AI Research

Do you ever wonder if prospective students are reading your content?

If the answer is yes, that’s a legitimate concern — and you’re not the only one.

Marketers across various industries are continually looking for ways to increase engagement for their content. For schools, that means creating websites, landing pages, multiple brochure types, and other types of content that are compelling enough to nudge prospective students to apply or persuade alumni to give back.

Aside from engaging and encouraging your target audience to take a desired action, great content will help strengthen your school’s brand.

To get you started on creating quality higher education content, we’ve put together 12 traits to guide you toward creating stunning content that will engage prospective students, alumni, and staff alike.

1. Create Visual Higher Ed Content

Images, videos, GIFs, you name it — any of these visual elements can help boost your content’s recall rate since visuals are 60,000 times easier to process than words. Not to mention that visuals transform your content into an aesthetically pleasing viewing experience. Visual content is an excellent way for your communications materials to show off your school’s culture, campus, and world-class facilities.

2. Create Interactive Content

It’s hard enough to hold people’s attention these days, and there’s no better way to lose your audience than a dull, static piece of content that doesn’t allow for any interaction. Including animations, transitions, and elements will elevate your readers’ journey. Whether it’s first-time visitors or student applicants that are visiting your website, you show you are committed to all of your audiences when you create an engaging content experience for readers of all stages. Interactive content enables your audience, drives the reading experience, and boosts engagement throughout the session.

3. Create Story-Driven Content

Emotions are powerful, and stories drive emotions. There’s no denying that people make emotionally-driven decisions if they can relate to your narrative. This is the moment for you to share your school’s story and showcase your values. To make your narrative even more compelling, try including stories as told by your school’s faculty, students, and alumni. Social proof can help strengthen your brand identity and trustworthiness in the eyes of new audiences.

4. Spark Conversational

Conversations aren’t just something you have in real life — they also extend to paper (or the screen). Writing in a conversational style helps you communicate better and connect with your prospects more genuinely. Nothing turns people off more than a written sales pitch. When writing your content, imagine yourself talking to your prospects and write the way you would speak to them. Instead of forcing your prospects into performing your desired goal, offer them benefits and solutions, and find out how you can help them achieve success.

As with any conversation, your content should lead them down a specific path to the desired action: your CTA. Do you want your audience to sign up for a trial? Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter? Whether or not they take the desired action will be determined when your prospective students feel comfortable engaging with your content and spend time reading it thoroughly.

5. Have an Integrated Content Marketing Approach

Don’t treat each of your content pieces like individual islands. They should complement each other to form a narrative for your prospects. This helps readers connect the dots and remember why they came to you in the first place. For example, instead of sending your alumni an event invitation and a separate blog post about giving back to your school, tie the two pieces together in the same sequential campaign. Add social sharing buttons or social media feeds onto your content to enable your audience to share them with their connections and simultaneously interact with you in real-time.

6. Create Original Content

This is where you draw on your school’s past to tell a story. For example, do you have a tradition that’s unique to your school (e.g., Harvard’s Primal Scream)? Don’t be afraid to add fun facts and use new ways of delivering your content and attract readers’ attention. For example, Middlebury College’s website doesn’t share the typical website layout that shows a navigation bar and school logo at the top like other schools. Instead, their website renders each content piece as color bars in a very minimalistic design, which stands out from the rest.

7. Create Shareable Content

In our age, social media is the easiest way for news or content to travel. Leverage the power of social media by making your content shareable on all essential platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Making something “shareable” isn’t just adding social media buttons. You should tailor the content and use the appropriate format for each platform. For example, if you have a blog post that you’d also like to promote on Instagram, consider creating a square image or infographic related to the post, and then link to the post in your Instagram profile.

8. Create Snackable Short-Form Content

Imagine yourself having a snack on the go while you’re working on other essential tasks. Would you prefer a whole meal with utensils or something bite-sized and portable? The latter sounds like a more convenient option, and this is exactly how most people prefer to read their content. Breaking up your content into smaller bits can help your audience process content more easily and retain the message you are trying to communicate in a much more effective way. Creating snackable content involves thoughtful planning on both design and text. Write in short sentences or bullet points. With regards to the layout of your content, use whitespace to separate images, and create visual blocks for your readers.

9. Your Content Should Be Accessible

Given that higher education institutions include people from very diverse backgrounds, being inclusive should be second nature. Universities are also required by the government to be ADA-compliant to accommodate individuals with disabilities. There are plenty of online resources that will guide you towards creating content that’s compliant with accessibility standards and inclusive of disabled audiences.

10. Make Sure Your Content Is Easy To Find

Your content shouldn’t leave your visitors in a confusing maze. A piece of content that’s easy to navigate reduces barriers and helps your audience reach the desired goal faster. For starters, an easily navigable website creates a better experience for users and makes your content more visible to your prospects. A well-designed navigation bar can tremendously reduce the amount of time it takes for your prospect to get from the homepage to your contact page. Having your content readily visible rather than buried under layers of different pages means your visitors are more likely to revisit your site.

