Content may be king, but growing an audience is the ace

There is more content than ever being produced. This was the case even before the advent of generative AI, which added fuel to the content fire.

LinkedIn is a primary place to share content, but it is flooded with new content daily. Most of it has little or no traction. Good content does not guarantee anyone will read or view it. Audiences do not occur on their own. Building an audience for your content requires planning and execution.

So what do you do to get your content on the radar and read by the right people?

One of the points I emphasize when I am coaching companies, especially sales and business development teams, is that sharing company generated content offers an opportunity: potentially an exponential reach into the niche in the GovCon market you serve.

There are four building blocks to attain that exponential reach, and it begins with the profile of each team member.

Over the years, GovExec’s Leading Brand studies highlighted the need for both visibility and credibility if you wanted to win any business in our market. That visibility and credibility starts with the profiles of your employees and co-workers.

Good profiles make it easier to connect and communicate with others in the market. Feds are much more likely to connect with contractors whose profiles resonate with them. The individual profile needs to explain what that person has done to help the Feds achieve specific results.

If each team member then starts building a network focused on the agency or agencies they serve, the groundwork is laid for the exponential reach and influencing a targeted audience.

Then the marketing team kicks into high gear by producing content that is relevant to specific issues and opportunities. Often that will entail interviewing company SMEs and helping them generate articles, white papers and case studies, or getting them on podcasts and webinars.

The content needs to be located either on the company LinkedIn page or the company web site and then shared on the company profile page.

From there, the team members should be encouraged to repost the content. Often curating the content highlighting key elements will increase the views.

My biggest stumbling block when coaching sales teams is convincing salespeople to take the time to share the content. My argument is that the more active you are on LinkedIn, the more you share something of value to your network, the more views you get. Those views, if worked carefully, can turn into conversations.

To recap, step one is to have good individual profiles. Step two is to start expanding your network. Step three is develop content that is germane to your target audience. Step four is to get the team to share the content. Step five is to rinse and repeat.

Building an audience for your content is do-able, but it takes time, planning and execution. Don’t expect it to occur quickly, but can and does happen for those following this simple formula.

Not that I have an opinion.

Mark Amtower coaches government contractors on Leveraging LinkedIn. He has been writing for Washington Technology since 2009.