Every time you post a piece of content that no one engages with (e.g. product content usually gets very low engagement), the social media platform’s algorithm learns that users don’t like your content.

As a result, the algorithm will show your next post to less people, so your opportunities for engagement have now decreased.
Thus, your 2nd post will most likely get less engagement than your 1st post.

The algorithm will now show your 3rd post to even LESS people, which will further decrease your opportunities for engagement.
And this keeps going and going in vicious downward spiral, so that posts that used to get 1,000s of views, now get 100s of views (or less)!

Unfortunately, I’ve seen many companies go down this path by consistently posting product-based content. You can see their engagement dramatically decrease quickly and then you just don’t see their posts at all anymore because the algorithm has learned not to show it to you.


So, how do you avoid this? Post content that will add value to your target audience!


Solve their pain points, give free tips and content and information they can’t get elsewhere. When you do talk about your company, talk about DEI initiatives or things you are doing to help local communities.

The focus your content should be about THEM, your target audience, and what will add value to their lives.

If you do that, you will get more views and engagement, and generate more awareness and more business opportunities as a result.

Words matter. For example, “financial advisor” is searched for 10x more than “financial professional.”) When your team writes LinkedIn profiles, websites and sales materials, use words your prospects typically use. This will allow you to get found and be more easily understood.

Other surprising results:

• “Sales” 70x more than “business development” – no one wants to say they do sales, but you are much more likely to be found if you do
• “Innovation” 2x more than “innovative” – craft your content to use that tense instead
• “Strategy” 50% more than “strategies”
• “Online” 10x more searches than “digital” – an oldie, but a goodie
• “Digital marketing” 10x more searches than “online marketing” – but not when it comes to marketing
• “SEM” 20x more than “search engine marketing” – abbreviate this one
• “SEO” 15% more than “search engine optimization” – this one doesn’t matter at much
• “Social media” 80x more than “social networks” – it may not be grammatically correct at times, but using “social media” will get you found more
• “Facebook” 80x more than “social media” – if you are talking about Facebook, say “Facebook”

Want to run some searches on your own? Check our Google Trends (https://trends.google.com) to do comparisons between 2 or more words or phrases.

Since LinkedIn introduced articles, more and more LinkedIn users are writing them. They are a great way to provide value to your connections, and help establish yourself as a thought leader. Many LinkedIn users are still sitting on the sidelines, though.

I’ve suggested posting LinkedIn articles to many of my connections. However, some are reluctant because they are afraid of putting themselves out there (or afraid of compliance). I gave a friend of mine some tips last week, and I thought I would share them with you as well to make it easier for you.

Step 1: Have an objective in mind.

We are not writing for writing’s sake. Your 10-page X-Files fan faction is great, but it’s not necessarily right for LinkedIn. Think about who your target audience is, and what you want your personal brand to be. What do you want to be to that audience? A trusted partner? A disruptor?

Answering your objective will help you determine what you want to write, as well as how you want to write it (e.g. challenging vs. helping).

Step 2: Write your article.

This is 95% of the work. Pick a topic you that you know a good deal about, and will accomplish your objective. Then, write a few paragraphs about it. Remember to keep your target audience in mind – what do they know about this topic already? What information would be helpful? Where do you need to push the envelope?

Nothing is more challenging to read on your phone than
20-line paragraphs.

Step 3: Make it easy to read.

Your article doesn’t have to be War and Peace, and in fact, should probably be less than 1,000 words. A majority of LinkedIn articles are read on mobile devices, so keep that in mind when you are writing – keep it short and get to the point quickly.

Nothing is more challenging to read on your phone than 20-line paragraphs. Keep paragraphs to 3-4 sentences maximum.

Break up your copy with bulletpoints, callouts, or in a list format, so it’s easier for users to read. Many readers will scan the text and look for signals to stop like bolded text, bulletpoints, callouts (e.g. the “Nothing is more challenging…” callout above) or numbers.

Step 4: Make it compelling.

