Getting Leads From Your Content

Content marketing on LinkedIn is our biggest source of new business for our agency.

Here is how to create targeted content that converts:

1. Post content that converts

I write every post using a simple formula:

i) The intro

LinkedIn gives you 210 characters to grab people's attention. Your first job on every piece of content you create is to get people to click ‘see more.’

Every time someone clicks ‘see more’ on your post - LinkedIn counts that as an ‘engagement’, and the more engagements you get, the more people LinkedIn shows your content to.

Think of your intros like an email subject line - they must grab people's attention. 

Those first few lines are what we call the hook. If you write a great hook, your content will do well.

There are a couple of different ways I like to write hooks.

ii) Calling out the target customer

• “Do I know any small business owners looking for ……”

• “Most marketers get this wrong about email marketing…..”

This is the easiest way for your target audience to stop scrolling and read.

iii) The value promise

With these hooks, I tell my audience they will get value by reading further.

• “These five automation tools helped me save 5 hours a week….”

• “This is the best business advice I’ve ever received…..”

iv) Creating desire

Knowing your target audience/network, you’ll know what they want.

With these hooks, I get people's attention by sharing how we’ve achieved something we know our target audience wants. 

“My latest Facebook marketing campaign is earning a ROAS of 5.6x…..”

“I just ran 5km in 17 minutes; here’s how I did it….”

Every sentence you write should draw your reader down the page to the next sentence.

So, your writing is creating a slippery slope for their attention.

Generally, if you can hook someone for three or more sentences, you’ve got them.

2. Turn attention into revenue

Once you’ve got people who have engaged with your content, you need to turn them into a lead.

i. Find people by looking at who has either engaged or commented on your content and reply to them

ii. Reach out to them directly through their profile and request to connect

iii. Repeat with people who have either engaged (liked or commented) who fit your target customer profile - here is an example of a lead who came through one of my recent posts

This process is repeatable for any social platform.

Notes: High-performing content about politics or popular topics doesn’t translate into new business.

Post A - 12,820 impressions:

Post B - 3022 impressions:

Post A had 400% more impressions but generated zero enquiries.

Post B created two enquiries.

Make sure the content you write is engaging the customer you want.

The Power Law Of Employment

Moving fast and breaking things was Facebook's motto for more than a decade and is still the calling card of many up-and-coming entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, the message's spiritual home.

The idea is that if you do lots of things, even when they flop, you'll have learned something and be better for it. i.e., do things, fail, learn, improve.

Nassim Talib even advocates for this approach in his book Antifragile, a wide-ranging look at how to succeed in the non-gaussian distribution world our complex systems have cultured -You don't have to be intelligent to succeed, just have a bias towards action.

But what about when you don't have infinite VC money, and breaking things might mean you miss this month's mortgage payments?

Being lazy means moving fast has never appealed to me. I prefer to take careful steps that cover more distance.

One way to do that is by taking advantage of what math attempts to describe with power laws, like the 80/20 principle, made famous by Richard Koch.

I've taken Richard's message to heart and continued applying this thinking to more and more areas of my life. Like our favourite body insecurity, the more I've looked for it, the more it has appeared.

The employment business is a custom for this rule.

Labour markets are quirky. At one end, you've got folks on minimum wage, getting paid far more than the value they can create. At the other, many six-and-seven-figure executives have even fewer ideas about producing value that exceeds the cost of their time.

I'm finding gold somewhere between those two extremes. As I've learned, you can pay 10 - 30% above market rates to hire people who bring your company 2 - 5x more value than those sitting in pay bands just below them.

That's how I ended up hiring H for my fundraising agency, Gravy. I ran a simple "looking for a writer" ad on student job search and offered an hourly rate ~10% above similar roles advertised.

We received ten applications within a day. One of those was H. At a guess, H is producing 3x of the results writers just below their hourly rate.

Yes, this is highly theoretical, but the gist holds. Offering a little more attracts a far higher quality of applicant on average. That slight difference between $40 and $45 an hour can produce surprisingly large payoffs.