Focusing too hard on the business

It may seem a little odd to suggest that on a platform designed for B2B marketing, you shouldn’t talk about your products and services. Or rather, you shouldn’t ONLY talk about your products and services. 

If I had a pound for every time I’ve unfollowed someone for ramming their shizzle down my throat on the daily without showing me any personality or character… 

I’d be paying a personal shopper to pick up my weekly Lego purchase rather than having to go myself. 

Yes, you need to make sure people remember what you do. It’s all too easy to post about your dog 6 days out of 7 and then wonder why no one knows you sell novelty socks. But what you lose when you get too business-focused is a personal connection with your audience. 

And without that, you don’t have a hope in hell’s chance of capturing their attention in the first place. 

Bring your real life to LinkedIn

It’s easy to think people come to LinkedIn to ‘Do Business’. That they are trawling their feed looking for companies to spend money with so as long as you keep advertising your services, you’ll win. 

This could not be further from the truth. 

The reality of the situation is that folks are on LinkedIn for a break from reality. A quick 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there. A scroll whilst the kettle boils or in some cases, an alternative to the newspaper when a number two is required. 

This means your target audience is not in the mood to be sold to, and will avoid content that does so because right now, they are trying to escape work mode and indulge in something a little more real. 

Enter the ‘personal brand’ phenomenon. 

There is a reason reality TV has become so popular since the birth of the first-ever Big Brother some 2 decades ago. People like watching and reading about other people’s lives. We are weird like that. 

Stories we can relate to. Debates we can have our say on. Situations we have a personal connection with. 

These are all the things that drive the engagement on your content and build an audience that over time will propel it forward into the eyeline of the people you want to attract. And why is this approach so important as part of your LinkedIn content strategy? 

Because people will always buy YOU long before they buy your product.

Make sure you offer a solution

The last point for today is about ‘offering a solution’ within your content if you want to make money from LinkedIn. It’s all too easy to go hard with the facts on a business post, or too fluffy and self-indulgent with a personal post and forget to offer any value to the reader. 

Yes, you need to show character, but at the same time, your audience will soon get bored if they aren’t learning anything from your content. Well, except that you love dogs and that you once stopped drinking for a month and now deserve a medal. 

To truly win on LinkedIn and ensure people see you as an authority in your space, you must highlight a problem, tell the story and then provide a solution. A ‘How I turned it around’ type of thing for example. 

On the back of this, you may also like to ask a question of your audience to encourage them to drop their opinions in the comments. This not only helps educate you and the other readers but adds much-needed conversation to the post, driving the impressions and in turn, the engagement.

For clarity, you don’t need to do this with every piece of content you create. Everything with a LinkedIn strategy is about balance. Too many business posts and your audience switches off. Too many posts about Fluffles the Cockapoo and folk forget what you do. 

Find the sweet spot and learn how to combine everyday life events with a business need and you will see success on LinkedIn. 

To find that sweet spot, you should work with us on one of our training courses. Obviously. 

Stay Unconventionall.