A good strategy always starts at the end. Knowing what you want to achieve first – and why – gives you direction, so you can plot the journey to get there.
If you’re building a B2B comms and marketing strategy, you need to know a few things:
- Who are the people you need to win over? These could be direct buyers, but they could be the people who influence those buyers internally and externally.
- What’s keeping them up at night? More importantly, what’s your unique insight into solving those problems?
- How does your business or product meet their needs? And how you’re different to anyone else on the market.
Once you’ve got this nailed, you can start to think about messaging and the right channel mix to meet your audience where they are (instead of hoping they’ll find you).
Naturally, PR and social media should form a key part of any comms strategy, helping build credibility that fosters trust and positions you as the authority on subjects relevant to your brand.
And in a world where marketing budgets are shrinking, focusing your efforts on LinkedIn – as both a social media and editorial publisher – could give you serious bang for your buck.
LinkedIn’s unique position
LinkedIn has changed over the years since its launch in 2003. It’s grown to over 1 billion members worldwide, with another 171.9 million expected to join by 2028.
In the last five years, LinkedIn’s seen a 35% increase in the C-suite joining in the US and a 30% increase in the UK, and a 23% increase in CEOs globally posting year on year. And a key thing to note: CEO content gets 4x more engagement than that of other LinkedIn members.
LinkedIn isn’t just the place for “thrilled to announce” updates anymore. It’s invested in building a team of the best business journalists in the world over the last few years, now boasting a 250+ person-strong cohort that helps surface and shape trending news, pushing industry-specific updates to key target audiences.
It’s now one of the biggest editorial platforms in the world. It’s sitting pretty in this unique sweet spot – part social network, part credible publisher.
And with distinct teams covering retail, technology and manufacturing, to name a few sectors, it’s reviewing user conversations happening on the platform to gather unique insight and expert commentary to give news stories a bit more colour, opinion and a ‘day two angle’.
We’ve always known social media and PR go together, but LinkedIn is capitalising on this shift in consumption like no other B2B platform. But, it only works if people – both brands and individuals – bother to post quality content that secures greater reach, builds credibility, authority and fosters trust.
Let’s take a look at one of the top news stories as I’m writing this blog: that projected growth for the UK is on the up, despite US tariffs.
Go to LinkedIn and navigate to its News bar on the right and you’ll see this reported through a series of posts and perspectives from those deemed experts – including industry body and respected news outlet Company Pages, and individuals with a credible background in finance and leadership.
LinkedIn’s doing what good journalists have always done: gathering the smartest voices in the room to tell the story.
So, what does that mean for your communications strategy?
It means thinking and working in silos is more dangerous than ever.
It means treating LinkedIn like The Times, or Forbes, WSJ, or a speaking slot. Offer insight, opinion and perspective through your content.
It means getting more people from your employee base involved in corporate comms.
It means thinking about the biggest influencers you can leverage and not limiting yourself to a single spokesperson.
It means bigger opportunity.
If you’re still relying solely on a press release and a few media pitches, you’re only telling half your story to half your potential audience (if that).
News, thought leadership and commentary flow through creators, communities, and social channels in real time now. People – including B2B buyers – are consuming updates in storytelling formats, and journalists are collating these online.
Right then, how do you actually win on LinkedIn?
A well-rounded comms programme is designed around a clear set of building blocks and activities you’ve already established. You just need to tweak these to execute for maximum impact on LinkedIn too.
Core activities should include:
Map your audience and influencers
You probably already know who your target audience is, so use LinkedIn to review what your ideal customers, industry peers, competitors and relevant ‘LinkedIn News’ editorial teams are posting about. Look for content gaps and develop your content ‘sweet spots’.
Sort out an editorial calendar
For both your company page and your key people. And align this to your broader marketing and comms strategy and calendars.
Create content around:
- Thought leadership pieces on industry trends
- Your take on challenges
- ‘Next day’ analysis of relevant news
The key here is speed. Just like with traditional media relations, if you can offer a fresh perspective on breaking news, people will listen. Consider sharing any comment you draft for spokespeople on their LinkedIn pages as well as pitching it to traditional media.
Experiment with different formats to announce brand stories – customer wins, innovations, news releases. Things like:
- A video announcement from the CEO or a post from their page rather than the brand page
- Share articles
- Set up fireside chat-style LinkedIn Live sessions
- Create carousels to distil complex information into bite-sized
Get your leaders and experts involved
- Make sure your C-suite and SMEs have compelling, up-to-date and professional profiles
- Ghostwrite or edit their posts, provide media training, and help them join relevant conversations – especially as sources for editorial teams.
Encourage employee advocacy
- Ask your employees to share and comment thoughtfully on company and colleague posts to boost reach. And encourage them to jump into those industry conversations happening on the platform.
Make friends with journalists
- Identify and follow sector editors and LinkedIn News journalists
- When you’ve got something genuinely valuable to add to a breaking story, slide into their DMs, tag them in your posts, or jump into relevant conversations to be considered as a source for ‘day two’ or expert commentary
- Monitor hot topics using LinkedIn’s “What people are talking about now” and Trending sections to spot newsworthy discussions.
And if you’ve yet to be convinced, we’ve seen an enhanced focus on these tactics work across lots of different news stories and sectors. This is a client campaign we had featured in LinkedIn’s Europe round-up – the newsletter had over 2 million followers at the time this was published:
And this is our very own Head of Media Relations, Katie Chodosh giving expert perspective in a round up about a Bluesky milestone:
As a brand and as an individual, being more active on social media is a major help to your comms efforts. We can help with every element of your LinkedIn strategy – from audits to content plans, or team training.
And if your personnel pages could do with some polishing, our Brand You programme combines everything we know about executive profiling with social media support.
Get in touch
Written by Louise Watson-Dowell, Head of Digital PR and Social Media at Definition.
