LinkedIn Content Strategy: Your Guide to Content that Excites Customers

1. LinkedIn Content Strategy: A Definition  
2. 6 Tips for your LinkedIn Content Strategy
3. Use a LinkedIn channel structure that supports your marketing goals!
4. Best-Practice Examples of a LinkedIn Content Strategy – Is it Impossible?
5. Conclusion

In this article, you will learn all the important points about:

• Definition of a LinkedIn Content Strategy
• 6 Tips for a Successful LinkedIn Content Strategy
• Best-Practice Examples of a LinkedIn Content Strategy – Is it impossible?

LinkedIn Content Strategy: A Definition  

What does this term mean? It's the game plan for your activities on LinkedIn. This involves strategically determining the content you publish in order to achieve your marketing goals on LinkedIn. Whether you want to generate leads, expand your network, or appear as a thought leader, a thoughtful LinkedIn content strategy is the key.  

This should primarily include the following points:

• Goals, target group and positioning
• Internal resources
• Personality
• Channels and channel structure
• Uniform content and variety of formats

Like on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram, LinkedIn is also a medium, perhaps THE medium in the B2B sector, where personality matters. LinkedIn success with an anonymized company profile is unthinkable today. It's no coincidence that buzzwords such as Social Selling, Corporate Influencer Marketing or Personal Branding are discussed so frequently.

6 Tips for your LinkedIn Content Strategy

Invest time in your goal definition and target group analysis

LinkedIn is just like Instagram: nice pictures and the channel is running. Wrong! This statement has not been true for Instagram for a long time either. Without analysis and a smart strategy, time and money quickly go down the drain. Why? Because without a clear course, no clear successes can be achieved. Define your overarching goals, define KPIs and measure them. Only in this way can you ensure that your content not only looks chic, but also has an effect.

SMART Goals – your foundation for success on LinkedIn

It is important that your goals are SMART, i.e. specific, measurable, executable, realistic and scheduled. A concrete goal could be that your company aims to lead opinion on topic XY because it wants to become the market leader in the respective service sector. But which metrics capture this? Average impressions or the number of high-quality comments, i.e. technical input or specific questions, per post are particularly suitable for this.  

A SMART goal might look like this:

"Our visibility on LinkedIn should increase by 10% and relevant engagement by 5% in the next financial year. For this we provide 10% more budget for creative services and 10% for media each."

How high you set these KPIs per year naturally depends on the industry; but also on how much time and effort you plan to invest in the channel. The prerequisite here, however, is that your channel is well positioned and the target group recognizes a thematic red thread.

The correct positioning – your guarantee for achieving your goals

Of course, you know your target group from A to Z and know what interests them. If not, you should launch market research measures to prevent investing your budget and working time past the right target group. Align your channel with how your product or service meets customer needs. This creates relevance and creates meaningful Social Media Communication on LinkedIn. Important: stick to your expertise! Before you start your LinkedIn activities, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is the target group (profession, age, interests, gender, purchasing behavior etc.)?
• What customer needs does your product or service cover?
• Where does your product or service stand out from the competition?
• How large is your target group (mass vs. niche)? Where does your target group move?
• Are they even on LinkedIn?
• What is my target group looking for on LinkedIn (further education, expert exchange, entertainment etc.)?
• What language does my target group speak?
• With which tonality do I reach my target group on LinkedIn?

An overview of what such positioning could look like can be seen in the following graphic. In order for you to get a good idea of the example, I have outlined your company as a software manufacturer for Social Media Tools like Hootsuite, Swat.io or Iconosquare.

If you have started your LinkedIn activities, you should take a closer look at your channel after three months . Is the key data you have smartly defined developing as you imagine? If the magic is missing, turn on the Analysis Mode and adjust. Usually, a few tests are needed to find out what the target group specifically responds to.

Tip: Always take a closer look at your activities. This way, LinkedIn is not a guessing game for you, but a tactical win.

Use a LinkedIn channel structure that supports your marketing goals!

Company pages have long been the core of their LinkedIn content strategy for companies and a safe bet for communicating corporate messages. But like on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, the relevance of personal profiles on LinkedIn is continuously increasing – this is well noticeable, especially on the key figures for post performance. Just with a little channel care and light activity of a personal profile, company pages can pack up in direct comparison.

