In part nine of my social selling on LinkedIn series, I want to talk about LinkedIn content. Specifically, where you can find relevant content to share to your LinkedIn profile, and how to share it so that you can turn your profile into a lead generating machine!
Finding and sharing relevant LinkedIn content regularly is key to developing a vibrant and effective LinkedIn profile. Content is absolutely king, if you want to build trust with your prospect and influence their decisions. You need to share content that pushes them off of their status quo and gets them thinking differently about the problems that they have and (more importantly) the solutions you offer!
But first! If you haven’t read the eight previous posts in this series covering social selling on LinkedIn, using LinkedIn as a sales tool, optimizing your LinkedIn profile picture, why you should customize your LinkedIn URL, LinkedIn headline tips, LinkedIn summary best practices, LinkedIn recommendations as social proof and LinkedIn skills and endorsements you should go back and review those first.
They lay the groundwork for your social selling strategy, how you should be thinking about LinkedIn in general, and some minor (but effective) changes you’ll need to make to your LinkedIn profile that will make you easier to find, and will help optimize your profile for organic search on Google.
What Is Good LinkedIn Content?
Now, before we get into finding and sharing relevant LinkedIn content, let’s talk about what good LinkedIn content is. What should you be posting to your LinkedIn profile?
Of course there is going to be no “one size fits all” answer here. It’s going to depend on your industry. But, you should start with sharing your professional expertise, experiences, and anecdotes. What do you do? What is your expertise? How can you help prospects and potential customers? What solutions do you have for their problems? Good LinkedIn content begins there! Think along these lines:
- What does the future of your industry look like?
- What important industry trends should people aware of?
- What are some challenges you’ve faced?
- What are some opportunities you’ve seized?
- What’s the biggest problem your industry needs to solve?
- What advice would you give someone entering your field?
While good LinkedIn content begins with your professional expertise, it certainly doesn’t end there. Never forget the social aspect of social media! You want to be authentic, natural and well rounded, so don’t forget to share LinkedIn content that goes beyond your professional life. Remember to be social when sharing LinkedIn content. Try some of the following:
- Share something you learned recently, Reddit TIL style.
- Share the last thing that you read and enjoyed.
- Share a piece of advice that you would give to your younger self.
- Share an interesting story or anecdote.
- Share your thoughts on current events.
- Share a life or business hack that enables you to be more productive.
- Share what you do to achieve work/life balance.
Finding Relevant LinkedIn Content
And, if you’re hard pressed to create your own LinkedIn content you can always rely on your newsfeed to do the work for you. Your Linkedin feed (accessible via mobile or desktop) is giving you content daily based on the information that you and your prospects find valuable.
That’s right! LinkedIn literally provides you new content every day! Simply scroll through your feed and cherry pick the content you think will be of value to your audience. Even better, as you scroll further down, you can pick very specific people to follow. Influencers within the market and likely prospects you would like to reach out to. As you do this, LinkedIn will algorithmically update, add to and refine the content you see. Your LinkedIn content machine will be built automatically as you build out your Linkedin profile.
You can always like, comment, and share any particular content that you see in your news stream. But what I’d really like you to concentrate on is finding an article that really resonates with your prospects. An article that defines a problem, answers a question, or contains valuable information. Then I want you to proceed to step two and hit the LinkedIn Share button.
Clicking on the LinkedIn Share button, allows you to share this to your network. It even gives you an opportunity to add your perspective or summation. To state what you think is most relevant or poignant about this particular article.
Properly Sharing LinkedIn Content
You can share LinkedIn content with prospects through articles, photos, posts or videos by following the steps illustrated below:
Remember though, it’s not enough to simply share relevant LinkedIn content, you need to share it properly in order to get the maximum effect. After all, if you post LinkedIn content and get no engagement from your readers, your prospects, your potential clients… Was it worth posting at all?Here are some suggestions on how you can engage readers when sharing LinkedIn content:
- Be sure to directly mention people when you share (Think potential customers who will find the content valuable).
- Include rich media such as photos and/or videos in addition to text.
- Always include a CTA (call to action). Ask for responses and feedback.
- Add relevant hashtags to topic tag your posts.
- Add your own commentary to engage readers and start conversations.
If all of this seems like too much to remember, LinkedIn provides a handy guide containing their best practices for posting and sharing LinkedIn content. You can download the printable PDF here.
The Bottom Line On LinkedIn Content
Sharing LinkedIn content is absolutely vital to kick starting your daily routine. Without sharing LinkedIn content, prospects will not learn from you. It is the perfect opportunity for you to educate your prospect, to inform them, and to get them thinking about solutions (ideally that you can offer or help them with) to their problems.
Watch for upcoming posts where I’ll outline more steps I take, and that you should take to optimize your Linkedin profile and the specific actions you should be taking on a daily basis to implement a solid social selling strategy and really start using LinkedIn effectively!
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