This is a blog piece, not a dissertation, so find ways to keep your readers interested like quotes, embedded video that tells your story, or an image that illustrates a point you’ve made such as this one from ComScore about mobile device usage:

Step 5: Summarize what you have said

Even if the user reads nothing else, give them 2-3 key takeaways at the bottom of the article. If the reader is simply scanning the article, this may be the only thing he/she reads, and that’s okay. They will have gotten the gist of the article, and you will have accomplished your objective.

Step 6: Have a call to action

You don’t have to have a giant, toll-free number inserted 10 times into your article. However, you do want to give the reader the ability to easily follow-up with you. I usually add this to the end of the piece.

Don’t go too far, though, and have a link every third word about great pieces you have written before (see how annoying that is). I find it frustrating to read an article that is 50% promotions about previous articles.

Step 7: Don’t overthink it

I wrote this article in 20 minutes. Again, it’s not War and Peace.

• Make sure it makes sense
• Make sure it sounds professional
• Correct grammatical issues
• Find and image
• Post it

(Note: If you are financial services, add “run it by compliance first” to that list).

Don’t ask 15 people to edit it before you post. Remember, if worse comes to worse, LinkedIn has an “edit article” button, which allows you can make changes to the piece after you post it.

Step 8: Find a key image

Each article has an image at the top of the page. Yours should represent your article, and also be eye-grabbing. Images of people usually tend to grab people’s attention.

Another, more risky route is to use something that people don’t normally see. I once used two apples for a post because I was talking about the need for an apples-to-apples comparison when measuring data. Nobody clicked on it. I don’t recommend using an apple image!

You don’t have to have a giant, toll-free number inserted 10 times into your article. However, you do want to give the reader the ability to easily follow-up with you.

Step 9: Think of a lead-in

When you post a LinkedIn article, you have the option to write a lead-in just like you do when you share someone’s else’s post. Use this to write something that will entice people to read the article (but stop short of sounding like click-bait).

Step 10: Tell people about it

Everyone has strong advocates in their networks, energize those advocates by letting them know you posted a new article, and ask them what they think. Your frequent engagers will be happy to share your piece. Offer to share feedback on their work as well.

Remember, if worse comes to worse, LinkedIn has an “edit article” button with which you can edit the piece after you have posted it.

Key takeaways:

• Have an objective
• Write about something you know
• Make it easy to read on mobile
• Don’t overthink it
• Tell people about it

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping organizations GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out anytime at 323.972.3566.

Photo: jseliger2

Since the launch of the new LinkedIn user interface, users have lamented that the Advanced Search is gone, it only exists in Sales Navigator now, and you have to pay for it.

I was upgraded to the new user interface last night, and I noticed something interesting: Advanced search isn’t gone.

The “Advanced” button that used to be next to the search bar is gone. That’s true:

OLD top nav:

NEW top nav:

However, you can still do advanced searches in regular LinkedIn. They are just more integrated into the regular search functionality.

To start, type what you are searching for in the search bar. For example, if I wanted to find VPs of Marketing at Wells Fargo in the St. Louis area. I would start by searching for “Wells Fargo,” waiting a second, and then clicking “People who work at Wells Fargo” from the possible options. Here are the results I get:

Okay, so 394,392 results. If I’m looking to find, connect, and start a relationship with VPs at Wells Fargo in St. Louis, that is an unmanageable number.

However, if you look on the right side of the page, you will see many of the filters you used to see in Advanced Search. They’re not gone, they have just been moved.

So, I will filter by 1^st and 2^nd for Connections, the Greater St. Louis area as Location, Wells Fargo as the Current Company, and finally, Financial Services or Marketing and Advertising as the Industry. (Note: you can also filter on Profile language, Nonprofit interests and schools).

Once I add these filters, here’s what I see:

Now, we are down to 170 results. That’s muuuuuch better. If I needed to, I could review this list one-by-one and find those VPs that are in Marketing roles, but that would be time-consuming.

The biggest challenge is that the title filter is no longer available in the regular version of LinkedIn. With the new LinkedIn interface, it’s only available in Sales Navigator.

