Understanding LinkedIn Content Pillars
LinkedIn is more than just a platform for job hunters and recruiters; it is a thriving social network where people come together to share ideas, learn, and grow professionally. While many underestimate its potential as a content sharing platform, businesses and individuals alike have found success in building their respective brands on LinkedIn using what are known as ‘LinkedIn Content Pillars’.
Content Pillars on LinkedIn are the foundation upon which your content strategy is built. These are the main themes or topics that guide what type of content you should post on this platform. They help keep your content consistent, relevant, and appealing for your followers. For successful content marketing, it is essential to define your content pillars and consistently create topics around these pillars.
The Three Major Content Pillars on LinkedIn
Now, let’s take a more in-depth look into the three most important LinkedIn content pillars: Educate, Inspire, and Engage. These are designed to help you offer genuine value, motivate your audience, and facilitate active engagement, respectively.
Educate
This pillar is focused on providing value to your audience through teaching or providing new information. On LinkedIn, this manifests as sharing industry news, offering expert advice, or unveiling data-driven insights. It’s about giving your network the resources they need to be more informed and effective in their jobs.
Statistics show that professionals are 50% more likely to engage with a post that helps them improve at their jobs. Including informative content such as how-to guides, tutorials, or thought leadership articles in your content mix provides valuable opportunities to demonstrate your industry expertise and credibility.
Inspire
The Inspire pillar is all about sharing motivational, compelling stories that strike an emotional chord with your audience. LinkedIn is a fantastic platform to share success stories, case studies, motivational quotes, or personal growth stories that can inspire others in their journey.
This pillar aims to connect with your audience on a deeper, emotional level, which can help to strengthen your brand association. It’s a great way to show the ‘human’ side of your business, which can often resonate with your followers and inspire loyalty and trust towards your brand.
Engage
The eEngage pillar is aimed at facilitating two-way communication, driving interactions and building relationships with your audience. It could be as simple as asking a question, conducting surveys or polls, or starting a discussion on a relevant industry topic.
The key goal here is to stimulate conversation and interaction amongst your audience. This helps to create a community and encourage followers to participate actively. It’s an excellent way of gaining insights into your followers’ opinions, interests, and needs while enhancing their sense of belonging and connection to your brand.
How to Leverage LinkedIn Content Pillars
To fully leverage the power of LinkedIn Content Pillars, you need a well-planned content strategy. This requires clear understanding of your brand, the message you want to convey, your target audience and their needs. It also involves producing high-quality, relevant and diverse content that aligns with the three content pillars.
You need to balance educating with inspiring and engaging content. For instance, if an article regarding an industry trend educates your audience, taking a stance on the issue and opening it up for discussion harnesses the engage pillar. Similarly, sharing a success story, although inspirational, can also serve to educate your audience on how to replicate that success.
Furthermore, every piece of content doesn’t need to fall strictly within a single pillar. An effective content strategy often involves blending these pillars. A blog post could both educate your audience on a new strategy and inspire them to push their boundaries. A thought-provoking question could both engage your followers and educate them through the discussion that follows.
LinkedIn Content Pillars are the backbone of a winning content strategy on this professional platform. By understanding and leveraging these pillars, you can create a strong brand presence on LinkedIn, connect meaningfully with your followers, and reap the rewards of an active, engaged network.
Remember, the key to successful content marketing on LinkedIn is consistency, quality, relevance, and diversity of content. So, take the time to understand your audience, plan your content around the three pillars, and watch your LinkedIn engagement grow.