Experian’s social media presence in LinkedIn represented more than 50% of their social audience. Most of the audience were followers of their company page, but they also owned several specialized groups with a sizable niche audience. In spite of this, only 15% of Experian’s social media activity took place in LinkedIn. I built a content marketing strategy to address that gap and develop LinkedIn as a branding and lead-generation channel for Experian in EMEA.

The content marketing strategy was based on four content areas, like fraud or collections, which were aligned with the strategic business objectives of the region.

 

Experian's company page in LinkedIn, which was the hub of our content marketing efforts.

 

Objectives

At the beginning we set some general objectives based on the intentions we had when developing this strategy.

  • Maximize the impact of our existing content
  • Build and nurture LinkedIn audience
  • Integrate LinkedIn in our multichannel lead-generation campaigns
  • Develop personal branding of key individuals
  • Use social selling to develop prospects in key industries

Afterwards we translated these into SMART objectives. Some examples would be:

  • Grow EMEA followers of Experian’s LinkedIn Company Page by 75% by the end of the fiscal year.
  • Support the inclusion of LinkedIn in 2 multichannel lead-generation campaigns per quarter
  • Turn 6 subject-matter experts into LinkedIn authors by the end of the year

There were more SMART objectives not included in this list.

Content marketing streams

The strategy defined different content marketing streams, with different objectives for each:

  • Branding: led by the company page, as well as posts on Experian’s owned groups.
  • Personal branding: we wanted to work with subject matter experts to publish content on LinkedIn related to their area of expertise, which would be also shared in key groups and from the company page. I also designed a training program for employees to provide best practices in building their profile and interacting in LinkedIn. Finally, I set up a program to provide employees with interesting branded content to share from their accounts each week.
  • Engagement: With targeted sponsored updates from the company page to generate leads from LinkedIn. We also used Sales Navigator as a prospecting tool, to identify key potential contacts.