LinkedIn Writing: Plan for Year 3
Like an idiot, I paid $12/month for software that told me how many total impressions, likes, comments, and re-shares my content was getting on LinkedIn.
I burned money on this for 2 years.
I did it because:
I thought LinkedIn's free tracking wasn't enough
I wanted to measure the impact of my writing
I wasn't sure what else to track
The problem?
Impressions, likes, comments, and re-shares don't measure the impact of my writing.
My measurement framework was broken.
So I made a new one.
Quick Recap Of Year 2
I write online so work finds me - more on that here.
(I also really enjoy writing, so that helps.)
My game plan for year 2 involved writing more in my professional niche (affiliate marketing for lenders).
The experiment proved fruitful. People in the industry noticed my writing, my inbound networking accelerated, and I realized I had the beginnings of a sales pipeline for an affiliate marketing agency.
With the conviction that my writing could generate inbound leads, I found a business partner, signed a client, quit my 9-5, and dove head-first into building a marketing agency.
I'm 3 months into it. So far so good and I'm happy I made the leap.
Measurement framework for writing
While on a W2, it was easy to trick myself into thinking impressions, likes, and comments were some sort of proxy for the impact of my writing.
You’ll notice my prior Newsletter updates had images showing these cumulative metrics.
The problem?
I could have posted complete garbage and still have accumulated the same number (or more) of impressions, likes and comments.
As a business owner that leverages social content for top of funnel demand, I could care less about those metrics.
I want my content to:
Attract future clients
Build trust with future clients
Generate discussions with future clients
And, ultimately, I need my content to generate sales.
So, the metrics I’m keeping an eye on are:
Publishing frequency — how many industry pieces per week
Connects/follows in my buyer demo
Number of inbound qualified leads
Repost volume (stronger quality indicator than likes)
Sales volume
Gone are the days of tracking impressions, likes, and comment volume. It was fun to see those numbers go from 5-figures to 6-figures to 7-figures, but it would be more fun to see the same in my business checking account.
The other cool side-effect of writing online is that I get to meet all sorts of interesting people in and outside of my niche. Regardless of what happens with this marketing agency, I’ll continue to write (but perhaps on different topics) because content creation is a networking machine on LinkedIn.
Year 3 Plan
I’ll keep pumping out Twitter style threads on affiliate marketing— these have been working for me.
But, I feel like I’m saying the same things over and over in those threads, so I’m going to be recording a solo format Podcast to see if the medium gets different ideas out of me (more on that here). Furthermore, I plan to hire writers to help me turn those recordings into written articles. I hope that gets me out of my creative funk.
I plan to do more research in my niche, so that I can share new specific insights. The more I can educate my potential buyer, the more trust I’ll build.
I plan to broaden my content platform to go beyond just affiliate marketing. My ICP is likely marketing their products in Direct Mail, Search, Social, and Email, and I want to be a trusted source of information there, too.
Lastly, I’m considering expanding my solo Podcast experiment into a show that brings on guests to dive into marketing topics that would interest my ICP. Not only would those interviews generate content, they’d also help me network directly with leaders in the space. I want to get comfortable with the Podcast format first before I commit to moving in this direction.
My topline success metric here couldn't be simpler - staying in the game and thriving as an entrepreneur. If I make that happen, it's likely my content had something to do with it.
P.S. - My LinkedIn feed won’t be 100% content in my agency niche. I’m targeting about 50% of posts for other stuff. I’ll do this so that (1) my networking and audience grows in and outside of my current niche and (2) people get to know me as a person/professional beyond the industry content.
P.P.S - I'm experimenting with ghostwriting for B2B CEOs. If you’re an entrepreneur or B2B exec that wants to use LinkedIn to scale your business, let’s chat.