11. Create Personalized Content

Help your prospects feel welcome by personalizing your content. This can be as simple as addressing them by name in the email subject line or writing in the first person to address your readers directly. If your content is targeted (email, sending a content offer, etc.), use personalization tokens to automate the process. This can also help you save time when working with big audience groups.

12. Make Sure Your Content Is Skimmable

Our reading habits have changed. As the world becomes more saturated with web-based content, people are getting increasingly good at skimming. Your Generation Z and Millennial prospects are probably skimming through your website pages, emails, and content on their smartphones as they’re performing other duties. Delivering your content in bite-sized chunks with a focus on delivering maximum value allows prospects to capture the core benefits you want to emphasize.

For example, instead of creating a multi-page eBook, a one-pager with a bulleted list of information on your programs and offerings may be much more skim-friendly. This can help get prospects to understand the value of your offerings in a short time without asking them to commit to spending time on your content while they are still learning about your institution.

Colleges and universities must now market themselves not only to prospective students but also to parents, donors, and other stakeholders. Crafting engaging, relevant, and timely content is essential—but it’s also time-consuming.

Enter artificial intelligence (AI). AI is revolutionizing content marketing by streamlining processes, enhancing personalization, and delivering insights that improve results. In this article, we’ll explore how AI can elevate higher education content marketing efforts and help institutions stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

1. Effortless Content Creation

Content is king, but creating it often feels like a marathon. AI can take much of the heavy lifting out of content creation, freeing up your team to focus on strategy and creativity.

• Generate ideas: AI tools like ChatGPT can brainstorm blog topics, social media posts, or email campaigns tailored to specific audiences.
• Produce drafts: AI can assist in writing blog posts, press releases, or even scripts for videos, ensuring tone and language match your brand.
• Editing and proofreading: AI tools like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor refine your content, making it polished and professional.

For example, an AI-driven tool could draft a blog post about campus sustainability initiatives or provide inspiration for TikTok videos highlighting student life.

2. Personalized Audience Engagement

Today’s prospective students and stakeholders expect content that feels tailor-made for them. AI makes it easier to deliver personalized experiences at scale.

• Behavioral insights: AI tracks user interactions on your website, emails, and social media to identify what content resonates with different audience segments.
• Dynamic content: Tools like HubSpot allow you to customize website banners, email subject lines, or calls-to-action based on visitor data.
• Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots can answer prospective student questions 24/7, providing personalized responses about programs, admissions, or campus life.

By personalizing content, universities can create meaningful connections with potential students and stakeholders.

3. Smarter Distribution Strategies

Creating great content is only half the battle—you also need to ensure it reaches the right audience. AI can optimize content distribution strategies, ensuring maximum visibility and engagement.

• Social media optimization: AI tools like Buffer or Hootsuite analyze when and where your audience is most active, ensuring posts go live at the right times.
• Email campaigns: AI can craft personalized email sequences based on audience behavior, improving open and click-through rates.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): AI-driven platforms like SurferSEO or Clearscope help identify the best keywords and optimize content for search engines, increasing organic traffic.

For instance, an AI tool could recommend promoting a scholarship blog post on Instagram at 7 PM, when prospective students are most likely to be scrolling.

4. Data-Driven Decision Making

Higher education marketers have access to a wealth of data, but sorting through it can be overwhelming. AI excels at turning raw data into actionable insights.

• Content performance analysis: AI tools track metrics like engagement rates, time spent on pages, and social media shares to reveal what’s working.
• Predictive analytics: AI can forecast trends in enrollment interest or donor behavior, allowing you to stay ahead of the curve.
• Competitive analysis: AI-powered platforms provide insights into what peer institutions are doing, helping you refine your strategy.

With AI, higher education marketers can make informed decisions backed by real-time data, boosting campaign effectiveness.

5. Improved ROI on Marketing Efforts

Marketing budgets in higher education are often tight. AI ensures that every dollar spent goes further by streamlining workflows and improving targeting.

• Automated tasks: AI handles repetitive tasks like scheduling social posts, tracking campaign performance, and responding to FAQs, saving time and money.
• Audience segmentation: AI pinpoints high-value prospects, ensuring your resources focus on audiences most likely to convert.
• Cost-effective ad optimization: AI-powered platforms like Google Ads use machine learning to optimize your campaigns, reducing cost-per-click and maximizing reach.

By improving efficiency and targeting, AI helps institutions get more from their marketing budgets.

6. Keeping Up With Changing Trends

The digital landscape evolves rapidly, and staying relevant is a constant challenge. AI ensures your content strategy remains agile and aligned with current trends.

• Social listening: AI monitors conversations on social media, forums, and review sites to identify emerging topics and concerns.
• Content refresh: AI tools can analyze your existing content library and suggest updates to improve SEO or relevance.
• Trend forecasting: AI tools like Google Trends or Exploding Topics highlight what prospective students and parents are searching for.

For example, if AI identifies an uptick in searches for “online master’s programs,” your team can create targeted content to capture that demand.

Why AI is Essential for Higher Education Marketing

AI is not just a trend—it’s a transformative tool that can help higher education institutions craft engaging, data-driven content marketing strategies. From automating repetitive tasks to delivering hyper-personalized experiences, AI enables colleges and universities to connect with their audiences in meaningful ways.