What does this mean for your LinkedIn Content Strategy? Depending on goals, target group and target group size, but also depending on the product or service, you should consider the setup of Corporate Influencers as well as the use of individual profiles of colleagues to distribute your marketing messages, in short an Advocacy Program,. What advantages that has, you will know step by step.

Company pages – the core of your LinkedIn presence

With almost a billion users worldwide, LinkedIn is the largest professional network and at the same time gathering place for all those who matter to your company: customers, decision makers, influencers, professionals, but also applicants. The company page forms the basis for your presence on LinkedIn and is the constant within your LinkedIn content strategy, because these can hardly quit unlike employees.

It is ideal for officially talking about your products, your brand or your corporate culture. A missing LinkedIn company page raises questions for all stakeholders. Is the company real? Is it up-to-date? A well-maintained page underlines the credibility, the values, the professionalism and last but not least the innovative power of your company – and in a time when new brands are entering established markets or opening up entirely new ones quickly and agilely, you certainly don't want to be left behind.

A LinkedIn Advocacy Program – your reach generator

Some call it an advocacy program, others call it an Ambassador Program. What's behind it is basically the same: showcasing employees on social media! Why? People love to interact with people – much more than with faceless company accounts. The goals can be quite different. Advocacy programs can support employer branding, recruiting, brand awareness, but also product and service communication. Typically, tools like Sprinklr or Hootsuite Amplify with an integrated Employee Advocacy function are used. As a social media manager, you can then upload posts into the software that colleagues can share on their LinkedIn accounts with just a few clicks.  

Sounds great, doesn't it? In theory, yes. In your LinkedIn content strategy, you should definitely include an intensive training of your colleagues which puts individualization of shared content at the center. In particular with larger companies or corporations, there is a risk of spam, because employees all share the same content via these advocacy tools. LinkedIn users who are connected to more than one contact within the company will then get the full dose of identical content. There will be great joy, because from a communications perspective this is not only ineffective for the company, but rather harmful.

Corporate Influencer Program – your personal competitive advantage

Add-on or core of your LinkedIn content strategy? It's clear that a Corporate Influencer Program has become an absolute Must-have in B2B businesses, because here too, “people follow people.” The potential in terms of reach, trust and personality should not be underestimated. Therefore, you should use corporate influencers – especially if your company is not yet so well-known and you may be selling an absolute niche product.

What distinguishes a corporate influencer from a “bought one?” Above all, authenticity! Because users always, in case of doubt, trust a brand ambassador who is permanently employed by the company for which he or she is advertising, more than influencers who are paid for their communication. The number of self-proclaimed opinion leaders on LinkedIn is currently exploding. As previously described, this is also reflected in the comparison of key figures. 

What steps should you as a company take to set up an effective corporate influencer program?

• Analyze the area where your company needs enhanced communication.
• Choose suitable colleagues - technical competence should ideally meet an affinity for self-presentation here.
• Train potential influencers, with a particular focus on the topics of profile optimization, network building, user interaction, and content creation.
• Supervise your influencers, including the editorial plan, initially 1:1 and meet with them regularly at the start of their influencer activities.
• Perform regular analysis and sharpen your positioning if necessary.

Of course, the goal should be for your influencers to eventually run themselves and require less intensive care from you than at the start. If the designated influencers are heavily involved at the start of your program, focus first on network building and engagement at the beginning. The two elements are anyway half the rent. The motivation to become a corporate influencer is, of course, the absolute prerequisite. Without this, it will be impossible. In this case: hands off!

Show real faces and true personality!

Personality Counts – therefore, you should put people at the center of your LinkedIn activities, because these are more interesting to other people than anonymous company accounts. This topic has now been mentioned more often – you see, it is important! But how do you specifically manage this for your LinkedIn content?