BUT…actually, that’s not entirely true. If you click on “Structuring your search,” LinkedIn gives you helpful tips on how to write your search queries:

The page overlay that appears shows you how to do complex searches…in the regular version of LinkedIn, AND YOU CAN STILL SEARCH BY TITLE!!

(Here is the URL for that page: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/76015  – note: besides that page there are also a lot of other helpful tips in that same section of LinkedIn Help)

So, let’s start over. With this new information, I would type my search like this:

title: (VP OR Vice President) AND company: “Wells Fargo”

Here are my initial results:

My new initial results set is a much smaller number (29,209 vs. 394,392), and they are all VPs, meaning: I JUST SEARCHED BY TITLE IN THE NEW LINKEDIN USER INTERFACE!

Now, if I run the same filters I ran before, my results look like this:

I could trim this further with more advanced Boolean searches (e.g. exclude Assistant Vice President and Senior Vice President), but even without doing that, I’m down to 86 opportunities, which gets me much closer to my target audience.

My advice: I always recommend that my clients upgrade to Sales Navigator. I’ve been using for years, and it keeps getting better and better from my perspective. However, if you can’t afford it, or don’t want to make that investment, I recommend you get really good at writing Boolean searches. Once you get the hang of it, then they roll off your tongue/fingertips. LinkedIn even has videos that help you write them on the LinkedIn Learning site: (https://www.linkedin.com/learning/search?keywords=boolean%20search)

Key Takeaways

• Advanced Search is not gone from regular LinkedIn
• You can still search by title in regular LinkedIn

If you find any other hidden nuggets in the new user interface, please share!

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping organizations GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out to Robert.

Photo: Rafiq Sarlie

Today, LinkedIn rolls out their new Sales Navigator Inbox. I got a sneak preview, and I must say, it’s like a sales and social media dashboard / command center / mini-CRM all wrapped into one page.

Here are the highlights – it:

1)     Allows you to search for someone to write to – both within and outside of your current connections.

2)     Gives you the name, picture and description of the person you have selected to send to, and also allows you to view their profile (opens in a new window). Note: if you are not connected to that individual, the “View profile” button says “Connect” instead, and allows you to send an invitation to connect.

3)     Also pulls in that person’s phone number, email address and website URL from their contact information (so you can follow-up in the off chance that your InMail is not answered)

4)     Shows you the connections in common with that person. For example, I have 59 shared connections with Craig, to whom I am writing this note. These connections are a great conversation starter to get a warm referral (a warm referral is definitely the best way to reach out).

5)     Shows you LinkedIn groups that you are both a part of – another potential ice-breaker for a prospect.

6)     Shows you what that person has posted/shared on LinkedIn recently – another great thing to reach out to someone about – especially if they wrote it. Engaging with someone’s content is the purest form of flattery!

7)     Creates a signature for you…automatically. I didn’t type any this information. I assume the Inbox is pulling this content from my contact information. I like it – less work for me.

Also, in the new InMail experience, when you send someone an InMail, the window pops up on the right side of the page, so you can still see all the vital information about the person, and all the of features I mentioned about the Inbox are available in that window as well.

Conclusion

You used to have to search all over in LinkedIn for this information. Now, the new Sales Navigator Inbox and InMail experience provides it all to you, and at the right time and in the place where you need it most, when you are reaching out to someone. Great stuff. Let me know what you think of the new Sales Navigator Inbox in the comments.

Related Articles:

Big new Sales Navigator changes announced at LinkedIn’s Sales Connect conference

Connect with your pizza boy on LinkedIn

NEW FEATURE in LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes company research faster and easier

About the Author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies transform their social media programs from driving engagement to driving sales. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to evolve your marketing and sales strategy for the new, digital age, train your teams how to use a sales-driving social selling approach at your organization, or talk University of Michigan football, feel free to reach out to us:

Every year, LinkedIn brings together sales leaders from around the globe at their annual Sales Connect conference. This year, it is clear that Sales Navigator is a big priority for LinkedIn. They are continuously investing and expanding the capabilities of Sales Navigator, and today they announced a slew of new features focused on 5 key areas to create what they are calling a “System of Engagement.”

