We’ve talked a lot about networking on LinkedIn and how to build engagement. Every step of the way, I’ve emphasized that providing key insight-driven content is key to creating and building engagement.
Content strategy is a vital part of your marketing strategy.
You want to be a thought leader in your space and with your audience on LinkedIn. That thought leadership is what provides you with value for putting in all that time and effort to build your network. Developing your own flow of key insight-driven content is what makes you a thought leader. But how do you do that?
What Makes Good Content?
Key insight-driven content is a first-person perspective on the problems that you can help solve and the insights you can bring that are relevant to your particular audience. It’s a very straightforward way of sharing your experiences and expertise.
Steps to Creating Good Content
- Brainstorm with the Executive Team
First up, sit down with your executive team and talk about the potential obstacles and problems that you’ve faced or that you see your clients facing. Think like a customer. Identify their pain points. They could be a need, a problem, a desire, or a challenge that your customers are facing. You want to share the expertise you have and look at it, particularly from the perspective of what your audience really cares about. What do you understand about their problems that you have a unique ability to help them with? Those are the topics that make for good content. - Find the Right Subject Matter Expert
It’s tough to consistently create good key insight-driven content. It’s not difficult to come up with the ideas, the challenge is how do you execute them. The way we’ve addressed that is by building a network of hundreds of subject matter experts – because it’s just not realistic to do it internally.We take an idea, flesh it out a bit, and then we find a writer who is already an expert in that market. They produce the content based on guidance and an outline from us.
- Use Editors to Get the Voice Right
Once the content is back, the next challenge is getting the voice right. This is key because this insight-driven content needs to sound consistent and like it is coming from the person sending it. We use editors who understand our voice and tone to do the final edits on the content.
Not all content is equal
Not everybody wants the same kind of content or even uses the same platform. Be sure you’re sharing your content in different ways – blog posts, LinkedIn posts, podcasts, social media posts, videos, and graphics are all different ways to present the same key insights to a wider audience.
Follow the Analytics
Pay attention to what the analytics say about the different types of content you post. We follow the data and see what it is we’re doing that is really creating engagement. Then we regularly refine our content topics based on what those analytics say.
Putting dedicated time and resources into creating good content will pay off. It helps drive additional connections and furthers engagement, and sets you up as a thought leader.
Learn more by listening to our B2B Word of Mouth Marketing podcast.
All the best,
Bill Bice
CEO