• Involve experts from your company – their colleagues will reward you by triggering positive user signals such as likes, shares, clicks, or comments.
• Tag the experts in your post. In this way, you “force” them to interact.
• Always position the experts in the context of their technical expertise – this way, you charge your company with competence in a sympathetic and approachable way.
• Always connect the experts in content with a specific topic. This creates recognition value and user loyalty in the future.
• Vary the LinkedIn content formats and bring your experts not only in quotes, but also in videos, document posts and picture galleries on the stage of your LinkedIn account.
• Use the experts also outside of LinkedIn, for example in Ads or in press releases, in order slowly to develop them into thought leaders in their field.

Check your internal resources!

Without internal resources, you won't be able to do anything on LinkedIn, because you as a social media manager need the experience and knowledge of your internal subject matter experts. Define together with all internal stakeholders and contact persons from whom you receive input for content, but who are also available for questions in the context of Community Management. As valuable as the commitment of your direct contacts is, it is just as important that their superiors give them the time alongside their actual activity to support you. Without this, your successful cooperation will fall victim to a too high workload – and we certainly want to avoid that.

If the resistance is somewhat greater, start small, with manageable time and celebrate your joint successes – because once the success train has started, more and more passengers usually want to get on board.

A few arguments to convince all your internal stakeholders of the inclusion of colleagues in your LinkedIn content strategy could certainly not harm you at this point:

• The inhibition threshold to write to experts from your company on LinkedIn about products or services is lower than to contact a company.
• By involving the experts, trust in your company increases.
• The quick answer to specific and technically correct questions increases the level of your customer service.
• Leads that come about through the LinkedIn contact can be clearly traced and assigned.
• The positioning of experts not only increases the reputation of the company, but also the reputation of the expert and can therefore be seen as an Employer Branding Measure.
• Through the interaction of colleagues, not only does your content and your channel gain additional reach, but also the We-Feeling within the company experiences a boost.

Consider the LinkedIn algorithm

The LinkedIn algorithm loves engagement. The more interactions your post receives, the greater the reach. This might have been true in 2022. As of recently, the LinkedIn algorithm values real expertise more. Thank God, because engagement-baiting, or the “begging” of user interaction through overly emotional posts, had become a real problem for LinkedIn over the years. An increasing number of users have reported this lately. In 2023, there was finally a major update for the algorithm, with the aim of placing a positive user experience in the focus – according to the motto "Quality First!"

This of course has implications now for how you should design your content. The main points are summarized here once:

• Talk about your core topic and dive deeply into it.
• Present a specific solution rather than general information.
• Use formats that support a communication message.
• Respond to comments and lead high-quality “dialogues” there.

Publish uniform content and stay true to your brand

Without recognition value, no lasting success. A post that cannot be clearly assigned to your company is of no use. Always speak with the clear voice that your CI guidelines give you. But also adapt it if LinkedIn brings out a new format, for example. This can certainly happen quickly on social media and then it doesn't make sense to hold on to the old braid.

The same applies to wordings and the language you use. Zesty content and sensational language is of no use if your target group maintains a conservative style. Bottom Line: Stay consistent and as close as possible to target group and goals. You should nip internal firecrackers such as content that is only internally motivated and contradicts your strategy in the bud if possible.

Best-Practice Examples of a LinkedIn Content Strategy – Is it Impossible?

Best Practice on LinkedIn – that's indeed quite a challenge, especially when it comes to company pages, because despite intensive Google search and regular scanning of the LinkedIn universe, there are hardly any companies where a 100 percent clear LinkedIn content strategy is visible.

Big players like BMW, Siemens or Telekom cover more than one goal and target group on their channels. Customers and applicants are in the foreground and at the same time in a competitive relationship in terms of content. Since LinkedIn celebrated its debut originally as a purely professional network and only developed into a content platform over time, the ambiguous positioning of many companies is absolutely understandable and probably historically grown. The shortage of skilled workers exacerbates the topic. However, the problem remains: what is exciting for one target group can be completely irrelevant for the other – and this shows up, especially on the performance fluctuations of the individual posts.

On the influencer side, it is easier to identify best practice examples depending on the interest field. The LinkedIn algorithm here very clearly follows our human interest in people – but we've had this point enough now.

Conclusion

LinkedIn Content Strategy, not an easy task, especially when it comes to practical implementation. If you are clearly positioned with your company and use internal resources wisely, then your LinkedIn activities could become the clear best practice example we are all so desperately looking for.