1) Tags and Notes – you can now write tags and notes and organize information on leads or accounts and categorize any way you want – such as where you met, how to follow-up, or the contents of your last conversation. Tags and Notes launched a couple of weeks ago. Personally, I’ve been hoping for this one for quite a while, and I have been loving it so far. Here’s what it looks like in action:

2) CRM – LinkedIn announced an integration with Salesforce a while back, and now through their CRM Partner Program, they will be allowing other CRM companies to create apps that plug Sales Navigator into other CRM platforms. The first batch of partners are Oracle, SAP, SugarCRM, HubSpot and NetSuite.

You will be able to see LinkedIn information at the contact level. You can set up leads, and act upon that activity more easily – you don’t have to move back and forth between platforms anymore. This lowers the barrier to social selling. No longer will you have to cut and paste information from LinkedIn into your CRM. This is huge.

You can also write directly into your CRM – more things you will no longer have to copy and paste into your CRM system and vice versa.

3) InMail 2.0 – a group of new enhancements to InMail were announced including:

• The current iteration of InMail blocks the entire window when you are sending a message. Now, the window be on the side of the screen on the desktop, similar to Gmail’s interface.
• LinkedIn will also give you icebreakers – common connections and items to include in your messages to improve likelihood of a response – while you are creating your InMail.
• You can include attachments now. Let me repeat that: You. Can. Include. Attachments. Now. Hallelujah! It’s also through a great, interactive, data-rich service method called PointDrive,

4) Search – You will now be able to search by:

• Spotlights – a group of key sets of information that will give you ways to drill deeper into your search results such as how many of your results have changed jobs in the last 90 days, have been mentioned in the news the past 30 days and have posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days
• Department size and revenue (to determine if a company should be in your target audience)
• Senior leadership changes at companies (new people tend to make changes to personnel and technology)
• Zip code of a company’s headquarters (until now any office would appear in search results, but most decision makers are in a company’s headquarters)
• Growth of both company and department (to see the trajectory of a company and department)
• Content (keywords for content they are posting to see what is important to them)

Some of these enhancement are live (Spotlights, department size and senior leadership), and the rest are coming soon.

5) Sales Navigator for Gmail – this integration of Sales Navigator and Gmail brings Sales Navigator directly into your Inbox. You’ll have all the information you would have in Sales Navigator (connections in common, interests, shared companies, more) that you can use to start a conversation now in Gmail.

This one is already live as well. You can this find plug-in in the app store on mobile (search Sales Navigator) or here:

When I spoke with Derek Pando, Senior Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, he related “the new Sales Navigator features are to enhance the overall customer experience of Sales Navigator, and to integrate it into daily workflows to get people the information they need as easily as possible.”

With these new launches, LinkedIn has showed that they realize the way forward for them is through Sales Navigator, and the best way to do that is to help set sales teams up for success by making it as easy as possible to do social selling.

So, Sales Navigator users, what do you think of the new features?

About the Author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies transform their social media programs from driving engagement to driving revenue. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a sales-driving social selling program at your organization, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

For years, I told people not to connect on LinkedIn with everyone they knew. I recommended that people connect with the RIGHT people, such as co-workers, people you meet and know from other companies – especially in similar roles, and people you meet at conferences, but don’t connect with just anyone.

When someone would ask me who not to connect with on LinkedIn, the example I would always use was the pizza delivery guy. I’d say something like, “You don’t need to connect with a college student driving his mom’s car around town, delivering pizzas.” I would tell my clients and co-workers that connecting with this guy doesn’t add much value to your network, so don’t worry about it.

Recently, I’ve done a 180-degree turn on this stance for two reasons:

1) I’ve BEEN that delivery guy. 18 years ago, I delivered for restaurants in Burbank and Studio City, CA areas. That was my night job as I followed my dream of building a consulting company from scratch during the day.

Connecting with me at that time (if LinkedIn existed) could have potentially added a lot of value to folks from a digital marketing perspective. Also, since then as my career has matured, I have been in a position to help out a lot of people in many ways from a networking, hiring, digital marketing, e-commerce and social media perspective.