By leveraging AI, your institution can stay ahead of the competition, maximize ROI, and focus on what matters most: sharing the stories, programs, and opportunities that make your school exceptional.

Now’s the time to embrace AI in your higher education marketing strategy and take your content to the next level. After all, the future waits for no one—especially in the fast-paced world of digital marketing.

Conclusion

Whether you’re creating new student materials, reaching out to alumni, or connecting with faculty and staff, you have the same end goal: to engage your audience. Keeping these twelve traits in mind will help you create content that captures your prospect’s or alumni’s attention and move one step closer to their goal.

FAQ

What is higher education content marketing?
Higher education content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and informative content to attract, engage, and retain prospective students, alumni, and faculty, ultimately promoting educational institutions.

Why is content marketing important for higher education institutions?
It’s important for building the institution’s brand, enhancing online presence, communicating unique value propositions, and engaging with the academic community effectively.

What types of content are effective in higher education marketing?
Effective content types include informational blog posts, success stories of alumni, faculty research highlights, virtual campus tours, and educational webinars.

How can higher education institutions use storytelling in their content marketing?
Storytelling can be used to share student and alumni experiences, research breakthroughs, and campus life, creating a more personal and emotional connection with prospective students.

What role does SEO play in higher education content marketing?
SEO is crucial for increasing the visibility of educational content in search engine results, helping prospective students and researchers find relevant information easily.

How can social media be utilized in higher education content marketing?
Social media platforms can disseminate content to a broader audience, engage with students and alumni, and foster a sense of community around the institution.

What are the challenges of content marketing in the higher education sector?
Challenges include addressing diverse audience needs, creating content that stands out, staying up-to-date with educational trends, and measuring the impact of content marketing efforts.

How important is video content in higher education marketing?
Video content is highly impactful for showcasing campus facilities, student life, and academic programs, offering a dynamic and engaging way to attract prospective students.

Can higher education content marketing aid in student recruitment?
Yes, by providing valuable information and a compelling portrayal of campus life and academic programs, content marketing can be a powerful tool in recruiting new students.

How can higher education institutions measure the success of their content marketing?
Success can be measured through website traffic, engagement rates, the number of inquiries or applications received, social media metrics, and overall brand awareness and perception.

Author bio

Ritesh is a digital marketing manager with years of experience in driving growth. He’s currently the director of inbound marketing at Foleon. You can find more about him on his LinkedIn profile.

Long before we called content marketing “content marketing,” companies were leveraging white papers to generate and nurture leads.

While many new types of content offers have emerged over the past few years, white papers have lost none of their value. Audiences want access to expert advice, and they’re often willing to hand over contact information to get it.

Today, your ability to reap value from white paper driven leads is greater than ever, especially if you view these publications as starting points in your relationships with new prospects and customers.

Is your white paper strategy set up to create and nurture these quality relationships? The following three questions will help you answer that question — and eventually secure a higher, more consistent ROI.

Check out the White Paper Marketing Tips You Need to Know.

The tips in this article are based on new HTML-5 interactive white papers. If you’re not familiar with them, we recommend checking out how you can create interactive white papers. 

1. Are you welcoming readers or putting barriers in their way?

The most popular way to capture leads with your white papers is by gating them, asking readers to enter some contact information before they get access. This can be an effective strategy, but there are also pitfalls to watch out for.

A form, especially one that is unnecessarily long, can deter potential leads from engaging with your content. This is what marketers call friction. In a best-case scenario, the sales process slows down. In the worst case, you’ll lose potential leads entirely.

Gauging your audience’s appetite for forms through testing is essential. If you see lots of traffic on your landing pages but very few conversions, the form could very well be the culprit. In that case, you want to have another option for visitors.

Use social login for your white paper

A significant advantage of using interactive white papers (instead of PDFs) is that you can use social integrations with sites like LinkedIn. Visitors can access your white paper with just one click, and you gain even more information than you would have captured with a form. Another benefit here is that you can be sure the information isn’t fake.

Mid-gate your white paper

Another option that’s increasing in popularity is mid-gating. Make the first few pages of your white paper open access so your readers get a taste of what you’re offering, and then gate the rest. This also has the effect of increasing the quality of your leads because readers will only sign up if what they’ve already read resonates with them.

Add a skip option to your white paper mid-gate

You can also use a form to gate your white paper but include a “skip it” option. You’ll still collect details from visitors with a high degree of interest, but you’ll avoid turning away those unwilling to part with their information.

Think about retargeting white paper traffic

If you choose not to gate your content, interactive white papers still allow you to embed retargeting pixels so you can engage with readers later using relevant offers on other channels.

The bottom line is that you should test prospects’ willingness to share their contact information and change your tactics accordingly. You want to gather data but still make it easy for them to engage with you through your white paper.

2. Personalize your white paper for your readers

You’ll find that when you personalize white papers, your leads will spend more time engaging with your content (22%, on average) and are more likely to share it on social media.

When prospects fill out a form or log in with their LinkedIn profiles, they provide you with all the details you need to personalize their reading experience. Don’t pass up that opportunity.

