Are you sharing your high-quality blog content on LinkedIn's publishing platform? LinkedIn is the world's largest social professional network, and is by far one of the best platforms for B2B marketers to connect with experts and influencers in their niche, build strategic relationships, and enhance their brand's reputation. In fact, LinkedIn is the #1 social media channel leveraged by B2B marketers. It's designed for the business community and marketers like you.
The beauty of LinkedIn's publishing platform is that it gives you an opportunity to share your value-rich content with users who are actively seeking new information to engage with. You see, over 130,000 unique original articles are published on LinkedIn every week and shared among the platform's community, which is now up to 500 million members. This provides you with a great opportunity to expand the reach of your content and reach more targeted audience subsets.
Given this, it's worth setting a goal to include LinkedIn publishing as part of your social media marketing strategy - here are five big reasons why B2B brands should leverage LinkedIn publishing, along with some tips on how you can begin incorporating it into your digital marketing process.
1. Showcase Your Professional Expertise
One of the major benefits of using LinkedIn publishing is the ability to share your professional expertise through in-depth blog posts, answering subsequent questions, and participating in relevant LinkedIn Groups. Over time, this will enable you to position yourself as a thought leader within your niche and build credibility for your brand.
Action tip: Write about areas you specialize in. Hone in on a specific topic, keeping your content focused yet informative. Always keep your target audience (or buyer personas) in mind when creating your content, ensuring you engage the right viewer.
2. Increase Brand Awareness
Publishing on LinkedIn is another way to boost awareness of your brand and increase online visibility of your content. When you post to different social media channels, you connect with different audiences who may not be on all the other social networks. Leveraging LinkedIn enables you to expand your reach and influence.
Action tip: Promote your new LinkedIn content to your email list and ask them to share it. Email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources. Don't forget to tell them to connect with you on LinkedIn too.
3. Promote Product Launches
Launching a new product? LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to use for product launches amongst B2B businesses.
Incorporate LinkedIn publishing into your next new product campaign to create additional opportunities for success.
Action tip: Remember your audience is business professionals. Tailor your product launch content to appeal to this audience. Writing social media content for LinkedIn may need to be written a bit differently than what you would publish on Facebook for that same piece of content.
4. Drive New Website Visitors And Generate Quality Leads
Publishing content on LinkedIn positions you to drive new traffic to your blog content and increase qualified leads landing in your sales funnel. Linking your original blog post on LinkedIn, or including a landing page link, gives you another medium to send new visitors to your site. It's a great way to boost your lead generation and engagement.
Action tip: Include a clear call-to-action in your content. What do you want your readers to do next? End your post with directions to improve conversions.
5. Boost Personal and Professional Development
LinkedIn is a learning environment where you receive fresh news, insights, and inspiration to help you be great at what you do.
Improve your skill sets, discover what's working now in your industry, and connect with some of the world's finest people, all on LinkedIn.
Action tip: Join and participate in LinkedIn Groups. There's a plethora of interest groups that you can offer insight and value to. Join Groups relevant to your industry, your region and more. But, don't just join to join - be active ito utilize the full benefits.
Incorporate LinkedIn Publishing into Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
If you're in the B2B space, LinkedIn can be a game-changer for your social media marketing strategy. Begin leveraging LinkedIn publishing now by sharing your valuable content to start connecting with a targeted audience and grow your brands credibility.
A version of this post originally appeared on The Fried Side blog.