The pizza boy may be a delivery guy now, but he’s working, he’s hustling, and he’s going to make something of himself. Someday, the big tip you gave him, or the connection you made with him, may pay dividends, and worst case scenario, you may help someone out, and that’s never a bad thing.

2) On LinkedIn, you can only view profiles of people in your network (1st, 2nd and 3rd degree connections). If someone outside of your network appears in search results, the result looks like the screenshot below, and the profile is blank when you click on it (unless you have Sales Navigator Team, where you can view out-of-network profiles).

Currently, I’m working with a lot of restaurants in the certain area, many of which are pizza joints. You know who be helpful to know right now? A BUNCH OF PIZZA DELIVERY GUYS! They could connect me to different restaurant general managers and/or owners of local restaurants. But, alas, I have never connected to a pizza delivery guy due to my shortsightedness.

Now, I’m not saying you should accept every invitation to connect your receive, or to start sending out mass invitations to connect to strangers and people you hardly know. What I am saying is to not discount the people you know and interact with on a daily basis simply based on what they do now. You never know where they (or you) will end up!

So, the next time I order a pizza, I’m going to ask the delivery guy to connect with me on LinkedIn. Sure, he may be a little weirded-out, but hey, he’ll probably be my boss in a few years, so I need to start learning about him now.

Related articles:

Don’t ever click this button on LinkedIn!

NEW FEATURE in LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes company research faster and easier

5 common social media content mistakes (and how to avoid them)

About the Author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies transform their social media programs from driving engagement to driving revenue. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a sales-driving social selling program at your organization, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

  [contact-form] 

Photo: Yoshihide Nomura

I loved cartoons ever since I was a kid. Every Saturday morning, I was up at the crack of dawn to watch and watch and watch until my father would drag me outside to help him on his pet project of the day.

As I got older, one of my favorite cartoons was Ren and Stimpy. In one episode, Stimpy was charged with guarding the “History Eraser Button.” The button that erases everything, and the one button you should never push.

LinkedIn has a button like this as well. It doesn’t erase anything, but whatever you do, don’t click this button!

The one button on LinkedIn you should never click is the Connect button in the “People you may know” section in the top right of your home page. The button seems simple and innocuous. However, if you push this button, it will send a generic “I would like to add you to my professional network” Invitation to Connect to that person. You don’t have the opportunity to personalize the invite.

Why is personalizing invitations important?

Say you were getting an invite to a birthday party. If the invite said “I would like you to come to my party,” and you knew the person really well, you would probably go. However, if you weren’t that person’s best friend, and you received that invite, your incentive to attend would be low.

However, if you received an invite that said, “I would love for you to attend my birthday party. I know you like bounce houses, beer and baseball, and this party will have all three.”

Which party invite would make you want to attend the party more – the generic or the personalized invite?

Take this same approach to your Invitations to Connect on LinkedIn. If you are connecting with someone you have known for a long time, “I would like to add you to my professional network” is probably going to get accepted.

However, if you just met the person at a conference last week (along with the other 100 people that person met), they might not even remember you, let alone want to connect. So, give them some reasons – remind them where you met, how you met, what you talked about, things you have in common (schools, former companies, connections).

Most importantly, mention what VALUE are you going to provide. For example, you want to share thoughts and ideas, or you both belong to the same non-profit and you want to help out. For some specific language for Invitations to Connect, check out Brynne Tillman’s recent post.

So where do I connect then?

Always connect from the person’s profile page. To get there from that same “People you may know” section, click on the person’s photo or name instead of clicking on Connect button . You will then be taken to that person’s profile page. From there, you will see a giant, candy-colored blue Connect button. When you click on that button, you can then personalize your invitation, and your invite will have a much higher chance of being accepted!

Key takeaways:

1. Always personalize your Invitations to Connect
2. Always connect to someone via their profile page, so you can personalize your Invitation to Connect

Related articles:

• NEW FEATURE in LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes company research faster and easier
• The best part of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index
• 5 common social media content mistakes (and how to avoid them)

About the Author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies harness the power of social media to add value their customers, build trust and drive sales. He’s always happy to talk all things strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a profit-driving social selling program at your organization, whether big or small, feel free to reach out to Robert.

