LinkedIn Reveals The Secrets Of Content Marketing Success

How can brands craft mes­sages that will actu­al­ly be heard by con­sumers?

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

When Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was try­ing to get the word out about his health care ini­tia­tives, he faced a prob­lem famil­iar to many mar­keters: How do you get a brand mes­sage out so that it is actu­al­ly heard by con­sumers?


Lucky for him, Oba­ma has bet­ter con­nec­tions than the aver­age mar­keter and was able to book an appear­ance on Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis’ Fun­ny or Die series, “Between Two Ferns”.

And, to date, the video has 10.4 mil­lion views.

It def­i­nite­ly seemed puz­zling to a lot of peo­ple,” said Dan Roth, exec­u­tive edi­tor at LinkedIn, dur­ing the recent Ad Age dig­i­tal con­fer­ence. “Here was the world’s most pow­er­ful man, typ­i­cal­ly flanked by world lead­ers, now with two ferns and a guy from ‘The Hang­over’.”

How­ev­er, Roth said he spoke to for­mer White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney, who con­firmed Oba­ma appeared in the video because he was hav­ing trou­ble get­ting his mes­sage out about despite Red­dit AMAs and LinkedIn posts.

That leaves one indis­putable fact,” Roth said. “If the pres­i­dent has this much trou­ble get­ting his mes­sage out, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

But it’s not all actu­al­ly gloom and doom if you can’t get your brand on “Between Two Ferns”.

But, first, brands have to relin­quish a lit­tle con­trol. In order to be heard, brands have to be on a relent­less mis­sion to not just cre­ate con­tent, they also have to be com­fort­able that they will lose con­trol of their mes­sages because con­sumers will take those mes­sages and turn them into their own and they will change what the brands intend­ed to say in first place.

If you want your mes­sage to get out, it’s not about accept­ing the new real­i­ty, it’s about embrac­ing it,” Roth said.

Jour­nal­ists used to be gate­keep­ers who con­trolled media and brand mes­sages, but, Roth notes, “There are no gates any­more.”

But, iron­i­cal­ly, thanks to the rise of social, “sud­den­ly every­one can be heard all the time, which cre­at­ed the same prob­lem we start­ed with – it’s very hard to get a mes­sage out,” Roth said. “Because there’s so much noise, it’s incred­i­bly hard to get heard.”

So what’s the secret for brands try­ing to cut through the clut­ter?

Sim­ply put, Roth said: “Know your mes­sage, know what peo­ple are talk­ing about already, know who you want to reach, and be pre­pared to stoke con­ver­sa­tion.”

But, more specif­i­cal­ly, Roth notes he sees over 100,000 posts per week on LinkedIn and it’s real­ly the brands/users who “keep at it” that are the ones that “win.”

Here are a few of the best exam­ples and why their con­tent ris­es to the top.

Write What You’re Passionate About

For exam­ple, Roth points to Bernard Tyson, CEO of health care provider Kaiser Per­ma­nente, who had writ­ten a num­ber of posts on LinkedIn about top­ics like health­care afford­abil­i­ty, which had mod­est views and engage­ment, but he want­ed to cre­ate more engag­ing con­tent like Vir­gin Group Founder Richard Bran­son does.

We asked what he was pas­sion­ate about and he said what’s going on with Ebo­la. [He said,] ‘We don’t have answers, but we don’t know what to do and it reminds me of my time in the ear­ly ’90s work­ing at an AIDS clin­ic in San Fran­cis­co and we didn’t have the answers and we had to tell them we didn’t have the answers, but we’re try­ing to fig­ure it out,’ and while telling sto­ry, every­one was lean­ing for­ward because we want­ed to know what hap­pened,” Roth said. “We said, ‘This is what you need to be writ­ing about. That’s what peo­ple want to lis­ten to.’”

Short­ly there­after, the deci­sion in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri was hand­ed down and Tyson respond­ed with the LinkedIn post, It’s Time to Rev­o­lu­tion­ize Race Rela­tions, which, Roth said, talks about what it is like to be a black CEO in Amer­i­ca. The post has since gen­er­at­ed over 440,000 views, 6,000 likes and 2,600 com­ments.

He went from just writ­ing posts about health care to start­ing con­ver­sa­tions,” Roth adds.

Be Open & Honest

There are also times when start­ing a con­ver­sa­tion means chang­ing con­ver­sa­tion, Roth said, point­ing to Tar­get, whose CEO, Jeff Jones, was fac­ing not only a major secu­ri­ty breach in 2014, but also employ­ees on Gawk­er talk­ing about how ter­ri­ble it was to work for the brand.

Then, Roth said, Jones respond­ed with The Truth Hurts.

In this post, he talks about the fact that what every­one says is true: Tar­get is a mess, the cul­ture is in real trou­ble, they didn’t have con­trol of data and he wasn’t sure how to pull it all back,” Roth said. “It was an open hon­est con­ver­sa­tion that sound­ed like he wrote it at 3 AM after a cou­ple of scotch­es.”

But even though it must have been dif­fi­cult to write, it gen­er­at­ed over 300,000 views and, Roth notes, the “com­ments were amazing…by own­ing it, he helped Tar­get change the con­ver­sa­tion.”

What’s more, Roth notes, “This strat­e­gy works whether you’re a CEO of a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny or a rel­a­tive­ly unknown per­son.”

Get Employees To Share Their Own Content

One exam­ple of a rel­a­tive unknown is Melanie Curtin, senior direc­tor of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions at ecom­merce wid­get Opi­aTalk.

Per Roth, “She writes posts about what she’s pas­sion­ate about…she’s clear, author­i­ta­tive, approach­able, and writ­ing from the heart.”

What’s more, her posts have over 1 mil­lion views in total, which Roth said is “huge for a non-celebri­ty/no­table fig­ure.”

Even though Curtin is not writ­ing about Opi­aTalk specif­i­cal­ly, she’s help­ing build the brand thanks to a halo effect, he adds.

Anoth­er exam­ple of a com­pa­ny embrac­ing this is Dell, which told its employ­ees to write about what­ev­er they’re pas­sion­ate about, Roth said. That includ­ed a midlev­el man­ag­er who wrote about lessons he learned about busi­ness from his father and he earned more than 250,000 views and 1700 com­ments. His pro­file also went from one of many at Dell to one of the most viewed.

The HR depart­ment loves this,” Roth said. “By hav­ing peo­ple write, they have a much eas­i­er time recruit­ing because it human­izes the brand and shows there are humans work­ing there.”

What’s more, Roth notes employ­ees aver­age 10 times the social fol­low­ing that their com­pa­nies have and have high­er engage­ment.

Get­ting employ­ees to share is how you get your mes­sage heard,” Roth adds.

But some­times it also means con­nect­ing with a narrow/specific audi­ence that is pas­sion­ate about what you’re pas­sion­ate about, such as the per­fect RFP for a shop­ping cart or the state of mod­ern but­ler­hood.

It’s not, ‘Can I cre­ate con­tent?’ It’s: ‘How do we cre­ate con­ver­sa­tions?’” Roth said.

The key is not to get dis­cour­aged. If you get only two com­ments on a post, don’t get dis­cour­aged. Con­tent is a hits-dri­ven game. Some works, oth­er [con­tent] doesn’t, but the only thing you can do is not write or write too infre­quent­ly,” Roth said. “You have to think like Oba­ma on ‘Between Two Ferns’. When sell­ing Oba­macare, he had to get in front of his audi­ence, so you have to think about the ferns you want to get between.”


Are you try­ing to spark con­ver­sa­tions with con­sumers as part of your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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