In addition to addressing visitors by name, you can make strategic editorial choices based on information such as their geographic region or their industry. One way to utilize this information is by filtering your publications so people with a particular profile only see particular pages of your white paper.

Personalization is a powerful way to increase engagement. Many major brands use it to create tailored experiences on their websites — and with interactive white papers, you can use it as well.

3. What are you doing after prospects read your white paper?

From the moment a prospect requests your white paper, they begin a relationship with your brand. At least, that’s how it should work. Too many companies treat a white paper download as an ending, not a beginning.

How you follow up with a lead determines whether or not a relationship develops. If you do it right, you’ll guide him or her further into the funnel and, eventually, take some profitable action.

With traditional PDF white papers, the most you can do is move them to a drip campaign. But with digital white papers, you can decide how to follow up based on how they’ve interacted with your content.

You might use a pixel, for example, to retarget certain readers that spent time on a particular page with a relevant offer on Facebook. If they used their LinkedIn account to access your white paper, you might choose to connect with them there.

By analyzing data from your interactive white paper using our Google Analytics integration, you’ll get an idea of how your readers interacted with your content and, therefore, how aggressively you should follow up. You can see which users were highly engaged and might warrant immediate direct contact with your sales team.

Look at the pages on which users spent the most time and which specific links they clicked. Did a user watch an embedded video all the way to the end? All of this information can inform your nurture strategy.

White papers are a cornerstone of B2B marketing, providing in-depth insights and solutions that build authority and trust. Yet, creating, distributing, and promoting white papers effectively can feel like a Herculean task. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) steps in, offering tools and strategies to make your white paper marketing efforts smarter, faster, and more effective.

In this article, we’ll explore how AI can revolutionize the way businesses approach white paper marketing, from content creation to data-driven promotion.

1. Streamlining White Paper Creation

Let’s face it: writing a white paper can be daunting. Research, outlining, and drafting take time—and that’s before factoring in revisions. AI-powered tools can simplify and speed up the process, allowing you to focus on strategy and creativity.

• Content generation tools like ChatGPT can assist with drafting sections of a white paper, ensuring your ideas flow clearly and persuasively.
• AI-powered research tools sift through vast amounts of data to surface relevant statistics, case studies, and reports in seconds.
• Editing and proofreading assistants such as Grammarly or ProWritingAid identify errors and suggest improvements, polishing your document to perfection.

With AI, teams can spend less time wrestling with writer’s block and more time crafting compelling arguments and solutions.

2. Targeting the Right Audience

A well-crafted white paper is only effective if it reaches the right audience. AI excels at audience segmentation and analysis, ensuring your content lands in front of decision-makers who need it most.

• Use AI-driven analytics platforms to identify key audience segments, including job roles, industries, and regions.
• Leverage natural language processing (NLP) to analyze what your audience is discussing online. This can guide the themes and tone of your white paper to match their needs.
• Implement predictive analytics to identify prospects most likely to engage with your content, improving lead generation efforts.

By using AI to refine your targeting, you’ll maximize the ROI of your white paper campaigns.

3. Optimizing Distribution Channels

Gone are the days of posting a white paper on your website and hoping for the best. AI can supercharge your distribution strategy, ensuring your white paper gets the attention it deserves.

• Email marketing automation: AI tools like HubSpot and Mailchimp can craft personalized email campaigns based on audience behavior, increasing open and click-through rates.
• Social media scheduling: Platforms like Buffer or Hootsuite use AI to determine the best times to post and which headlines are most engaging.
• Content syndication: AI helps identify third-party sites or industry forums where your white paper could gain traction, boosting visibility.

4. Enhancing Lead Nurturing

White papers are often designed to capture leads, but what happens next? AI can take the guesswork out of lead nurturing, keeping prospects engaged throughout the buyer’s journey.

• AI-powered chatbots can follow up with readers who download your white paper, answering questions or guiding them to additional resources.
• Use AI to score leads based on how they interact with your content, helping sales teams focus on the most promising opportunities.
• Automate personalized follow-up emails with AI tools to keep leads warm and guide them toward conversion.

5. Measuring and Improving Performance

White paper marketing doesn’t end after publication. AI provides deep insights into how your white papers perform, enabling you to refine your strategy for future success.

• Engagement tracking tools reveal how much time users spend reading your white paper, which sections they linger on, and where they drop off.
• AI-powered A/B testing allows you to experiment with different headlines, visuals, and calls-to-action to see what resonates best.
• Use sentiment analysis to gauge audience reactions on social media or in feedback forms, providing valuable insights for future content.

Why AI is a Game-Changer for White Paper Marketing

AI isn’t just a tool; it’s a game-changer for white paper marketing. From drafting to distribution and beyond, AI enables marketers to work smarter, not harder. By leveraging AI’s capabilities, you can create high-quality white papers that reach the right audience, drive engagement, and deliver measurable results.

As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, businesses that embrace AI will find themselves ahead of the curve—delivering content that informs, persuades, and converts. So why wait? Start integrating AI into your white paper marketing strategy today, and watch your results soar.

