What Type of Content Works on Linkedin, with Alex Rynne, Senior Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn

0:01Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray. And join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. Today, I have someone on the podcast. We're going to get inside information, how to use LinkedIn for your business, for you. I got Alex. She works at LinkedIn. She's been on LinkedIn for 10 years. She's a senior content manager there for the marketing solutions. And we're going to dive in. So welcome Alex to the podcast. Thank you for having me.

0:50Excited to be here. Long time fan, first time caller. Let's just dive into just why LinkedIn first, and then we can get into the nitty gritty. Yeah. So why LinkedIn for marketers? I mean, in my opinion, that's where your audience is. People come to LinkedIn with a distinctly different mindset than they do when they go to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, even X. So People are coming with a professional mindset. People are coming for different reasons. I mean, yes, people are looking to connect with like-minded professionals. People are also using it as their main source of industry information. And people are using it for entertainment also.

1:35So yeah, I think one of the main reasons for marketers though is because it's where your audience is at. It's where the decision makers are at who are going to decide if your product is worth investing in. So yeah, it's a must have for marketers, especially B2B marketers. I want to go into also what is the biggest mistake that you see a lot of B2B brands make when they join LinkedIn or even people who join LinkedIn that want to start utilizing it? I'd say just like establishing a page and assuming that you're going to get a following like right away. It's similar to building a relationship with someone.

2:16You don't go on a first date and ask them to marry you. You know, it takes time to build a relationship. It takes consistency. Um, so I think there's this expectation, okay, I came on, I created a page. Um, I have these solutions that are great. Why aren't, why aren't I getting more followers? Why aren't more people interacting with my content? Um, and it just, it just takes time. The other thing from B2B marketers specifically, and this is no hate on anyone, just something that I've noticed is that a lot of B2B brands are pretty boring and they shouldn't be, and they don't have to be, you know, there's people assume that with B2B buying decisions, they, people don't want to be entertained, but they still want to be entertained.

2:58I think people assume that B2C brands can have a lot more fun, but B2B, B2B buying decisions are just as emotional. Um, and people still want to see humor and personality, uh, in their content. So I think I'd, I'd like to see more B2B companies in particular being a little bit more courageous and bold. So I want to talk about it because a lot of people think of LinkedIn as, well, at least five, six years ago, it's a place to get a job or network. Now it's more of a place where it's becoming a true social network, but I still think people are not thinking of it as a way to drive business and drive results.

3:45So I want to start off. What are some tactical things people could do today to start getting attention on LinkedIn for their brand or themselves? You know, it is similar to other social media sites in the sense that you should post consistently and making sure that your audience is, or that your content is valuable to your audience, meaning that it's audience centric. It's not necessarily about you and your product, although at the end of the day, that's what you're there for. It's more so alleviating your customers and prospects pain points. Um, so yeah, I think one of the first things is just making sure that your, your content is audience centric, making sure that you're posting consistently, making use of all of the different content formats that are available to you.

4:34So, you know, if you're, if you're publishing content on LinkedIn from your blog, that's great, but there's other ways to make that you can distribute that content. People want a blog post in maybe a visual format. So like a stat card or a nicely designed like quote card, a short video, whether that's something that's really like lo-fi, like you did it on your phone, or maybe you're doing a live stream that's like in some studio that you built if you have a little bit more funds. So I think making sure that it's a multi-format approach, posting consistently and making sure that it's not all about you.

5:13I also think no one wants a page that's like a used car salesman where it's like, buy my product, buy my product. I would make sure that you have a full funnel approach, which means that you're not just going for the hard sell every time. You're publishing some content. Maybe that's about industry news that is product agnostic. That's how you become a trusted business intelligence partner to these people, not just a person who's trying to sell their product. so one thing linkedin just did recently is they they're buffing up their your analytics with with newsletters with um posting we can go into like newsletters first because i think most people don't even know they can create a newsletter on linkedin and then what was the move to start adding open rates and more analytics into newsletters was a feedback.

