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John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing fame, wrote a post about his Total Content System, which I would encourage you to read about. Jantsch outlines how to approach building content for your audience, planning it on your calendar and which forms of content you can use to deliver your thought-leadership to your target audience (i.e. newsletter, blog posts, ebook a, etc.). I urge you to go read Jantsch's post then come back here and finishing reading this post. Jantsch offers some great in-depth content marketing fundamentals. However, if you'd like to learn how to simplify your content marketing platform to just LinkedIn, which is great for coaches and consultants, take what you've learned from Jantsch's post and apply the following as your LinkedIn Content Marketing Platform. Your LinkedIn "Website" If you didn't have a website or a blog you could use your LinkedIn profile web address as your online business destination. Put your LinkedIn web address on your business cards and in your email signature, etc. Your LinkedIn "Blog" Blog posts are a great marketing tool to educate and inform your target audience about a topic or need for which you provide insight and a solution. If you're using LinkedIn as your content marketing platform you can post short and sweet "blog posts" in your LinkedIn Status Updates -- you're allowed to post up to 600 characters, which is plenty of space to post a solid thought, or do a multi-part series across a few Status Updates. With these posts being shorter than traditional blog posts you could post a few times a week or even daily...think shorter poignant posts like that of Seth Godin. Your LinkedIn "Email List" As you post your Status Updates, those connected to you on LinkedIn will see your updates. Continue to expand your network of connections by continuously meeting and inviting new people to connect with you on LinkedIn. This is like growing your marketing email list, in fact it is a marketing email list. Also, if you are a member of any associations, like a chamber of commerce for example, and have a member directory with email addresses, pick out the members who fit your target audience and invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers a way to send multiple invites in one fell swoop to an email list you have. Your LinkedIn "Newsletter" I recommend once a month, or perhaps once every other month or even per quarter, send out a longer form "newsletter" to all of your LinkedIn connections. You can email them directly through LinkedIn's email service, which is built into every LinkedIn personal profile. In the Basic (free) version of LinkedIn you are only allowed to send one LinkedIn email message to a maximum of 50 different connections at a single time, so if you want to send your "newsletter" to all of your LinkedIn connections you'll have to copy and paste your message into several LinkedIn emails with 50 recipients per email. This may not sound ideal, but investing an hour or two to do this once a month or once a quarter can be a worthwhile time investment to reach your entire list of growing LinkedIn connections, which is full of customers, prospects, partners and referral sources. Calls to Action No matter what information you're sharing you always want to keep in mind what next step you want customers, prospects, partners and/or referral sources to take as they engage with your content. The call to action may be to directly connect with you, share the content with a friend, follow your updates, download an ebook you produced, attend an upcoming webinar you'll be putting on, receive a free consultation, etc. I think you get the idea, but it's important to help your audience to know and understand how they can take next steps to continue building a relationship with you both online and eventually in person.
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