Photo: Doug Belshaw

Last year, my wife and I saved up our money and took the family to Hawaii. My kids love sea turtles, so we searched for and found a beach that sea turtles are known to frequent.

We hiked about a half mile to the beach (with 400lbs of beach gear in tow), and were rewarded by walking up and immediately seeing an enormous sea turtle. My kids were over the moon! My wife and I were ecstatic, and I took about 100 pictures. We stood watching this magnificent creature sun itself, and throw sand on its shell.

After about 20 minutes of “ooh’s” and “aah’s,” a fellow beach-goer walked up to me, and said, “Um, if you like sea turtles, there’s about 20 of them around the corner.” And there were. This new revelation of information, and we spent the day admiring these reptiles (from a safe distance, of course), and taking enough pictures to last a lifetime.

Seeing the one turtle was great, and we would have been happy with that, but seeing all the rest of them made it even better.

That’s how I feel about a recent enhancement to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator platform. If you are not familiar, Sales Navigator is the highest level of LinkedIn premium service. In a nutshell, it helps you get a lot more business.

The new Sales Navigator enhancement is called “Premium Insights”, which pulls in company information from many sources to make research faster and easier. If you have haven’t seen Premium Insights yet, here are the 5 new features (Note: I have included screenshots taken from Airbnb’s page as examples).

1) Total Employee Count is the total number employed at a company that are LinkedIn members over the past two years. This feature also shows the percentage growth in that period of time and average tenure.

If a company has seen significant downsizing in the past two years, it may not be the best place to apply for a job, or reach out as vendor. In the example below, you can see Airbnb has seen 68% growth in the past 2 years.

2) Employee Distribution by Function is the distribution of company employees by function over time. This feature defaults to the top 4 functions in size at a company.

The feature allows you to see where the company is focused (e.g. Media, arts and design, engineering and operations), and the trend for each. It also can give you some insight into who makes the decisions at a company. For example, if the company has 1,000 people, 700 of them are sales and 5 are marketing, and you’re trying to sell them on a product that is going to impact sales and marketing it’s a good bet that the head of sales is the key decision-maker you need to convince for a company to work with you).

3) New Hires is the trending count of newly hired employees over time at a company. This shows if a company is growing, and the trend of growth as well. Stagnant employee count is a sign that a company may not be ready for a new technology or consulting help, or maybe it’s the PERFECT time if they have just hired a new rock star from a different industry.

In the example below, you can see that Airbnb had big boost in hiring at the beginning of 2015, and new hires have slowed, but are still at a pace of close to 100/month.

4) Notable Alumni are noteworthy people that used to work at a company in the past. (Note: this feature only shows VP-level and above. So, if you were the mail boy at Disney for a month a couple of years ago, and you want everyone to know about it. Well, I’m sorry, but you will not appear here).

With this feature, you can find out if a company churns out great leaders, and is it held in high regard by its alumni. For example, if a company’s alumni include Bill Gates, Beth Comstock and Elon Musk, you’d probably want to work for or with that company.

At Airbnb, you can see there aren’t many notable alumni, which is to be expected for a company that has only been around a few years.

5) Active Job Openings are a company’s total job posts available on LinkedIn, segmented by seniority and function, trending over time. Everyone uses LinkedIn for recruiting nowadays, so if they are posting new jobs, it’ll be on LinkedIn. Thus, if you are looking for a job, or want to see if a company is the midst of an expansion, this will give you that insight.

In the example below, it looks like Airbnb is expanding again. They have more new openings in the past month than they’ve had in any month in the past two years.

Could you find out this information about companies from other sources before this Sales Navigator enhancement? Yes. It is a lot easier to have it all in ONE place? Absolutely! Now, you can do high-level research on a company with Insights to be able to inform a knowledgeable, custom-tailored conversation with a key stakeholder.

Linkedin took a great experience with Sales Navigator and made it even better.