6:11What are you seeing with newsletters as a top of funnel strategy? Newsletters have exploded in the best way possible. I think folks don't always have the pain with to be like checking your page constantly or that, you know, enough time to be coming on LinkedIn to absorb everything. So newsletters are the perfect way that if someone's interested in you or your content, like a summary of what are the top things that they need to know, or like the top tips of the week, etc. So yeah, I mean, again, it's just like a different format, a different vehicle to deliver your insights to your audience. So we thought, you know, it made sense given that people are more and more so seeing LinkedIn as a place to come and gain industry news and stay connected to add that format.

7:09And then, I mean, the other big format that LinkedIn's really pushing, and you, if you can give tips on how to do this the best way, obviously it's video content and you have a video feed now. It's different than other platforms, video feeds, but you still see other followers, but how should brands be utilizing that or people be using that feature? And what are some tips for them to be actually seen in the feed? That's a great question. I've had, I've posted a lot myself, just videos about video, very meta. And I've gotten some feedback I've seen in the comments of like, you know, most people are jazzed.

7:53Most people are like, great, this is amazing to see video on LinkedIn. We're excited. And some people are like, oh no, I didn't want LinkedIn to become TikTok. Like everyone calm down. LinkedIn is never going to be TikTok. That's not our MO. You know, it's just, it's like I said in the beginning, a different mindset. We're still a professional platform. We're not boring, but we're still a professional platform at the end of the day. So the type of content that you're coming to consume is different. Secondly is just talking about what you know. People are just like, I don't know what to record.

8:25You know, I don't know what to record. What should I talk about? I'm like, talk about what you know. It's the same stuff that you post on your blog. It's the same content that's on your website. It's just in a different format. Thirdly, I think it's an opportunity to really showcase your company's personality and maybe folks within your company like your leaders. Because as we know, millennials and Gen Z, we're not just looking at a company and looking at the solutions. We're looking at the leaders and even like what politics the leaders align with. Are there any sustainability practices or charitable practices within that company?

8:59We care more about the company as a whole and less just about the products. So anyway, my point is, it's a great way to showcase your company's leaders, maybe some of your company's employees. At the end of the day, I believe that people buy from people and not from companies. So the more that you can humanize your brand with video, I think the better. And I would say a big barrier that I see to a lot of people, even to begin with video on LinkedIn, is that they have this perfectionist idea that they want their videos to be great. And I get it. We all want to put our best foot forward personally and professionally, whether it's for your personal page or whether it's for the LinkedIn for marketing page.

9:45It really doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, I don't think it should be perfect. Whatever the inconsistencies are or the hair that's out of place or the dog barking in the background, all that stuff just makes you a lot more relatable. And over time, your videos are naturally going to get better. The first video I did, I look back now and I'm like, oh gosh, that was terrible. I was so clearly reading off of this cue thing that I'd set up for myself. But that naturally gets better over time, as with anything in life. So, yeah, I wouldn't be afraid to put stuff out there that's not perfect. I think also going deeper on that, I love that you said humanized brand.

10:26I love that you say people want to see the leaders behind their brand. They don't want to see faceless organizations. They also want to see, like have a connection even in this age of AI where you don't know what posts are written by AI or what's not. it's a chance to get in front of people in a human way but another thing that i think is really cool that you could do and i see a lot of people doing this and is if you're a brand or you're like say i have a podcast or what linkedin does better than any other platform is you can boost that post or sponsor that post and get it seen by your ideal customer profile which is the best part so you can have a good video.

11:10You could see it performing. You want it to be seen by more of people you want to be seen. You can put some money behind it. And I see a lot of people doing this. What strategies have you seen with that functionality of like boosting posts to get seen by the right audience at the right time? Yeah. That's another good point. Cause that's another thing that makes LinkedIn distinctly different from other platforms. we have the world's biggest database of, you know, first party professional data because people are coming in and willingly filling in out all this stuff about them. So we are targeting can get very granular.

