LinkedIn is a tremendously powerful tool for content marketing. In particular, the introduction of “Long Form Posts” in February 2014 has unlocked huge potential for financial content marketing.
As a social platform pervaded with successful professionals, you cannot afford to neglect LinkedIn. However, few financial firms know how to exploit the platform effectively.
Indeed, we sometimes see financial firms attempt to write a Long Form Post, hoping that this form of financial content marketing will attract some inbound leads. Unfortunately, most of these efforts produce few views or little engagement, resulting in disappointment and deep frustration on the part of the marketer.
Why did that guy get so many likes and comments on his post? What was wrong with mine?
In this article we’re going to get your Long Form Posts started in the right direction so they start producing the inbound leads you want. It might sound simple, but the simple secret is this:
Connect Like Crazy
There’s no way around it. For Long Posts to be a worthwhile form of financial content marketing, you need them to travel as far as possible once you hit the “Publish” button. This means having a large network of connections, since their newsfeeds is the first place that your article will appear. How they behave towards it will then determine how far it travels.
On average, about 10% of your connections will view any Long Form Post you publish. Out of this number maybe 5% will engage with your Post in some way (e.g. Like or Share).
So if you only have 300 connections, then only about 30 people will see it and perhaps 1 or 2 people will Like it. If that person has only 300 connections, then you may get 60 views and possibly 4 Likes. After that, the views and engagement will start grinding to a halt.
So the key thing is to start networking! For example, recruiters are especially good at this on LinkedIn. Some can amass as many as 5000 connections in as little as 5 months!
However, you don’t need to be a recruiter to be a formidable LinkedIn connector. You just need to be great with people, which is good news for financial firms like financial advisers. After all, your whole business is about people!
It’s important that you don’t just connect with anyone, however. If your target market is small business owners for instance, then search for and connect with them.
Remember, when you start publishing your Long Form Posts you want most of your connections to have things in common (e.g. job title, interests or industry). This will help you tailor your financial content marketing towards them, ensuring it is more relevant to your network – resulting in more engagement.
You’re on your first steps to becoming a LinkedIn marketing pro! In the next post, we’ll show you how to craft Long Form Posts which draw in your target audience.
