Are you having trouble finding inspiration for LinkedIn posts? Then you’re in the right place! Today, we’re going to talk about where we find the inspiration to write weeks of LinkedIn posts for each of our clients. We will go through inspiration, process, and how to maintain a LinkedIn swipe file (also, we’ll answer “What the heck is a swipe file!”)
At Abask, we maintain the profiles of 3 CEOs on LinkedIn and the pages of seven companies on a daily basis. So, if you’re looking for a count, that is 13 posts each day (including Abask and Rebecca), or 91 posts each week, or 4,732 posts each year! That’s a demanding schedule and requires a tight process, a good understanding of LinkedIn, and a whole truckload of inspiration. Our LinkedIn newsletter offers weekly tips and lays out the newest features for LinkedIn. If you’re interested, you can sign up now, by clicking this link: LINKEDIN NEWSLETTER.
The Process of Gathering Inspiration for LinkedIn posts
Obviously, you can set aside 20 minutes every day to craft a LinkedIn post, but after doing that a few times, you’ll soon realize that you’ll spend approximately between one and two hours on each post. That is not sustainable. It’s way too expensive too. Imagine you charge $100 per hour, now you have to charge $100/ day in order to maintain the daily post schedule. (That’s not including the research on ideas, responses you need to post, and the analytics you should be gathering.)
DAILY CREATION DOESN’T WORK
BULK CREATION DOES!
Creating posts in bulk takes about 2 hours for us each week, and we are NEVER out of ideas.
Here’s the process we follow:
- Gather inspiration. (This is the part we cover in this post.)
- Write the posts
- Create graphics
- Place them into the content calendar.
- Copy/paste into LinkedIn as needed.
Open up a Word doc, a Google doc, or even your phone’s notes feature. This will
Now, put yourself into the shoes of your target audience. What problem are you trying to solve for them? Now, what are the perfect questions for them to ask you?
Here’s an example:
- I want to work with dog groomers.
- I’m can manage their social media to get more clients for them.
The questions they might ask are
- “How much does it cost to have someone run my social media?”
- “How long does it take to put together a social media calendar?”
- “What are my competitors doing on social media?”
- “How do I get social followers to become clients?”
And so on.
Make sure you spend 20 minutes writing the questions.
DON’T ANSWER THEM YET!
As you write questions, you’ll probably get more ideas. Just sit with the list for 20 minutes writing as many as possible.
You should have at least 30 questions on a successful day.
Look At What’s Working.
To get more inspiration for LinkedIn posts, figure out what LinkedIn likes.
(Again, we cover this in our newsletter, so we’re offering an easy fix here: LINKEDIN NEWSLETTER.)
LinkedIn shares certain content more than others. By knowing what LinkedIn likes, you can build a bank of content that will get shared a lot. Unfortunately, most of what LinkedIn likes is posted natively (directly on LinkedIn rather than through a content scheduler), so that’s more work for you, but having the content created upfront means you’re spending 5 minutes copying/ pasting rather than an hour crafting every day (and often realizing you need more info before you can actually hit post!)
Right now, LinkedIn really likes polls. So setting up a poll will boost your reach exponentially. It’s also a great way to gather information about your target audience or niche neighbors (other people in industries that serve your target audience. In the dog groomer example, a niche neighbour might be a dog shampoo company, or a local breeder).
As you’re going through the research, keep adding questions to your document.
Find the questions your audience is asking on LinkedIn.
For more inspiration on what your clients might ask, check out the posts your ideal clients are writing on LinkedIn. Are they asking questions that could lead you to more inspiration?
Which groups do your audience frequent on LinkedIn?
Join them!
Here you will find a wealth of information from people in the same industry.
Tons more inspiration.
Find the questions your audience is asking outside of LinkedIn
Now, let’s head over to other sites to see what questions people in that industry are asking:
Literally, a questions site where you can narrow it down by industry.
Do a search by industry and you’ll find conversations around the topics and inspiration galore!
Ah! The cream of the crop. Where do you go when you have a specific question?
That’s right: Google.
Put your target audience’s industry into the search bar and see the questions that pop up.
That’s how we find inspiration for LinkedIn posts. We maintain that document and continuously add to it (ours is shared amongst the team.) It takes about 2 hours to set up the initial document and I add to it almost daily whenever I think of a new idea – in the shower, on a walk, waiting for kids to come out of school, in the line at the grocery store…
Hope this helps you to find your own LinkedIn inspiration. Now, if you’d like to see how we write the posts, stay tuned for the next blog post.
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