011 How To Use LinkedIn To Create Content Your B2B Audience Will Love

How do you create content your customers will care about? In this episode, we focused on finding content ideas for your B2B customers. We zoomed in on Linkedin and why this is a great platform to source your ideas and to help you create content that your audience wants.  

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Episode Notes:

Today we’re going to talk about content ideas and I guess the best way is to start with talking about the common mistakes that we commit when we’re creating content. And I mentioned already, B2B content is boring. It’s the same playbook over and over again. It’s your eBooks, it’s your white papers, they’re gated behind, a long-form with the goal of just getting your email, I mean, who is still reading an ebook? 

Common Mistakes When Creating Content

Gone are the days that safe, vanilla content works anymore. I mean, you cannot just be following best practices. And by the way, when we talk about content, we’re not just talking about written content like blogs, but also videos or podcasts.

And I think one reason why this has happened is because of how we write our content or how we think about ideas to write about. One usual way of doing this and not saying this is wrong, is people usually start with keyword research. And like I said, it’s not wrong, but using keyword research alone that’s what makes the content so safe and so generic.

Be where your audience is and try to find out what is it that they’re complaining about or they’re talking about. Understand what your audience needs exactly and write that content.

How Do We Get Content Ideas That Matters To Your Audience?

The first is pretty obvious, it’s starting with your audience in mind. So I know that sounds like common sense, but example, we’re just thinking about like a keyword that’s trending and writing about it, will it be read or consumed? Will it have engagement? Will it convert or drive traffic back to your site? So that’s number one.

Next, it’s very important to be clear on who your target is. So example, if I’m a MarTech company, I have this tool that helps with, analytics for an email platform. Y
ou have to break it down. Do you want to help the CMO of a FinTech company? Or do you want to really speak to an email marketer? These are the things that you’ll have to understand and to identify before creating your content.

We often copy our competitors, do a similar blog post but it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the topic that your own customer wants. So don’t just look at best practices, or stick to what used to work because marketing just keeps on evolving. So that’s the first step. 

Pick a Platform Where Your Audience Is

Find a platform where I can build a community around my brand or my company and not just a following. So I don’t care if my Facebook page has a hundred thousand likes, but it’s like ghost town in there. I want to be where I can really reach out and talk to and almost touch my, my target. Understand your audience, know what they’re thinking, know what to expect and create content in this case that they will want to engage with.

Since we’re talking B2B here, LinkedIn is the best platform for this.

What Is The Goal of Your Content?

Not to be overly simplistic here, but really content is created to help your audience or whoever they are, even if they’re B2B or B2C. Content is there to help.

The first thing to make it effective or to make it work is you’ll have to be able to connect to your audience, their mindset, their pain, what their problems are. Your content has to communicate and change their behavior or mindset.

Then the third one, which we often miss is entertaining them. In B2B, you tend to be very corporate or very professional which is understandable. But really we’re talking to the people behind those businesses and not the buildings or not the company name. It has to still sound like you’re talking to a human or you’re talking to a colleague or a friend.

The last one I’m going to mention in the section is to make this a repeatable or scalable process for generating content. Don’t just do this once or try another strategy once. It has to be like a cycle. You go to where they are, you listen and while you’re there, because you’re picking a platform where you can engage with your customer, talk to them, interact with them. Then test if the content matters, if your content works for them. And then if not, change your approach, test it and then repeat.

LinkedIn As A Good Platform for Content Ideas

Recently, LinkedIn has really transformed from a recruitment based platform to a content-driven platform. One thing that’s unique about LinkedIn, you’re seeing your friends activity. So even if you’re not connected to a colleague of yours but you liked their posts. I can see that you like or commented on it. How does this help in any way? It helps me see what topics you’re interested in and it makes growing your network organically easier.

It’s also easy to target and connect with your ideal customer or like-minded people. And that’s where community is a community starts. So first thing is to start with your personal network. Check your connections posts and I’m assuming that you’re intentional with connecting with your ideal customer. When you’re trying to create content that matters, then you’ll have selective with who you’re connecting with. And then ideally that person is active and you can watch out for their posts. Do they have questions? Are they ranting? Are there issues that they’re talking about? 

So that’s one thing. And then while you’re there already, you can see what your ICP or ideal customer profile is doing. Take advantage and engage with them, interact with them. There’s no better way to understanding your customer than really talking to them. And just one caveat here. Use your personal profile and not your company page, because one people want to wants to interact with other people and two company pages don’t really work very well on LinkedIn.

This one is a tactic that you can also try. Searching trending topics on LinkedIn. And how do you do that? Use the search bar, um, in the job title of your ICP then you can even choose the industry of the person. And then it will show you the most recent posts. You can see what topics are being talked about. And. What you can do is move to like the search results on the second or third page. And you’ll be able to see the second or third-degree connections. So that’s also your target, your target customer.

 

Final Thoughts and Recap

Be where your customer is, listen to what matters to them, observe which content type resonate with them, tests, rinse, and repeat. When you’re creating content always think about, are you educating them, entertaining them?

Don’t forget that B2B businesses, they’re still humans there. Think about how you communicate with them as a person, not as a business.


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