Conclusion

White papers hold more potential value for marketers than ever. They can introduce you to the prospects you’re most interested in meeting. If you deliver an experience that is both useful and memorable, those introductions will lead to quality customer relationships.

Examining your white paper strategy with the questions we introduce here is the first step to boosting ROI, generating more leads, and building better customer relationships.

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FAQ

What is white paper marketing?
White paper marketing is a strategy where businesses produce and distribute white papers — authoritative reports or guides — to inform their target audience about complex issues or solutions and promote their expertise.

How effective is white paper marketing in lead generation?
White papers are highly effective in lead generation as they offer valuable insights, attracting potential customers who seek in-depth information on specific topics.

What are the key elements of a successful white paper in marketing?
Key elements include a compelling topic, well-researched and authoritative content, a clear structure, professional design, and a call-to-action.

How can businesses distribute their white papers for maximum impact?
Businesses can distribute white papers through their website, email newsletters, social media, industry forums, and by partnering with other organizations for wider reach.

What role does SEO play in white paper marketing?
SEO can enhance the online visibility of white papers, making them easier to find by target audiences through search engines.

Can white paper marketing be used to establish thought leadership?
Absolutely, white papers are an excellent tool for establishing thought leadership by showcasing a company’s expertise, insights, and innovative approaches in their field.

How does white paper marketing differ from other content marketing strategies?
White paper marketing focuses on providing in-depth, research-based content on specific topics, targeting a more informed and professional audience compared to other content types.

What industries benefit most from white paper marketing?
Industries such as technology, finance, healthcare, and consulting, where complex solutions and detailed information are integral, benefit greatly from white paper marketing.

How can businesses measure the success of their white paper marketing?
Success can be measured by tracking downloads, leads generated, engagement on social media, and the paper’s influence on sales or business inquiries.

What are the challenges in creating effective white papers for marketing?
Challenges include ensuring high-quality research and writing, selecting relevant topics, maintaining reader engagement, and effectively promoting the white paper to the right audience.

How long should a white paper be for effective marketing?
The length can vary, but typically, a white paper should be detailed enough to cover a topic comprehensively, usually ranging from 6 to 50 pages, depending on the subject complexity.

Can white papers be used for both B2B and B2C marketing?
While more common in B2B marketing due to their detailed and technical nature, white papers can also be effective in B2C contexts, especially for complex or high-value consumer products.

What is the ideal structure of a marketing white paper?
An ideal structure includes an introduction outlining the issue, a body discussing solutions and data, and a conclusion with a clear call-to-action, all presented in a logical, easy-to-follow format.

How can visual elements enhance a white paper in marketing?
Visual elements like charts, graphs, and infographics can make the content more engaging and help in explaining complex information more effectively.

What strategies can be used to promote a white paper on social media?
On social media, highlight key findings, use compelling graphics, create teaser content, and consider paid advertising to target specific professional groups or interests.

Can white papers be repurposed into other content forms for marketing?
Yes, white papers can be repurposed into blog posts, infographics, webinars, or a series of social media posts to maximize the content’s reach and lifespan.

What makes a white paper credible and authoritative for marketing purposes?
Credibility comes from thorough research, expert insights, accurate data, a professional tone, and clear, unbiased presentation of information.

How can businesses ensure their white paper resonates with their target audience?
Understand the audience’s challenges and interests, use language that speaks to them, and address their pain points or questions comprehensively in the white paper.

What is the importance of a call-to-action in a white paper?
A call-to-action is vital to guide readers on what to do next, whether it’s contacting the company for more information, signing up for a service, or accessing additional resources.

How does the distribution channel impact the success of white paper marketing?
The choice of distribution channels (such as the company website, email campaigns, industry forums, or social media platforms) can significantly impact the reach and effectiveness of the white paper, making it crucial to select channels where the target audience is most active.

Author bio

Ritesh is a digital marketing manager with years of experience in driving growth. He’s currently the director of inbound marketing at Foleon. You can find more about him on his LinkedIn profile.

Do you want to get serious about promoting your business on LinkedIn?

See how, by following these tips, you can get a lot more out of your LinkedIn company page and grow your followers month over month.

LinkedIn is becoming a Content Powerhouse with many opportunities to build a strong following, organic, and via paid advertising.

In this article, we’ll mainly go into how to get more LinkedIn followers for your company page organically.

If you want to get a more holistic view, check out our LinkedIn Marketing Strategy Guide.

Let’s get started!

1. Why would anyone follow your LinkedIn company page?

Some organizations get a large following by simply sharing updates about their product or service. A lot of people follow Apple’s product updates. Chances are, you’re not yet in that league. You would need to ask yourself the question:

‘how interesting are my company/product updates?’

If the answer is: ‘quite interesting’. You can get some very loyal followers that want to know everything about what’s going on with your organization, what’s new, where they can find you, what’s up with your employees, etc.

Sharing only company updates will lower your potential though.

Why?<

Because chances are that you won’t get a lot of ‘top of the funnel’ new followers. Followers who would follow your company page because you are the go-to place for new inspiration, helping them to solve their problems, etc.

