10 Steps to Grow Your Brand on LinkedIn: exitfive Newsletter #96

Hello and welcome to the exitfive Weekly Newsletter - read by 16,000 B2B marketing professionals around the world. Exit Five is a membership site designed to help you build a successful career in B2B marketing. Join 3,000 other members at exitfive.com.

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Today's newsletter is sponsored by PharosIQ

In 2024, you face tougher pipeline challenges than ever: reduced budgets, tighter resources, and fewer active buyers. 

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10 Steps to Grow Your Brand on LinkedIn

1. Shrink down the focus of what you write about. What's the one topic it would be most valuable for you to be known for? Start there.

2. Develop a clear POV in your industry. Who is your product for? Why do you exist? How are you different? What are the megatrends that matter to your customers? What is broken? How can you help them?

3. Win with depth. Don't worry about being witty or posting funny memes. If that doesn't come natural to you, it's not going to work here. Lead with education. Write to educate and inform. Maybe you also have some personality and let it show in your writing, but focus on educating and informing.

4. Write three posts a week. Why three? Because you need to start somewhere. If I tell you everyday you'll say no way that's too much, if I tell you once a week you'll say that's not enough (and you're right) so let's start with three posts a week.

5. Treat LinkedIn as your industry blog. This is where you write about work.

6. Keep a notebook with ideas for the backlog. You're in meetings and on calls all week with teammates, recruits, partners, advisors, investors, peers. There is so much knowledge and so many nuggets in there - you just have to flip your brain on for the good ones. After you have a call, make some notes about what you talked about. The other night I had a thought about ChatGPT and it's impact on SEO. I emailed myself some notes on it and wrote the post later and scheduled it out later. You need lots of content ideas to be successful here. Create a file where these ideas can live, then you have little prompts each time you go to write.

7. Set aside time to write your posts. You don't want to do this? Then you can't play this game. You have to find time for it, there's no other way. You can do this in 1 hour a week. You can find that time if it's important to you.

8. Write them in batches. When you have writing time, use it. Ride the momentum. Write a week's worth of content in one sitting (that's only three posts, remember?) And do that once a week.

9. Comment and reply. Make sure you do this. Start commenting on people's posts in your feed. This will make your feed better (you'll start seeing more of their posts when you comment), it will increase your engagement (LinkedIn likes to see that you're active beyond just writing your own posts), and this will give you ideas for future posts of your own. A comment can so often be the jumping off point for more writing later. Spend time in the comments on your posts if you get any.

10. Schedule your posts in advance. Use the LinkedIn native scheduler. So you batch write and then schedule them for the week. The best time to post varies but the simplest thing is to pick a time, and once a day in the morning (7-8 AM) usually works, so try that. Weekends are great too and often times posts will get the most engagement on Sunday night.

P.S. Are there any specific challenges you're facing in creating content on LinkedIn right now? LMK

🎧 Podcast #135: Traits of a High Performing CMO

Dave Kellogg is a former CEO and CMO with operational experience across companies from $0 to $1B+. He served as GM/SVP of Service Cloud for Salesforce, CEO of MarkLogic, and SVP of Marketing at SAP / Business Objects. Today, he is principal at Dave Kellogg Consulting, EIR at Balderton Capital, and author of the popular SaaS blog Kellblog (www.kellblog.com). He has also served as an independent director across 10 startup boards and has a unique perspective on what top-performing SaaS companies do and what role the CMO should play.

We talk about:

- Being a great partner to sales and why it is marketing’s job to make sales easier
- Mastering the art of becoming the dispassionate analyst, presenting the facts
- Being a partner to the CEO
- Dave's thoughts on the importance of benchmarks, his POV on category creation, lead gen vs. demand gen, ChatGPT, and more.

Listen to the Episode Now on Spotify

Or find it everywhere you listen by searching "Exit Five" podcast.

🎧 Podcast #136: How To Use AI In B2B Marketing

I'm joined by Jessica Hreha. Jessica is the Head of Marketing AI Strategy & Transformation at Jasper. Previously, she was the Head of Global Integrated Campaigns & Content Strategy and Founder of VMware Marketing AI Council at VMware.

We discuss everything AI in B2B Marketing, such as

• How to use AI to ideate and refine your creation process
• Use cases for AI beyond copywriting
• Why you need dedicated in-house AI champions
• What Jasper is doing to improve customer engagement with AI

Listen to the Episode Now on Spotify

Or find it everywhere you listen by searching "Exit Five" podcast.

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

On May 9, Bill Kenney will be in the community for an asynchronous AMA to discuss building a brand in B2B that your customers want.

Ask him questions related to brand strategy like

• How to communicate your vision, what you do, and why it matters to your customers, and hiring.
• How to make brand your leading revenue driver.
• Where do most B2B brands fall short
• How to rollout your new brand
• Does my logo actually matter (it’s not branding without a logo question, right)

Drop your questions in the comments whenever you’re free, and Bill will answer them within a couple of days of the event.

Bill’s agency, Focus Lab, has worked with companies like Netflix, Marketo, Adobe, Outreach, Udacity, Braze, InVision, and so on. If you want to learn how to build a brand with someone who’s worked with some of the best, now is your chance.

RSVP HERE

🏢 OPEN ROLES

Who's Hiring Right Now

HOT JOB OF THE WEEK: Freshpaint is looking for a Senior Product Marketing Manager who will be the first product marketing hire at a fast growing startup. This role will be responsible for further developing Freshpaint's ICP segments, working with product on the roadmap, and building out value propositions and messaging. 

If you're interested you can apply here. 

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• Spot AI is hiring a Director of Demand Generation. $185-200k salary.
• RethinkFirst is hiring a Social Media Manager. Remote Role 
• RethinkFirst is hiring a Growth Marketing Director. Remote Role. 
• Tribunus Health is hiring a Growth Marketing Manager. Remote Role. $80-120k salary.
• Meter is hiring a Field Marketing Manager. Remote Role. $85-143k salary.
• Auror is hiring a Director of Field Marketing. $150-168k salary.
• Aimtal is hiring a Marketing Account Manager. Remote Role.
• Tiugo Technologies is hiring a Director, Content Marketing. Remote Role.
• OlyBet Group is hiring a Group Director, Customer Marketing. 96-144k€.
• ContactMonkey is hiring a Senior Website Growth Lead. Remote Role.
• MightyScout is hiring a Growth Marketing Manager. $90-$110k salary. Remote Role.
• Flowhub is hiring a Demand Generation Manager. $95-$125k salary. Remote Role.

Join us in Exit FiveBecause no one goes to school for B2B marketing. 

We have a private community + content site for marketing pros like you and me if you’re looking for a peer group and discussion forum to help you grow your career in B2B marketing.Get feedback, campaign ideas, browse templates, videos, guides, get recommendations on agencies and vendors, find contractors and freelancers, vent about your boss, find new jobs and more.

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