Late last June, I got bad news.
One of the clients I work with decided not to renew my contract. It wasn’t a complete surprise — it’s the nature of freelancing — but I still found myself in need of new work.
There was only one thing to do. Kick my search into high gear.
Lining up my next opportunity was as simple as sharing this post on LinkedIn.
Because of that post, I received several referrals, two of which resulted in job offers.
That post would not have been as effective, if I hadn’t spent a bit of time and effort building a healthy network on LinkedIn beforehand.
Fortunately, I’d already laid the groundwork… with a little help from an industry legend.
My Content Strategy
Brian Clark, who founded Copyblogger and helped pioneer content marketing, heavily influenced my general content strategy.
His basic approach, which I learned in the Content Marketing Strategist course he offers through AWAI, is to create a content strategy that’s audience focused.
You build your strategy by getting crystal clear on these five points:
- Why you’re creating content
- Who you’re creating content for
- What information your target audience needs
- When and where they’ll find the content you create
- How to communicate to the audience
I relate to this approach, because it closely mirrors one of the core ideas in my area of expertise — product management. When you’re in product management, you learn to identify specific people you want to help and figure out what problem they want solved.
The Content Marketing Strategist program teaches you how to create a content strategy for your clients, but it’s just as easy to apply the approach to create a strategy of your own.
Which is what I did. Let’s take a closer look.
Why am I creating content?
I like to say I create content in order to learn and earn.
Product management is a broad profession, and there are many aspects I’m not involved with, at least not day-to-day. And, while experience is the best teacher, I use writing as a way to learn about product management practices and frameworks that are less familiar to me.
I’m able to earn directly from my content. I’ve written books and other saleable content geared toward product managers. I also earn some side income from the freelance writing I do for organizations in the product management space.
Finally, my writing indirectly helps me earn, because it’s key to building my network of people in the project management industry on LinkedIn… and that network is what I use to find freelance product management opportunities.
Who am I creating content for?
The natural audience for my content is product managers, product owners, and business analysts who work on products their companies use internally.
This is a rapidly growing niche of product management that’s currently underserved by the large quantity of product management content out there. There is a lot of product management content available, but most of it centers on building software products that you sell directly to your customers. The people I’m writing to have different needs.
A main reason I picked this niche is because of my extensive experience, and because I observed a lack of useful content on the topics of interest to internal product managers.
What information does my target audience need?
For people who work on software products their companies use but don’t sell, a lot of common product management techniques apply, but they require some adjustment.
People in my audience are looking for information about common product management approaches applied in contexts similar to theirs. This could include how-to content and case studies tailored to their particular situation.
What order will I deliver my content in?
Product management is a broad subject, even when applied to the specialized niche I cover. And some of the topics I cover make more sense if my reader has encountered other topics first. It’s also helpful to cover bigger, more important topics first and more nuanced topics later, if you’re thinking about how a reader might consume your content.
To bring some order to the topics I cover, I drew some inspiration from an article by Neal Cabage that described the skills he looks for in his team of product managers.
Then I did a bit of market research. I had a couple of speaking opportunities, where I polled the audience about which topics they were interested in learning about. I used the poll results to set the sequence of newsletter topics I’m currently working through.
How will I communicate with the audience?
I chose this niche primarily because it’s one where I have a lot of experience. I also interact regularly with other product people who are in the same situation.
As a result, I’m very familiar with the product management domain and find it natural to use terminology my audience is familiar with.
Of course, I realize even with extensive subject matter expertise, I need to pay attention to how people in my audience talk about new product management concepts. I make it a point to adjust the language I use based on how people talk about product management in LinkedIn posts and comments.
Applying that Content Strategy to LinkedIn
Once I had a general content strategy in place, my next step was to start implementing it on LinkedIn. There are some specific steps I took to adapt my strategy to a LinkedIn audience.
Most of these steps are based on helpful tips I picked up from Melissa Suzuno’s LinkedIn for Freelancers: Build Your Brand and Business.
That ebook contains great hints for strengthening your LinkedIn profile and for building useful LinkedIn habits.
Blogging on the LinkedIn platform
Melissa suggests you regularly publish blog posts on LinkedIn to get the most out of the platform.
My primary form of blogging on LinkedIn is to post copies of my newsletter using the LinkedIn newsletter feature. I schedule these editions to go out a couple days after I send out the email newsletter to my subscribers.
I use these newsletter editions to draw attention, to attract followers and connections on LinkedIn, and potentially gain subscribers to my email newsletter, as well. To drive potential subscriptions, I include this snippet in each newsletter edition on LinkedIn:
Do You Like What You’re Reading?
Subscribe to InsideProduct to get the newsletter before everyone else, when it comes out every other week.
I use the content strategy I described above to determine the topic for each newsletter edition and the corresponding copy on LinkedIn.
Stay top-of-mind with status updates
Besides posting blog posts every other week, I also try to post a status update daily.
Often the status updates are posts referring to articles, either one of mine or someone else’s that resonates with me.
There are a few people in the product management community that I find highly informative, and I share their articles regularly. Those posts help me get seen by their networks, and, since their networks are bigger then mine, the posts drive traffic and help me generate followers and connections.
When I share their posts, I make it a point to explain why I posted their article. I’ll also point out where I agree with what they wrote and where I have a different perspective. In fact, the cases where I have a different perspective often drive some great interaction. Of course, when I disagree, I explain why and keep it respectful.
Keep the “social” in social media
Along with posting about my or other’s articles, I’ll also repost their LinkedIn status updates, if it speaks to me. Or, I’ll comment on others’ status updates.
When I agree with them, I’ll use the comment to provide some further insight. When I disagree, I explain why, obviously in a respectful way.
Networking is an Ongoing Activity
Having just finished a job search, I can attest to how much more effective it is when you have a network you can use to find opportunities.
I had a much better response rate when responding to opportunities where I had a connection than to the ones where I blindly applied to a job ad.
And putting out a post seeking new opportunities brought a lot of interest my way. My LinkedIn network definitely helped my search.
And now that I’ve identified my next gig, the experience of the past couple of months tells me one of the most important things I can do is double down on the activities I described above and keep building my network. I’m proof positive having a well-planned content strategy and implementing it on LinkedIn can turn you into an opportunity magnet and set you up for bigger success as a freelance writer.
