number of options that allow you to select the Fortune 50, Fortune 501-1000 and several choices in between.
  

  Narrow your search to Fortune 1000 companies.

For example, you may want to search for facilitators within your local area whom you may not already be connected with but you share a group with. To do this, you would simply type “facilitator” into the Keyword field, select the country, enter your ZIP code or postal code and select within 50 mi (80 km) and finally select Group Members under Relationship.

Finding the people in whom you are most interested using multiple search fields.

Search results are more relevant using Advanced Search.

Another example would be if you were looking to connect with the Communications VPs of Fortune 50 companies whom you share a connection or group with. For this search, you would type “communications” into the keyword field, select Location Anywhere and then check 2nd Connections and Group Members from Relationship, VP from Seniority Level and Fortune 50 under the Fortune 1000 section.

Save time prospecting by searching for LinkedIn members who meet your search requirements.

Get the best search results using Advanced Search.

Finally, Advanced Search allows you to save your searches. Not only will this feature remember your search, it will also send you weekly or monthly notices of any new member profiles that become a part of your network. You can also scan these new profiles from the Saved Search Tab by clicking on the number under New.

As a free member, you can save three searches, while Premium members have the ability to save up to 7 with the additional bonus of 500 profiles showing up in the search results rather than the standard 100 that comes with free membership.

Saved Searches make it easy to locate new people in your network who meet your search requirements.

#2: See Who’s Viewed Your Profile

An excellent source of potential connections lies in your Who’s Viewed Your Profile page. This page includes a list of people who have recently viewed your profile. While free members can only see the last five people to have viewed their profile, Premium members get the full list of people from the last 90 days.

See who has recently viewed your profile on the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page.

From this list you can find targeted prospects, potential clients or strategic alliances and reach out and connect or send them a message.

For best results when contacting these prospects, send them a personalized connection request to start a conversation with them, rather than mentioning you saw they viewed your profile.

Also located on the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page is a list of keywords that people have used to search when they viewed your profile. This can be extremely valuable; as it will tell you what keywords you are being found with most often.

With this information you can choose to further optimize your profile with these keywords or, if those are not the keywords you wish to be found for, you can go back and re-optimize your profile for the keywords you want to be found for.

Learn what keywords people are using when they find you.

Two additional benefits to the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page is the Views by Industry and Views by Geography sections.

The View by Industry area will help you highlight the top industries of people who have viewed your profile. If one of the industries listed at the top is not one that you currently are marketing to, this may indicate a potential untapped market that you should consider prospecting.

Knowing which industries your profile viewers are from can provide useful information about potential markets.

Views by Geography can provide similar insight, as it will list the countries your profile is most viewed from. If it is appropriate for your business, you may wish to consider reaching out to people located in the top countries on your list to expand your market.

Find out how many people from which countries are viewing your profile.

#3: Connect Directly With InMail

InMail is a message you send directly within LinkedIn to another member you are not already connected with. You might choose to send these to people with whom you would like to connect before you send a LinkedIn connection request to see if they’d be open to connecting with you on LinkedIn.

Using an InMail greatly increases your chances of success because they have a much higher open rate compared to that of email, as well as a strong lead conversion rate of 7%. This improves your ability to talk to and connect directly with top decision-makers.

This feature also includes a guaranteed 7-day response rate. If the person you contacted doesn’t contact you within 7 days, LinkedIn will credit you with another InMail to send, whether or not they reply to you after the 7 days.

Reach out to people outside of your network by sending an InMail.

While all members can purchase InMails, there are a number of benefits that are exclusive to Premium members. As a Premium member, you receive a number of free InMails each month (this number depends on which type of LinkedIn Premium membership you buy), you can accumulate your InMail credits from month to month (but they will expire after 90 days) and you can purchase up to 10 more InMails than your account type allows.

Over to You

While the paid LinkedIn service is not for everyone, I hope that I have provided you the information you need to decide whether LinkedIn Premium membership is right for you and your business.

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