Picture it – you’re sitting in your office and find out that a few dozen (hundred?) of your top prospects are mingling at an event a few blocks away, free for all to attend. What do you do now?
Do you send them all an email and tell them to come to your office to talk shop about whatever they’re discussing, hoping a few show up?
…or do you sprint to the event, pulling a few execs and colleagues along with you, sparking conversations left and right, and then inviting them to your office to keep the conversation rolling, knowing that a few dozen will show up?
The answer is so obvious and yet, if your marketing and sales strategy doesn’t include having executives and leaders, at a minimum, posting on LinkedIn and contributing to the conversations every day, you’re saying, “Of course it’s the second one!” while you’re actually doing the first one.
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If your reaction to this is, “My buyers aren’t on LinkedIn”, I have some scoop for you:
1. They are. Just because they’re not active doesn’t mean they’re not reading/lurking/learning.
2. They don’t need to be. Dark social = someone takes your post and shares it in group texts, Slack channels, communities, Sales Assembly peer groups, podcast comments, webinar chats, and so forth.
3. If you’re only writing content for your budget-holding buyers, you’re missing the mark.
Content on LinkedIn is just like a marketing funnel, and much of this is brand awareness. We write content to educate leaders, BDRs, marketers, lawyers, executive assistants, college students, first-time managers, individual contributors, CMOs, CCOs, CROs, and sometimes we write total nonsense that will get some laughs. 🙃
If you write for your buyers only, you won’t succeed nearly as fast. If you auto-share company-promotional content only, you won’t succeed. In fact, the algo will start to throttle your posts as the first few aren’t engaged with which isn’t a great look for your brand or execs.
Instead, show up on LinkedIn to inspire and teach others 80% of the time.
Perhaps a BDR likes your post. And their AE sees it/likes it/shares it in Slack. Both of their networks see it, they start to like it. A leader on the Slack channel reads it/likes it, then that person’s network sees it…rinse repeat.
Showing up on LinkedIn is not only a competitive advantage (only 1% of member post every week, but over HALF of the 900M LinkedIn members show up every week for a min of five minutes), but it’s a slow start that ultimately creates a flywheel of continued massive impressions and awareness.
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Ready to talk about it? Give us a shout.
We recently launched our newest executive branding, with the CEO’s two initial posts netting 200+ likes, nearly 50 comments, and 10,000+ views collectively, and just signed a major celebrity to do the same for them.