Related articles

• The value of social selling
• The best part of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index
• How to Drive a Social Selling Project – Step One: Gain C-suite Alignment

About the Author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder of Assist You Today, a company focusing on helping companies get closer to their clients, build trust and drive sales by harnessing the power of strategy, data, digital and social.

To find out how to set your company up for long-term success in this new digital age, and generate more sales using strategy, data, digital and social, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

  [contact-form] 

All social media marketers want to create content that resonates with their target audience. However, I have noticed after years in social media that many companies seem to make similar mistakes when it comes to social media content marketing.

Here is a list of 5 common social media content mistakes to avoid:

1) Making it all about themselves.

In social media, content needs to be about the audience – based their needs and what resonates with them. What companies want to talk about is their products and services, and many companies post this content on a regular basis. The problem is, social media users did not log-on to see content about products and services, so social media marketers need to frame their content in a way that will be valuable to their audience.

To do this, social media content needs to be P.U.R.E. – Powerful (compelling, stands out, stands on its own), Useful (provides values, not selling products), Relevant (something pertinent to the target audience at that time) and Engaging (makes target audience want to do something with it – e.g. share it with others, sign-up for a newsletter, buy something).

2) Losing their identity.

When I conduct reviews for companies regarding their social strategy and content, I see many brands posting content that is not aligned with their target audience.

For example, they have a highly-sophisticated client base, but they are posting 101-level content because it gets the most engagement. So, even if they get a ton of engagement, it is not with the audience they want to buy their products and services. Thus, even though it’s “successful” on the surface, it’s ultimately unsuccessful because it will not lead to business.

It’s all about quality over quantity – 10 shares from a company’s target audience is better than 20 shares from people outside that target audience.

3) Not using data enough.

Every company has a plethora of valuable data on their customers from sales, social and traditional marketing, but many companies don’t use this data when they are creating their social content. The most successful companies on social segment their overall audiences and target messages only to certain segments to which it is relevant.

Also, the results of previous pieces and campaigns inform what audiences like, do not like, and what will drive leads and sales. To optimize this further, test, test, TEST different messages to continuously keep up with target audience preferences and changing needs. Data needs to be at the heart of all content decisions from original strategy to end-of-the journey optimization to ensure strong ROI.

4) Designing for desktop.

Per Comscore, 65% of all digital time in the US is spent on mobile. However, most companies are still creating and optimizing their content for desktop, which is a big disconnect with consumer preference.

Companies need to ditch those extra long articles, and especially those enormous infographics! After all, users can barely read those on a desktop device. To use this content, cut those big infographics, brochures and other materials into “snackable” pieces that can be easily consumed on any device. As added bonuses, companies will have 10x the content to use, and it will be much more likely to be viewed and shared this way!

5) Sharing the exact same content across multiple channels.

Many companies with slim social resources post the same content on many different social sites, which is understandable, but not ideal. Although, some things are universal like using imagery and video, the thought leadership content that works on LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily work on Facebook, and definitely doesn’t work on Pinterest.

If resources are scant, optimize for each channel by adding site-specific nuances, like adding a hashtag and/or tagging the appropriate @ on Twitter. Middleware programs like HubSpot and Buffer make it easy to do this.

If resources are not an issue, design for each channel, then look at the type of content that works for each channel, and create accordingly. For example, the content that results in the most engagement and conversations for me on LinkedIn is…content about LinkedIn – big surprise! When I post that same content on Twitter, it receives a lot less interest. The more time companies can take to create content that works with each channel, the more successful their social media efforts will be.

Key Takeaways

To avoid the biggest social media content mistakes, companies need to make sure they are:

• Designing content for their target audience’s needs and preferences
• Using data to shape their strategy and tactics
• Creating site-specific content

Related articles

• The value of social selling
• What should your social media objectives be?
• 4 steps to social media content success

About the author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder of Assist You Today, a company focusing on helping companies get closer to their clients, build trust and drive sales by harnessing the power of strategy, data, digital and social.

To find out how to set your company up for long-term success in this new digital age, and generate more sales using strategy, data, digital and social, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

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Photo: Andy Roberts