As part of your marketing, does your brand promote its executives as influencers in their own right? 

While the temptation is to view social media influencers in the same vein as the media – something outside the organisation that we need to engage with to reach an audience – in reality, when it comes to LinkedIn , brands often have the people they need already in-house to establish credibility and influence. 

Let’s have a look at what brands should be doing to promote their executives on LinkedIn  and some reasons why many don’t engage and how to put together a LinkedIn  executive profile-building content strategy.

Why LinkedIn  should be your top B2B priority

It’s well known that LinkedIn  is the top platform for business-to-business (B2B) lead generation, and the great news is that 93% of content marketers find LinkedIn  content marketing at least ‘somewhat effective’ [source]. I still think a lot of brands are missing out on the opportunity by not investing time in a LinkedIn -specific content strategy focussed specifically on their executives. And by ‘content’, I don’t just mean the written word; video is incredibly impactful on LinkedIn , but not everyone is comfortable in front of the camera.

“Personal profile-building matters because people buy from people and would probably rather follow an individual for their focussed expertise over following a company and seeing every single corporate update.”

Personal profile-building matters because people buy from people and would probably rather follow an individual for their focussed expertise over following a company and seeing every single corporate update.

In my experience, brands are put off doing executive-focussed content marketing on LinkedIn  due to either a lack of resources, lack of social media experience, absence of a content calendar, or because they didn’t see quick results. You won’t; building an executive profile on LinkedIn is very much a long game.

Creating content that appeals to both humans and LinkedIn ’s algorithm

Each social network’s algorithm is different, but one thing they have in common is they tend to prefer that people post on their network rather than link out to other sites. If you publish a blog post on your website and link out from LinkedIn , it will probably get deprioritised on LinkedIn  and not drive the traffic that you’d like. That’s why, when putting together a content strategy, you need to have a unique content strategy for each social network.

The long-form content that lives on your website should absolutely be useful to your audience, but it should be more related to answering customer challenges and product info for search query purposes, while LinkedIn content should live exclusively on LinkedIn  for the purpose of informing and persuading your LinkedIn audience.

Definitely familiarise yourself with the LinkedIn  algorithm before you post anything.

How to create a solid LinkedIn  executive profile-building programme

Here’s a step-by-step guide to forming an executive profile-building content marketing programme on LinkedIn:

Set out business objectives, tone-of-voice and messaging: Cringeworthy phrase here, but what is your ‘why’? What are you trying to achieve, what are you hoping to convey and how are you going to say it? You need to do this thinking up front to inform the rest of your strategy.

Establish decision journey of customers: How do your target audience buy from you? How long is the cycle? What do they need to know about you? Your LinkedIn  content will need to answer these questions and, where possible, link to relevant content on your website to take the reader further down the sales funnel.

Select spokespeople according to skillset: Pick an expert for the key areas you want to major on. For example, for corporate messages your CEO is best, while for technical content, your Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is probably the best voice. Note that sales titles can be off-putting. 

Who’s good in front of the camera? What type of content is best delivered verbally and which by written word?

Lay out your content calendar: This will be a mix of ‘perennial’ content – seasonal or holiday-related content – while leaving space to respond to events (such as government budgets or geopolitical events that might impact your business). Being consistent is key: you don’t want to become overfamiliar, but it’s important that executives post on LinkedIn  at least once a week; although it doesn’t need to be a full-on article.

Get a great copywriter on board: An engaging copywriter can make the difference between content that converts and content that flops. They can nail the executive’s unique voice and advise on what type of content would work best (e.g., how-to content, report structures, opinion pieces etc.)

Track performance, analyse and continually improve: Once you’ve got your content live, you can always promote it with paid promotion on LinkedIn  to ensure it reaches the right eyeballs. Use tracking links if linking from a LinkedIn  article to your own site and always use Google Analytics 4 to see how content is performing: What works best? Whose content is doing really well? What topics resonate most?

Remember, it’s all about playing the long game. Stick with it. By continually appearing in your target audiences’ feeds as a useful brand with credible experts, your brand name will stand out when they do come to buy.

Are you happy with your organisation’s LinkedIn  content strategy? If it’s something you’re looking to improve further and would like some help, please get in touch and I look forward to having a chat with you.

The post How to build company executives’ profiles on LinkedIn™  appeared first on Eight Moon Media, B2B Technology Copywriters.