LinkedIn Goes All-In on B2B Marketing

Social media networks have made the news for all the wrong reasons this year. But LinkedIn is the exception, rolling out a steady stream of new features and avoiding controversy. The latest is a new collective for B2B marketers that just happens to work as excellent content marketing for LinkedIn. The question is, will LinkedIn include or compete with the many existing B2B marketing voices? Robert Rose weighs in.

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Aired: August 5, 2002

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It seems that all the Social Media Networks are in the news these days, and for all the wrong reasons, whether it’s:

• Meta tinkering with their feed to be more like TikTok
• Twitter trying to fend off a billionaire man child
• TikTok saying, “LOL, All your data belong to us

Being a social media network these days is tough. Unless you’re LinkedIn, that is. They seem to be navigating the waters of 2022 pretty well, and they’ve just launched a new original media community for B2B marketers.

Hello everybody, Robert Rose here with the news. It’s what’s new, but, more importantly, what’s important in the world of content marketing. It’s the news you need to lead in the practice of content marketing and strategy. Of course, for the best in best practices, you can always go to contentmarketinginstitute.com.

So we’re in the official dog days of summer. And while we wait for news to happen, we have one small thing to report.

LinkedIn has launched a new program called the LinkedIn Collective. It’s a new content-centric platform that’s designed to (in their words) “inspire excellence and success” for B2B strategists.

The announcement calls it a community of insightful thinkers. But, at launch, it feels like a curated original content feed from the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions group.

Put simply: It feels like an original content marketing program from LinkedIn.

The posts (at least thus far) have been very interesting, featuring well-written thought leadership from the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team with some other contributors. It also features LinkedIn research on B2B marketing.

Related: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/10/b2b-power-content-marketing-research/

Our take: According to the launch post, the LinkedIn Collective is meant to be a gathering of the best thought leadership on how B2B marketing should be done. They desire to create a digital destination that propels the discourse on B2B marketing.

There’s no doubt they have the personnel and talent to do that. But it leaves me wondering if the plans also include bringing long-time platforms that have focused on B2B marketing to the forefront. You know, create an actual community.

It’s amazing to see B2B marketing and thought leadership get a prominent place on LinkedIn. But if it just becomes a centralized voice for LinkedIn, it remains, well, just that:  An interesting platform that competes with the many B2B companies that already use LinkedIn to disperse great B2B marketing thought leadership.

That would seem a little counterintuitive to me. I’m hopeful that as the LinkedIn Collective matures, it becomes exactly what it says it is: a collective of some of the best thinking in B2B marketing strategies that features some of the amazing thought leadership work by media companies, technology companies, manufacturing companies, freelancers, and consultants.

Do we at CMI have a vested interest in this? Yeah, we do.

Regardless, it’s a great program. And congrats to the LinkedIn team for getting it done.

And that’s five minutes of news you need to lead in content marketing. I’m Robert Rose. Remember, it’s your story. Tell it well. I’ll see you next week.