It was with great pleasure that I was able to wrap up my 2022 Content Marketing World experience with a session featuring two exceptional marketers that I’ve known for many years*: Steve Kearns (LinkedIn Senior Manager, Content Marketing and Social Media) and Tequia Burt (Editor in Chief LinkedIn Ads Blog) with a topic that is near and dear: How LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is Using the Blog to Power its Growth Engine
In an age of social media with Instagram, TikTok and even LinkedIn, does blogging still matter? For LinkedIn, the answer is absolutely yes.
The LinkedIn Marketing Blog acts as the external ‘voice’ of the Marketing Solutions business and is a critical education and conversion vehicle for B2B marketers looking to excel with LinkedIn advertising. Publishing content five times a week, the blog comprises more than 175,000 global subscribers and 2.5 million annual page views. It also serves as a key campaign activation tool for LMS marketing, sales and product organizations, spotlighting business news, LinkedIn advertising best practices and more.
Sitting at the center of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions content marketing operations, the blog has sourced millions of dollars in bookings in FY21, up 80% over FY20.
Reaching mostly senior marketing executives, the LinkedIn Marketing Blog has experienced phenomenal growth over the past 5 years. Six years ago LinkedIn had about 100k followers on overall social channels and 1,000 on the blog. Today LinkedIn has 4.7m followers and 175k on the blog.
With Steve and Tequia coming from the media world, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions runs their team like a media company. Steve is the publisher making sure business objectives are achieved, Tequia is the Editor in Chief making sure the content is top quality. And Alex Morales is the Distribution Lead making sure blog reach is achieved. Each of those responsibilities creates a point of tension, but they work together to create a really productive growth engine.
As part of their customer-centric strategy, LinkedIn decided to get content that was helpful and non-promotional to their audience and an effective way to do that was through the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions blog.
The key to success for the blog has been a focus on data-driven insights. An example is a jobs report to help the LinkedIn community with questions as well as making sure that content was inclusive. The ads industry took note of the approach and the report achieved 2X page views compared to other content.
So, what’s the secret to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions’ blog success? The LinkedIn Marketing Blog strives to be a good B2B marketing resource for people with content that is rooted in data insights and prioritizes inclusivity. After they launched the first data insights report, they launched others including one on Gen Z to help them feel included in the conversation.
While LinkedIn has substantial resources, this approach is relevant for businesses of any size. If you have something you really stand for, you can double down on it and focus, lean-in. Inclusivity is key – make sure the content you’re producing is going to resonate with the people that represent your business. Make it easy for people to see themselves in the content.
Pro tip: If you’re going to publish content for a particular audience, like people of color, it’s useful to run that content by someone that represents that audience first or even have someone on your staff that represents that audience.
So what’s next? Building upon the success of the blog, the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team received additional investment to expand production of insights driven content.
LinkedIn is reimagining how they turn up in the marketplace with their customers, their partners, their agencies and to the industry more broadly by leaning into their core differentiator – data.
All B2B marketers need to consider: What can we offer that nobody else can?
For the objective of growing LinkedIn’s own presence on the Linkedin platform, they asked themselves that question: What can we offer that no one else can? In the case of LinkedIn it was data and insights.
A big part of this data- informed effort for LinkedIn has been the launch of Linkedin Collective, which is a content franchise featuring insights into what being a great B2B marketer can be with the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions blog serving as a blueprint.
LinkedIn Collective is a place for the B2B marketing community – to move the industry forward. It features big data reports and contributors to talk about issues that are important to the B2B marketing community.
Quarterly themes drive narratives. Most recently it’s about creativity and B2B. Most B2B brands are about performance marketing and not brand. The reality is, creativity can drive great results. With this theme, LinkedIn has invited industry experts and CMOs to share their perspective on creativity in B2B.
To be sure, LinkedIn Collective is not a sales pitch, but about how marketing is connected to the bottom line and focused on helping B2B brands be more successful on LinkedIn, broadly in B2B and how to make decisions that connect to value that buyers appreciate.
As a complement to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog and LinkedIn Collective, social messaging helps connect the dots in their overall narrative story. If you want to know what works on LinkedIn for marketing and advertising, you can find out through the LinkedIn Collective .
While the blog has been a success story for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, every business has an opportunity to uplevel their marketing on LinkedIn. There is no doubt that the B2B marketing category is ripe for innovation.
For more LinkedIn Marketing resources, be sure to check out LinkedIn Ads, Linkedin Marketing Ads Blog, Linkedin Collective and The B2B Institute.
Also, be sure to find and follow Steve and Tequia on Linkedin.
*LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a client of TopRank Marketing.
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