How To Master Content Publishing On LinkedIn And Drive Views To Your Content

Where does 50% of B2B web traffic originating from social media come from?

The answer might surprise you.

It's LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is one of the best places to publish content for brands.

If you're not content publishing on LinkedIn, and you need more ROI from content, it's a great time to start. You can use LinkedIn to elevate yourself as a thought-leader, connect with your community and demonstrate your skill set and ability.

If done correctly, you can also get a ton of traffic and leads. But it takes a solid B2B content publishing strategy, as well as a few critical things.

B2B Content Publishing on LinkedIn: The Must-Haves

LinkedIn is great for content publishing because it's an expansive, engaged network. In fact, 91 percent of executives rate LinkedIn as their favorite source of professionally relevant content.

But to thrive on LinkedIn, you need to consistently publish high-value content. You also need to work on your profile and build up the right kind of connections. With these tips, you can get the most from LinkedIn and build up a ton of engagement from your material.

1. Post From A Person, Not A Company Page

Now, companies like Google and HubSpot are exceptional at managing their company pages. But if you haven't been maintaining and growing your LinkedIn company page, you're not going to get a lot of engagement if you start there. I'd recommend start on a personal page. 

Why?

Because people trust other people. And LinkedIn promotes content from the people you're connected with the most. 

Instead of our company page, for instance, I publish LinkedIn content from my personal account. I like to mix in personal updates (above) along with blog content. It puts a personal touch on things and reminds my followers that I'm a real person.

2. Do A Mini Audit Of Your Connections

A majority of contacts tend to be old high school friends, college peers, and co-workers. I'd consider those decent connections, but you also need to connect to users that match your customer profile. You don't want to publish content that none of your followers care about or find useful.

When you decide to start publishing content on LinkedIn, audit your existing connections. 

You can download a file of your connections right from LinkedIn. From there, you can audit based on job title and industry. Once you have a better idea of your existing connections, you can purge connections that you don't know and focus on building up the right LinkedIn audience.

3. Create An Actual Strategy

If you want to get engagement from your content, you can't post on LinkedIn every once in a while. You need consistency, which requires an actual plan to create and distribute material.

A few questions I'd ask when kicking off a LinkedIn strategy include:

Do I want to invest in articles or videos?

How often can I realistically post new content? 

What resources do I need to commit to this plan?

From these answers, you can create a strategy with the type of content you will create and how often you will publish. This will help you stay active and engaged on the channel.

4. Train Your Connections 

In the short-term, if you don't get engagement from LinkedIn content, it can be frustrating. But that doesn't mean you should stop. It will take time to build traction, especially if you're just starting with content publishing on LinkedIn.

At first, work on getting into a publishing rhythm. You want to start training your connections to look and engage with your content.

I publish content a lot, and at first, I did not get a lot of engagement. It took a few months, but now, I'm at the point where friends and peers ask me when I'm going to publish next. I even have connections on LinkedIn that approach me in person to talk content I've shared, even though they never left any kind of digital proof they saw it.

5. Tell Your Followers What To Do

You can't assume that your audience knows what action you want them to take on a post or a video. If you want them to comment, ask a question, and request answers. If you want them to do and read the rest of your blog post, share a working link, and tell them to do that.

Here's a simple example. In this post, I tell the reader to click on the post to learn the secrets. I'm telling them why they should read the article and what they will gain from it. 

6. Limit Your Automation

Let's be real for a second. Everyone knows what an automated LinkedIn post looks like.

They look like this:

Obviously, it's not a terrible thing to do, because I automate posts myself. But since everyone recognizes this is content that automatically publishes, they know it's not coming right from you. While posts you manually write tend to be personal, thoughtful, with automated posts, your connections know that there's literally almost no effort in doing it.

That's why automation has a time and place. I'd set up auto-publish, but still, make it a point to comment on those posts and write posts a few times a week. Because you can't completely automate LinkedIn engagement, no matter what tool you’re using.

7. BE GENUINE and get personal

I love seeing LinkedIn influencers who have real personality. One of my go-to examples is Noah Kagan, who publishes a lot of fun videos, articles, and podcasts. And even if you're not at his level, you can find ways to be genuine and stand out. 

Take Brandi, for example. I went to college with Brandi, and she works at NetApp. She posts business content, but she also posts a lot of thoughtful stuff, and you can tell it’s genuine.

She finds a way to be relatable, which is a good look for anyone looking to gain traction on this channel.

The Truth About LINKEDIN PUBLISHING 

Here’s the truth about getting engagement from LinkedIn publishing – it takes work! You can’t automate your way to connecting with your LinkedIn audience, or any other social community. You need to put in some consistent effort. Even taking five minutes a day to share a post on LinkedIn and writing one insightful comment is better than nothing.

In the time that you’re waiting in line at Starbucks, holding on Zoom until a meeting begins, or sitting in the lobby of your doctor’s office, you could be doing something little to contribute to LinkedIn.

Because here’s the thing about spending 10-20 strategic minutes on LinkedIn each day – it builds up, and before you know it, you’re creating genuine connections with your contacts.