Examples of great B2B LinkedIn company pages 

HubSpot sells sophisticated CRM software to organizations. They have a ton of product updates, but that’s not the only thing you see on their LinkedIn company page. They share a lot of interactive content, tailored to attract new followers in their target group. It’s not a coincidence that they have more than 800,000 followers on LinkedIn.

Here are some examples of posts from great B2B Linkedin company pages: MailChimp, Hootsuite, Slack

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share company updates. It means that, if you want to attract new followers that are not that well acquainted with your organization, it helps to provide content that is valuable even if they don’t use your product (yet).

Also, if there are influential people in your industry, and non-competing companies, that you respect and wish to be associated with, be sure to mention them in your updates. You’ll have a better chance to get in front of their network since they’ll be able to reshare your post to their followers.

2. Be consistent with sharing content and your branding

You probably have noticed in the examples above that the content HubSpot, MailChimp, Hootsuite, and Slack share is recognizable. If you want to build a loyal following on LinkedIn, it’s important to be consistent in your: messaging, posting frequency, and branding.

Let’s put it like this:

If you manage to get 1,000,000 content views with 100 pieces of content that are on-brand, people recognize it and start seeing a story a brand is trying to tell. If you get the same 1,000,000 content views with 100 pieces of content that are NOT on-brand. Your message get’s diluted and people would not even know that many pieces of content were from your brand because they did not recognize it. This leaves major gaps in the story you’re trying to tell.

It’s not just about how many people you have reached over time. It’s also about being consistent, telling a consistent story, and using on-brand messaging and visuals helps. Especially on Social Media where people scroll past content very quickly if it’s not engaging.

Create great Social Media captions

I understand it can be difficult to stay consistent with creating content and posting on LinkedIn. Therefore, I’m happy to be able to introduce this great AI-Powered Social Media Caption generator that can help you come up with new ideas and even entire LinkedIn captions. We do advise adding a human touch to your posts and never relying on it 100%. Nonetheless, using the AI Social Media Post Generator helps a ton. No more starting with a blank page and you can get ideas from different angles. Check out the example below.

You can re-run the generator as often as needed and create a list of LinkedIn posts for the entire week or month. You can get started with a free trial to see if you like it.

AI Tool for the Pros

Want to take it one step further? Check out the Blog to Social Post Generator. Simply enter a piece of text from any of your blog posts and let AI help you create up to 25 LinkedIn posts. This helps you promote your blog post more easily and cover your topic from various angles. Check out the video to learn more. Also, check out our AI LinkedIn Post Generator and learn how to create effective LinkedIn Images, video scripts, and more.

3. Understanding the LinkedIn Algorithm to get better Organic Reach

After you came up with what content you would like to share, what story you would like to tell, and created engaging branded content, it’s time to post in a way that will maximize your chances of getting a high organic reach. Understanding LinkedIn’s algorithm is very important.

Basics LinkedIn Algorithm:

Share content that people would like to engage with and help LinkedIn to reach its goal of becoming a Content Powerhouse.

A couple of key points to their algorithm:

1. Receiving thoughtful comments should be your main goal if you want to increase your organic reach. LinkedIn loves comments the most because these will add even more value to a content piece and helps LinkedIn to become a Content Powerhouse. That is why you often see people asking questions and saying ‘link in comments’ (more on that on point 3).
2. The second best way to increase your organic reach is by receiving likes and shares.
3. LinkedIn wants to become a Content Powerhouse. This means they would like to keep people engaging and contribute more content on LinkedIn. Content that does not include links to get people off the platform, tends to perform better.
4. Interactive posts perform best. So text with images, carousels, etc. Not link posts 😉
5. Receiving engagement in the first hour is key for how LinkedIn will score your content. More on LinkedIn’s filter and the scoring mechanism is below. Be sure to post content when your followers are most active. You can easily see in your data in which country your followers live. Make sure to tailor your posting time to them ;).

A broad overview of LinkedIn’s algorithm

Below, you can see how LinkedIn’s algorithm works in a broad sense. 80% holds true for just about any Social Media platform. The algorithm tries to define what is spam or low quality with its own tools, if the piece of content passes the test, it’ll be shown to a couple of real people. Based on the interactions, the piece of content will be shown to more people and the algorithm keeps evaluating how many people it should be shown to.

Therefore, gaining a lot of followers that will never engage is a big miss in your LinkedIn growth. People used to buy Facebook followers and soon found out that it was doing a lot of harm and stopped.

Let’s say you have a total of 5,000 followers of which 1.000 are following your company page because all employees invited all their connections and the invitees wanted to support you and accepted but will never engage. That means that you have 4,000 followers who did follow your company page because they want to receive your updates. This still doesn’t mean that those 4,000 followers will engage with each and every content piece you post.

In this situation. When you post an update, and it passes the low quality / spam filter and it’s being shown to a couple of followers, chances are pretty high that just a few people interact with your post, meaning it will not be shown to all your followers.

low engagement / reach does not always mean that you’re not posting quality content. Just keep that in mind. It can also be that the followers you have gained are just ‘supporters’ that never interact with your content.

Organic reach on LinkedIn is really great compared to many other social media platforms. Using the right hashtags helps you to get in front of the right audience.

