Do you want your business to be seen as an industry leader? Wondering how LinkedIn can help you? Here’s how to start developing thought leadership and thought leadership on LinkedIn, three types of content that will help you, and how to choose your business image.
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Why Businesses Should Consider LinkedIn for Thought Leadership
When most of us think of thought leadership, we tend to think of the more personal social media platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, and even Facebook.
LinkedIn is still very much a business and recruiting oriented platform in our minds. Most of the time, people only pay attention to their profiles when they are looking for (or think they might start looking for) a new job opportunity.
But it turns out that one of LinkedIn’s superpowers is that it’s the only social platform that puts business first. It is the only social network that thrives on your personal profile being more about your business and your brand than about you on a personal level.
Of course, the personal is still important because we do business with human beings and smiley faces instead of logos. And while all the other social marketing platforms available also work better when you humanize and present the face behind the brand, LinkedIn is the only one that allows you to create an entire social page out of your business.
#1: Choose who you want to be the face of your brand on LinkedIn
One of the interesting questions that arise when leveraging LinkedIn personal profiles and thought leadership is: “Who should a company or brand choose to create that thought leadership profile?”
Obviously, whoever starts optimizing their personal LinkedIn profile to establish themselves as a thought leader in an industry will become a face for their brand. These are people who will create regular content that establishes their name and personal brand under the umbrella of the business brand, and in doing so, will be the first line of interaction with the audience.
So it’s pretty obvious why you should take your time choosing the best person to pull this off. And this role doesn’t have to be restricted to just one person: the biggest brands can choose multiple people to become thought leaders within their industry.
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Here are other considerations for choosing someone to take on a thought leadership role:
- Are they experts in your field and within your business?
They don’t need to be content creation or marketing experts, but they do need to understand the industry and the brand’s place within it, before they can establish themselves as thought leaders.
- Are they willing to present themselves as a face of the brand?
Almost every brand has experts who could fill this role, but they may feel uncomfortable in the spotlight or creating public content and establishing themselves as thought leaders. So make sure this person is comfortable doing it.
- Do you feel comfortable in front of the camera?
They need to be confident enough to be able to speak clearly on camera to help establish the connection with the audience that builds their authority. Some people are amazing and charismatic in person and then freeze on camera, and others whose charisma and presence are always understated in person really shine on video.
Again, you don’t have to restrict yourself to just one person for this role. Companies that invest in building personal brands with their employees as thought leaders in their industry tend to do very well and attract new talent.
Additionally, if no one in your business seems to fit the criteria or if you are a small business just starting out in the thought leadership space, you may want to consider hiring staff specifically for this purpose.
#2: Optimize a LinkedIn Profile to Build Thought Leadership
The great thing about LinkedIn is that your presence as a thought leader starts with your personal profile. You want to set up and optimize your profile so that it demonstrates your authority as part of your brand within the industry and helps establish you as a thought leader.
When someone visits your personal LinkedIn profile, they should immediately be able to see what you do, who you help, and the value you provide. This starts with a strong title throughout your description, featured links, published articles, activity, and content.
Above all, if you want to establish yourself or help establish your staff and employees as thought leaders within your industry on LinkedIn, those personal profiles should be built with the audience in mind. Make it clear who you serve and how, and provide resources that establish authority and thought leadership.
Whether you have one person or multiple people working to become thought leaders on LinkedIn, make sure you have a LinkedIn Business Page set up. Personal profiles they post will be linked to this Page and some of their content (as applicable) may be reused on your Page.
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#3: Algorithm-Supported Content Ideas to Establish Thought Leadership
As with any social channel, understanding what the channel is working for and what your audience is responding to are important parts of developing your content strategy.
Although LinkedIn is a social platform that prioritizes business, it is about humanizing brands. And part of being a thought leader means that you’re adding your personal opinions and perspectives along with value to everything you post.
It goes without saying that if you want to establish yourself as a thought leader on LinkedIn, you need to consistently post compelling and thought-provoking content.
This means developing a content strategy that aligns with your values and brand goals, and posting that content at a time that works for you.
While you’ll want to diversify your content and test all kinds of posts, here are three types of content that are currently preferred by both the algorithm and the audience.
surveys
Polls on LinkedIn are short, multiple-choice quizzes that invite people to vote on a particular topic.
You can post a LinkedIn survey that culls information from your audience, creates an engagement or networking opportunity, or even works as an audience filter or lead generation tool.
The surveys that tend to work best are those where you discuss a personal perspective on a particular topic and how it relates to the business, then present the survey, and then ask for some kind of commitment in the form of a comment. For example, you can ask the audience to explain their choice in the comments.
This doesn’t mean that every time you want to post a story about yourself, it has to be a poll. You should also not start creating all the surveys to play with the algorithm. While they are the favorites right now and get the most engagement, abusing the algorithm ends up hurting your brand more than helping it.
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Carousel
Most of the time, when we think of carousel posts, we envision a series of images or graphics, like a carousel post on Instagram.
On LinkedIn, carousel posts act more like a document sharing feature than an image post. LinkedIn carousel posts allow you to upload and share a PDF file, which can be created very easily with tools like Canva.
Each page of the PDF becomes a slide in the carousel that the audience can scroll through.
And what’s really cool about these carousel posts is that they don’t look like images, they look more like e-books or guides. There may be embedded images in the PDF just like in an eBook, but most of the page contains text.
One important thing to note here is that the PDF content does not include live links.
So instead of posting your entire PDF to LinkedIn as a carousel post, what you could do is submit your ebook, create a top-level lead magnet from that ebook, and post it as the carousel.
Make sure the final slide of your carousel post includes a strong call to action, such as “like” and save the post or visit a website to learn more by downloading the full ebook.
Videos
Just like with any other social media platform, video is a powerful medium for creating content.
Video on LinkedIn allows you to connect with your audience, which helps build trust and authority right away. Also, people still find it easier to consume information from a video because it takes less time out of our busy lives.
With this in mind, short videos from 30 seconds to 3 minutes tend to perform better on LinkedIn than longer videos.
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We hope this information is very useful for you and your business, if you have any questions, let us know in the comments.