Hum, Sing, Shout: How to Design a Scalable, Sustainable, and Always On Content Marketing Strategy – Purna Virji, Linkedin

Purna Virji, Senior Content Solutions Consultant at Linkedin
In this session, LinkedIn’s Senior Content Solutions Consultant Purna Virji will share how marketers can re-think their content planning approach and share frameworks and best-in-class examples for designing a scalable and sustainable always on content strategy.

Key takeaways on how to design a scalable, sustainable, and always-on content marketing strategy

There is nothing worse than a blank sheet of paper when it comes to figuring out what content to produce. So, Purna provided a number of places to seek out content from as well as a framework for organising said content.

  • Audit existing content to curate from your:
    • purpose
    • employees
    • history
    • wins
    • data
  • Give new purpose to what’s worked elsewhere:
    • news and current affairs
    • popular social trends
    • high-investment content
  • Plan content using the Hum-Sing-Shout framework:
    • Include content from all teams.

How to Audit Your Existing Content to Find Fresh Ideas

  • The best performing creative tends to be half-old, half-new.

5 research-based strategies for sourcing fresh ideas from existing content:

    • Curate from your purpose to connect via shared values.
      • How you’re making a difference to your local community
      • How you’re making a difference at scale
    • Curate employee voices to build strong emotional connections.
      • Learnings from Employee Resource Group (ERG) discussions
      • Employee passions
      • Executives sharing ideas and learnings
    • Curate from history to nurture audiences and drive engagement.
      • Tap into key trends to boost engagement.
      • Evoke nostalgia via hashtags like #TBT to spark dialogue.
    • Curate from your wins to set yourself apart via social proof
      • Promote customer experiences.
      • Promote recognition you receive.
    • Curate from your data to stand out in your customer’s research.
      • Promote success/effectiveness rates
      • Promote value and benefits of choosing you

How to Give New Purpose to What’s Worked Elsewhere

  • You can create dozens of assets with minimal work when the same core IP gets re-used in a variety of formats and channels.

Take a leaf out of Disney’s book—3 blockbuster strategies to repurpose content like a movie mogul:

    • Build content from news and current affairs to be relevant and timely.
      • Celebrity news to attract attention
      • Recent popular headlines to boost interest
    • Repurpose popular social trends to drive connection.
      • Humor via trending memes
      • Let your audience join the fun.
    • Sample from your own high-investment content.
      • Create snackable video bites from in-depth reports.
      • Turn insights from your research into compelling visual stories.
      • One research report
        • Employee-focused posts
        • Manager/HR-focused posts

How to Plan Via the Hum-Sing-Shout Framework

  • Hum, Sing, Shout: Help your content engine run continuously and smoothly.
    • Hum, i.e. Hygiene Content:
      • Always-On content optimised to audience intent and interest
    • Sing, i.e. Hub content (Small campaigns):
      • Regularly scheduled campaigns with content based on audience passions
    • Shout, i.e. Hero Content (Large campaigns):
      • Big, broad, and topical “cornerstones” that are most resource-intensive
    • Being Always-On helps you provide relevant content at the right time throughout the buying journey.

How to grow your organic linkedin followers

Q and A on how to design a scalable, sustainable, and always on content marketing strategy

Q: Are there certain types of posts which are better on LinkedIn?

A: It really depends on who your audience is. For example, if you’re talking to Gen-Z, it helps to be much more visual (i.e. short video clips). Video on LinkedIn tends to get three times the usual consumption rate as other types of content. Ultimately, understand who your audience is, get really tight with your targeting, see what resonates, and keep testing.

Q: Creating the content is one thing. Getting employees engaged to share it is another. Have you got any more tips on getting employees and co-workers engaged in sharing on social or elsewhere?

A: A simple ask is helpful. For example, internally, you can post an email say, once a week, about something you’re currently promoting. Externally, on social media platforms, spotlight your team. By helping them build their brand, they are incentivized to share those posts.

Q: How do I get more organic followers on LinkedIn?

A: Ask people to follow you on LinkedIn in your email signature or on your website. Post daily, even if only five days a week. This will help you build traction and build up the views. In all your other marketing messages, such as press releases, include the link to your LinkedIn profile. Tag others in your posts as well to draw more eyeballs to your content. Essentially, it’s very karmic: Do good and help others and they’ll all lift you up.

Q: Should there be a different approach to using LinkedIn for B2B versus B2C? Or do the same principles apply?

A: People often think that we need to be more “rational” when doing B2B. But in the last couple of years, because we’ve all been working from home, the line between B2B and B2C has been blurred. We’ve found that B2B has started to emulate B2C in terms of its human-centred approach. In a nutshell, no, it’s not that much different. The only real difference is that the purchase journey takes longer with B2B (3-18 months on average).