LinkedIn posts with 0 hashtags, will mainly be seen by your followers and connections of people that interact with that post.

LinkedIn posts with the right hashtags will be seen by people who are not following you yet and you’re not connected with them.

LinkedIn is even encouraging you to use hashtags. They want to catch up on being a content platform like Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Work with LinkedIn and you will get rewarded.

When posting on your LinkedIn company page, you’ll see that the post-builder is helping to use relevant hashtags.

Using relevant hashtags is great to get better results, but if you want to get great results, you will need to also check the popularity of a hashtag.

If you have a small LinkedIn company page as we do. You shouldn’t (only) use the most popular hashtags because your post will never get seen in the big ocean.

But some hashtags seem nice but have 0 (or close to 0) followers. That’s also a waste of hashtag usage.

Homework

Make a list of hashtags that fit your LinkedIn company page and content you publish. The hashtags should be just right. Not too popular, but also don’t choose the hashtags that no one follows.

Check out your hashtags here:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=[enter hashtag]

5. Let colleagues know that you’ve published a post on your LinkedIn company page

All platforms are aware that some content is great and some… isn’t. Listings on Booking.com, Tweets on Twitter, photos on Shutterstock, etc.

They all have an algorithm to boost great content up the ranking. Usually, they look a data provided by the users. In the case of Social Media platforms, the percentage of people interacting with a post.

Example:

Post that has been seen by 500 people and has received 10 interactions.

Is of better quality than:

Post that has been seen by 500 people and has received 1 interaction.

Even if you have 10,000 followers on your LinkedIn company page. That doesn’t mean that all your followers will see your post. You will need to prove to LinkedIn’s algorithm that your post is worth showing to all your followers and their connections.

You will need to raise the interactions, FAST.

How?

One simple way is to message your colleagues to let them know that a post has been published and that liking, sharing, commenting, and even clicking on the link is appreciated.

You’d want to show the algorithm as soon as possible that the post that has been published is great and all your followers should see it.

You can message your colleagues within your group app or on LinkedIn.

6. Educate your employees on how to get the best out of LinkedIn

Not all your employees or colleagues are marketers. It’s not their job to know about the best practices on LinkedIn.

Often time, they do want to help the organization they work at to get more followers and to build their personal brand.

Share a short explainer on the best practices and benefit from the collective power of your organization.

Here’s an example:

Also, be sure your employees are properly mapped to your Page (by citing it accurately in their Work Experience), because every time your employee makes a new connection on LinkedIn, the new connection will be prompted to follow your Page.

7. Interact in LinkedIn groups

Did you know that there are some great thought leaders in various LinkedIn groups? There are small- and large LinkedIn groups and you can even start your own.

You can share articles, comment on what others have shared and interact with people in your target group. Be sure to be present and mention your company page when it’s relevant.

8. Invite connections to follow your LinkedIn company page

LinkedIn had introduced this option for a short period, then removed it and has now re-introduced it.

You can invite your first connections to follow your LinkedIn company page. All team members that are page admins can use this function. You can invite an individual only once.

This can be a powerful tool to get more followers for your LinkedIn company page, but be sure not to spam people.

9. Interact with your LinkedIn company page

You can interact on various topics with your personal account and tag your LinkedIn company page.

Or.

You can simply interact directly with your LinkedIn company page (like, share and comment).

On your company page, you have the option to add three hashtags and change the hashtags as often as you like.

By clicking on these hashtags, you’ll enter a feed about the hashtag you selected and can interact with your company pages.

10. Publish long-form content on LinkedIn with your personal account

As I mentioned before. LinkedIn wants to catch up with other content platforms and is doing its best to help people reach a large audience on LinkedIn without having to pay for it.

One of the best ways to reach a large audience on LinkedIn is to publish long-form content with your personal account. Of course, be sure to mention your company page, add the right hashtags, invite your colleagues to like and share, etc.

If done well, this tactic can really help you get more followers for your LinkedIn company page. The people you’ll reach will at least have a LinkedIn account but will likely also be highly active on the platform. Following your company, there will make more sense than, for instance, on Instagram.<

11. Make it easy to share website content on LinkedIn

Aside from tactics, you can follow to get more followers from within LinkedIn, there are also tactics to utilize your assets and channels.

One of the most straightforward ways is to make it easy for people to share your content on LinkedIn.

First, it’s important to have the LinkedIn share button on your web pages.

Second, it’s important to have the LinkedIn O.G. tags configured properly.

If you have a visitor that likes your content and wants to share it on LinkedIn, it would be a shame if he would not do so, simply because the post looks really messy.

12. Ask people to follow your LinkedIn company page

You would be surprised how many people will follow your LinkedIn company page if you would just ask.

We’ve already covered the option to invite your first contact to follow your LinkedIn page, but there are several other ways you could go about it, depending on how important it is to you to get LinkedIn followers.

Many organizations add a LinkedIn follow button to their website footer and email footer, but they don’t ask to take action.

You could simply add a line of text in your email that goes something like:

“Be sure to follow our LinkedIn company page where we share the latest updates on [fill in the blank]”

Or.