11:47Now I wouldn't recommend, um, doing like hyper-targeting, um, somewhere in between, you know, you don't want to do the spray and pray. You also don't want to go to niche on your hyper-targeting, but you can on LinkedIn if you want to, because we have those targeting capabilities, in regards to boosting a post or whether it be video or otherwise, just because we do live in an age of, you know, specific social media algorithms, you do have to pay to play, which is how I say it. Like you, you have to have budget to put paid behind your content, because in my mind, you should be spending around 20, the 20, 80 rule.

12:27It's the golden rule that we follow on my team. So spend 20 % of your time creating content, 80 % of your time strategically distributing it from a paid and organic standpoint. Because if you created something awesome and then you don't take the time to distribute it, you just publish it once or twice and assume your whole audience has seen it, then that was a waste of your time. So you want to make sure that you're kind of like slicing and dicing it into different formats, putting paid behind it. One strategy I see if you're like hesitant to put paid behind something because you don't want to waste your money, you're not sure if it's going to work is use your organic strategy as a testing bed, right?

13:04So like you could post stuff organically and you notice that like this one blog post did really well, or this one carousel of images did really well. That's a good signal to you to inform your content strategy in the future. Oh, this hit a chord with my audience. Let's double click into that. Or let's like find another variation of that and then put paid behind that because it's, you're almost certain that, you know, this already resonated from an organic standpoint. The assumption is it's going to do much better if you put paid behind it. I think also a thing I like to do, which I think is even a softer test, I would say, is use comments as a way to just test headlines or quick things.

13:50Because now you have analytics for comments too, which is now going to help people understand, hey, they're getting impressions. And if they get likes as well, that can inform you that, hey, maybe I should write a piece of content on this because it struck a chord with that audience. It's also if you don't have a big audience, commenting on people who are getting attention is a great strategy because you're being seen in a feed of someone who is a trusted voice and you're commenting something valuable to that trusted voice and makes you seem more trusted. So that's something that I think people don't do enough is use comments as a strategy to inform a lot of comments.

14:36Yeah, I can. I agree with that. I think the keyword, what you said is comments, commenting something valuable. Some people just go on and like, they noticed that one of my video posts is doing really well. So they see it as an opportunity to post a link to their website or like talk about their product. And I'm like, yeah, no, like, I'm sorry, I'm going to delete that because this isn't a place for spam. But yeah, if it's a comment that's additive to the conversation and like, again, social media is meant to be a two way street. It's not like me yelling into a megaphone or my brand yelling into a megaphone and just, you know, assuming that people are going to like that and we're, that we're not going to interact with them.

15:12So yeah, that's why I think that comments are very important to show again, that you're human, that you're, that you're, there's someone on the other end of that computer who's, you know, willing to go in and talk and go, um, a back and forth conversation with you. Um, so yeah, I, I like that, that strategy as long as it's additive to the conversation what i mean so there's a big trend that i mean it's been going on for a little bit but it's are doubling down and we've met kind of hit on it a lot but people also using personal brands and company pages to do a lot of their marketing so a founder posting or head of marketing or whatever their audience is that they're they want they use it utilizing those profiles as well as a personal brand.

16:00Part of the strategy of growing your brand or your company, do you recommend that you have some personal brands attached so you get seen more? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it has to come from an authentic place. One thing that's more unique to millennials and Gen Z is that we're just hyper aware of when we're being marketed to I feel like we can smell BS from a mile away and so it has to come off as authentic like this person was already posting or this person you know what I mean like it can't be like oh the company clearly told this person to start posting but they're very stiff and it's clear that they're not having a good time doing it I think if you're having fun creating content it comes across very clear to the consumer and they have a fun they have a good time consuming it but yeah I think in general it's important because it's like we talked about what we mentioned before, you're humanizing your brand.

16:58You're showing the people behind the organization that cause folks to just like your brand, have greater brand affinity. And I think at the end of the day, also, it doesn't hurt because it's just another way to stay top of mind. We always say that the brand that is bought is the brand that is remembered. So if people are seeing people that work at your company talking about stuff that's either associated with the brand or maybe stuff that's not associated with the brand, it just like builds the brand's credibility. And for example, like I mentioned, I started posting videos about video with no intention of, just with the intention of trying to be helpful, right?

