Why Content Marketing on LinkedIn is More Important Now than Ever Before

Source: Neil Patel

LinkedIn’s not the biggest social network out there.

But it’s one of the most lucrative ones.

That’s because it’s full of senior-level business professionals, decision-makers, and C-suite executives who are busy networking (and not procrastinating) on LinkedIn.

Don’t believe me?

CEOs use LinkedIn the most of any public social network. And 41% of millionaires use LinkedIn, too.

So it’s the go-to channel to get access to these otherwise hard-to-reach people.

That’s not even the best part, though.

Creating lucrative relationships with these people is usually extremely challenging. However, LinkedIn now makes it insanely easy with its content marketing tools.

You can create content assets, push them out to these influential people, and generate new leads at scale.

And I’ll show you how to do that in this article.

Let’s get started.

Why LinkedIn is a prime content-marketing target

LinkedIn’s business membership has exploded from only 37 million in 2009 to over 467 million last year.

The vast majority of LinkedIn users (67%) consider themselves “news junkies,” While 40% of members log in each and every day looking for new content.

Those are good signs!

Here’s why.

Years ago, I realized that longer posts on Quick Sprout (over 1,500 words) got 68% more tweets and 22% more likes than shorter ones.

Check it out for yourself. The results aren’t even close.

Since then, I’ve upped each post to over 3,000 and beyond.

Guess what happened?

The visits, time on site, and social shares grew even more.

It turns out that smart business professionals like reading in-depth, actionable content — plan and simple.

Now let’s turn our attention to LinkedIn. Guess what type of content works well for its users, too?

There are over three million long-form posts on LinkedIn, with another 130,000+ being added each week.

People are out there starving for quality content — none of that 300- to 500-word junk that gives no tips, no actionable steps, and no real value.

After all, that last part (value) is why we harp on long-form content.

Think about it.

We’re talking about complex, technical topics that are hard to explain. So it takes a lot of words to do each topic justice!

An overly simplistic 500-word article just doesn’t give you the room necessary to fully expand on the subject.

Best of all, anyone can get started creating content on LinkedIn.

I’m going to show you how to do it in the next section (and tell you what kind of content works best).

Then I’ll show you some of my favorite advanced strategies to skyrocket results.

Start by creating content based on trends and industry insights

LinkedIn makes posting quality content insanely easy.

Simply log in to LinkedIn and click on the “Write an article” button.

Now you can write directly in the form field (or copy and paste in your content from another source), add an eye-catching featured image, and save the article.

When it’s ready to publish, LinkedIn will take care of all the formatting, so it will look perfect 100% of the time.

All of that sounds great, right?

Except for one thing: Where exactly are you supposed to get started?

Thankfully, LinkedIn gives us the answer.

Six out of ten LinkedIn users are most interested in reading about industry insights.

Here are the next two in-demand categories (after industry insights):

• 53% are interested in company news
• 43% are interested in new products and services

The good news is that you can take content from other sources now (like presentations, webinars, videos, podcasts, or even old blog posts), re-work the content to include some industry insights, hit “Publish,” and watch the views pour in.

Comparing data points across industries is one of my favorite strategies to cast a wide net that appeals to everyone.

However, if you specialize in a particular niche (or just see that one performs especially well), you can also go deep on a specific topic (like this next e-commerce example).

Pretty straightforward, right?!

There’s one extra secret, though, for creating content on LinkedIn.

Scroll back a little bit and re-read those two posts. What do you notice?

The headlines on both are exceptional (if I do say so myself).

Here’s why that’s critical.

Nobody will read your content unless you have a killer headline

On average, five times more people read an article’s headline than even a sentence of the body copy.

That sounds like content-marketing wisdom you’d expect to read today. Except, it isn’t.

It’s from legendary ad man, David Ogilvy, who shared that anecdote decades ago.

Headlines are just as important today, though. Think about it for a second.

What gets you to click when you open your email and scan that full inbox, or when you browse the active feed on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn?

It’s the headline.

Unfortunately, these can be notoriously difficult to write. It often takes a lot of work

But I’ve found a few foolproof hacks to create killer headlines every single time.

Tip #1. Shoot for “practically useful” headlines.

A study from the New York Times found that “practically useful” posts get shared the most.

What does that mean exactly?

I would define a “practically useful” headline as one that promises the reader something that they can put into practice ASAP.

Many times that also means they get some tangible result, too.

For example, take this post.

You’re only reading it for one single reason: to get more traffic for your website.

The point is that you want a step-by-step tip or strategy that’s going to deliver a valuable outcome.

Tip #2. Start with one of the five most popular shared LinkedIn headlines.

BuzzSumo analyzed 10,000 of the most-shared phrases and narrowed the list down to these top performers:

• How to…
• The future of…
• You need to…
• Why you should…
• Can learn from…

You’ll notice that all of these words follow a similar vein. BuzzSumo recommends sticking to two main trains of thought:

• Write about success, what others have done to achieve success, and how you can implement success-building tips.
• Write about industry trends or other newsworthy topics that are on the top of…

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