17:37Because video is a new format on LinkedIn. And our internal growth team approached me and they asked me if they could put some thought leader ads, which is also a new content format, behind some of those videos about video. And it turns out that those videos about video that didn't even mention LinkedIn video ads were some of our top converters over the past quarter. So it's just interesting. People want to hear from people. People are less... Of course, you're going to try to sell people on video ads if you're the LinkedIn for marketing channel. But if it's someone who works at LinkedIn, who is obviously associated, but also not pushing the product just talking about like insider tips that's going to do well so we talked about um obviously that one ad strategy is like having organic strategy boosting that post getting seen by more but the other side of it is actually running running ads and having an ad strategy but could you give some insights of what the best brands are doing to be successful with linked in actual ads on the platform, not sponsored posts?

18:54I think the first step is making sure that you're implementing an objective-based advertising strategy. So it's not necessarily about the ad product that you choose itself. It's about what you're trying to achieve. So if you think about, okay, I want... What do I want? I want brand awareness. I want people to be more aware of what my brand is. I want lead generation. So, you know, that's pretty self-explanatory. Then you go into campaign manager, LinkedIn campaign manager, and based on what your objective is, it gives you a suite of products that you can use. So it's pretty helpful in that sense because it can be overwhelming.

19:34We have a lot of different ad products, but go in, pick what your objective is. It'll give you a certain amount of products that you can choose from. And I think one of the most successful things I also see is that folks that are submitting using a mix of different product formats and within those product formats, submitting a bunch of different creatives. So just like I said before, like it's about, it's less about creating more about distributing. That's also what I mean is that you have a variation of like, say you're doing carousel ads. You have literally like five different versions of that one carousel ad and then seeing which one is doing best and then like making little changes and campaign optimizations along the way.

20:21I think the other thing is that especially in B2B marketing, it takes a much longer time to see results, especially like lead generation results, right? Because the sales cycle is much longer for B2B. It could be like three to six months. So the issue that we're seeing is that a lot of leaders are being like, okay, the ad was expensive and it's been up for a month. What are the results? And the marketer's like, dude, I haven't really seen anything yet because it's only even a month. So I think there's a lot of upward education that needs to be done around how long it's going to take to see real results and especially bottom of the funnel results when using LinkedIn ads.

21:02But yeah, I'd say making sure that you're following an objective-based format, making sure that there's some variation, making sure that, I mean, this is kind of maybe like an obvious one, but making sure that you're using something like a bold, creative, something that's going to stop in the feed. There's so much content out there that I think it's important to like, know what your brand's definitive value props are and really leaning into that. I think the other thing is like not forgetting about the copy that is associated with the imagery. Some people just think, just kind of like think of that as an afterthought.

21:38But yeah, I think making sure that's uniquely different is also important. Yeah. Two things on that. When I used to work for a company back in the day, we were really successful with LinkedIn ads. And one of the strategies we used to use is we had like a very neon color background. And we would just say like, are you a human resources professional? Like that That was just like the copy on it and we, and put caught on the image and then we would have like more copy on, on top. And then it'll be like, claim your, have a good offer. And it converted so well because we're targeting those people. And if you were a human HR professional, you're going to stop in the feed because it's literally calling you out in the advertisement.

22:26Exactly. That's, that's a good point too. It's like calling out your audience directly. like, you know, hey, HR professionals, hey, social media marketers. Yeah, that's really important. We've done some internal A-B testing too around backgrounds. So it's interesting that you said that. And we found, you know, when there was a one with a white background and one with like a darker, almost like wood-esque background and the darker one, one in the A-B test, even everything else was the same, same on the image, same like caption copy. It was just the background. And I think it was just because the feed is white, the feed's gray.

23:03So it just stood out a little bit more. I think another thing that good advertisers do, and I feel like people forget, and this is why you should invest in organic strategy if you're going to do ads on any platform is you need to have a company profile with some followers or some good stuff on there or a good landing page. So if someone's going to scope you out when you are running an ad and you have five followers or 100 followers, it looks kind of sketchy in a way, even though followers are sometimes vanity metrics in some people's eyes. But I think it's also social proof in other people's eyes.

23:41So that's why focusing on having a company page with good content on there, a link to something that you really want, something that's your copy and your bio is telling them directly what you do and who you are and showing personality on there is a great way to also have conversion because it shows the followers of your company when you're running out. So it looks weird if you're not investing in a organic strategy as well. Yeah, you called out two important things there. One is not to forget about the call to action. I don't know why I still have to say this, but if you're going to run some kind of ad campaign or even if it's just an organic post, make sure that you're sending people somewhere.

24:29So you're sending people to a landing page, you're sending people to the blog. What's the call to action? What's the next step that you want folks to take after they just consumed your post. The other thing is, yeah, I wouldn't put paid behind a campaign if it's telling people to go back to look at your LinkedIn page and there's nothing really there. There's not a lot of content there. There's not a lot of followers, like you said. You're not ready. You're not ready to put paid behind it quite yet. Unless, I mean, people do follower campaigns pretty early on, But I think it's important to establish a good, consistent flow of content.

25:11Make sure that there's stuff on there. So that when you're driving people there, they're not like, oh, this is a dead end. So yeah, that's really important. Yeah. Just like running, even if I'm thinking about a Facebook or Instagram ad, if you have an Instagram ad, people are going to check out your Instagram if they don't know you. They're going to want to know what you post, who you are. So if you don't have a story or something on there or good content, they're going to run away because they're going to think you aren't legit or not real. So it's the same thing in every ad platform. If you're going to run ads, at least have sort of an organic strategy behind it, as well as a pay strategy, because people will see that.

25:56What are some other underrated tactics people should be thinking about doing on LinkedIn? Yeah, I think not burying the lead is important. People, especially marketers, are pretty busy. So whether it's a video or it's, you know, whatever format it is that you're publishing on LinkedIn, whether it's a blog post, make sure that you're very clear and pretty early on what it is that the marketer is going to learn from this. Because again, it's not about you. No one cares about you. People are consuming their content because they're hoping that it'll make them look good in some capacity. Maybe they're learning something.

26:34Maybe it's something that can communicate up to their bosses. Whatever it is, it's about them. So make sure pretty early on. And if it's a video, I'd say within the first three seconds, what it is that they're going to learn. In that same vein, making sure that it's it's snackable content. Back when I first started at LinkedIn back in 2014, 2015, we were creating these like one-stop shop eBooks of everything you need to know about LinkedIn for marketers. And it was like a hundred page eBook. Um, I laugh now because no one's going to read that. Um, I don't even know. I mean, people read it then, but I don't think that's, that's not what people want now.

27:14So making sure that you're creating more snackable, shorter versions of that within your feed. And when I, when that comes to video, I'm talking about like 30 seconds, like whatever you have to say, you can probably say in 30 seconds, maybe a minute, unless you're doing a live stream, which is obviously a lot meant for a longer format. But even if you're doing a live stream and it's like you and me talking, or maybe like there's us in a couple, there's three or four people talking, I'd say like, keep it to 30 to 45 minutes max. I want to go into some rapid fire questions for you. Just there. Don't worry.

27:54They're not, they're not going to be too crazy, but, um, uh, just first thing comes to mind, best LinkedIn posts, format, text, image, video, or carousels. Video followed by carousel followed by image, followed by just text. Oh, I like that. What's that? Number two is what's the most overrated LinkedIn marketing tactic? Overrated. Um, I see a lot of people posting just because I think I get the sense because they just feel like they have to, they have to be posting. Um, again, there's so much common content on LinkedIn, especially with like AI assisted content now entering the game there, what's happening is what we're calling a sea of sameness.

28:43So there's just so much content. There's an influx of content on the feed. Um, you don't need to say anything unless you have something to say, like that's okay. If you don't have anything to say, that's fine. Like, obviously you don't want to go radio silent for a month if you're a grand, but if you don't have anything to say, don't say it. And in fact, when you do speak up, people will listen, um, more closely because they know that you're not just like posting because you feel like you have to post to keep up with the Joneses. What is, um, one B2B brand that's crushing it on LinkedIn right now that someone could go look for an example?