You could add a pop-up on your blog with the same message.

13. Run ads to get more followers to your LinkedIn company page

If you really want to take it a step further, you should run LinkedIn ads. Make sure you know how much a quality follower is worth to you before running the ads and testing various tactics.

This is a topic for the next post, but if you’d like to get started check out our guide on setting up your LinkedIn Insight Tag.

With over 900 million users competing for attention, growing your follower count can feel like trying to stand out in a crowd at a packed conference.

Enter AI. From crafting engaging content to optimizing your profile and building relationships, artificial intelligence offers tools and strategies that can significantly boost your LinkedIn presence. In this guide, we’ll explore how to use AI effectively to gain more LinkedIn followers and amplify your impact.

1. Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

Your profile is your first impression, and AI can help ensure it’s irresistible to potential followers.

• AI-driven headline suggestions: Tools like Copy.ai and Jasper can craft attention-grabbing LinkedIn headlines that highlight your expertise and attract your target audience.
• Profile keyword optimization: AI tools like Resume Worded analyze your profile to ensure it’s optimized with keywords that make you more discoverable in LinkedIn searches.
• Professional headshots: AI-based platforms like Remini can enhance your profile photo, making you appear polished and approachable.

By creating a well-optimized profile that resonates with your niche, you lay the groundwork for growing your followers organically.

2. Creating Engaging Content

Content is the lifeblood of LinkedIn, and AI can help you produce posts that stop the scroll.

• Content idea generation: Struggling with what to post? AI tools like ChatGPT can suggest timely and relevant topics based on your industry.
• AI writing assistants: Platforms like Writesonic or Jasper can help you craft posts, blogs, or articles that are clear, engaging, and formatted for LinkedIn’s audience.
• Content repurposing: Turn long-form content, like blogs or white papers, into bite-sized LinkedIn posts using AI tools like Repurpose.io.

AI ensures your content is not only professional but also tailored to what your audience wants to see, driving more engagement and followers.

3. Personalizing Your Outreach

Building a larger LinkedIn following often involves direct connections and personalized outreach. AI can streamline this process without making it feel robotic.

• Smart message generation: Tools like HyperWrite craft connection requests or follow-up messages that sound natural and align with your personal tone.
• Audience segmentation: AI analytics platforms like Crystal Knows offer insights into a person’s communication style, enabling you to tailor your approach.
• AI-powered lead generation: Tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, enhanced with AI plugins, can identify and recommend the best people to connect with based on your goals.

When outreach feels genuine and customized, people are more likely to follow you.

4. Leveraging Data for Insights

AI’s ability to analyze large sets of data can give you an edge in understanding what works—and what doesn’t—on LinkedIn.

• Content performance tracking: AI-powered platforms like Shield Analytics can show which posts perform best, helping you refine your strategy.
• Trend analysis: Tools like Exploding Topics or BuzzSumo use AI to identify emerging trends in your industry, so you can create timely content that resonates.
• Competitor analysis: AI tools can analyze your competitors’ profiles and posts to uncover what’s driving their engagement and apply those insights to your strategy.

With data-driven insights, you can focus on creating content and connections that actually grow your followers.

5. Automating Time-Consuming Tasks

Consistency is key to building a LinkedIn following, but it can be hard to keep up. AI tools automate repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on higher-level strategy.

• Scheduling posts: Tools like Hootsuite or Buffer use AI to recommend the best times to post for maximum visibility.
• Auto-comments and engagement: Platforms like MeetAlfred or Podawaa help automate engagement with relevant posts, increasing your visibility without extra effort.
• Hashtag optimization: AI tools can suggest the best hashtags to expand the reach of your posts.

By automating these tasks, you can maintain an active LinkedIn presence without spending hours each day on the platform.

6. Enhancing Visual Content

Visuals play a big role in LinkedIn posts, and AI can help you create eye-catching graphics that boost engagement.

• Graphic design tools: AI platforms like Canva Pro offer templates and designs tailored for LinkedIn, making it easy to create professional-looking visuals.
• Video editing: Tools like Pictory.ai allow you to transform long videos into short, impactful clips for LinkedIn posts.
• Infographic creation: AI-powered tools like Venngage simplify the process of turning complex data into engaging visuals.

Visually appealing posts are more likely to grab attention and earn followers.

7. Boosting Engagement with AI-Powered Interactions

AI can help you engage authentically with your audience, encouraging more people to follow you.

• Smart comment suggestions: Tools like ChatGPT can craft thoughtful comments on posts from influencers or peers, helping you build visibility.
• Engagement tracking: AI monitors who is liking, sharing, or commenting on your content, so you can prioritize engaging with your most active supporters.
• Interactive polls and surveys: Use AI to generate questions for polls that spark conversation and drive engagement on your posts.

Engagement isn’t just about posting—it’s about showing up for your audience, and AI makes that easier than ever.

Why AI is a Game-Changer for LinkedIn Growth

Growing your LinkedIn followers takes time, effort, and a strategic approach. AI streamlines the process, offering tools to optimize your profile, create engaging content, personalize outreach, and analyze what works best.

By leveraging AI, you can build a stronger LinkedIn presence, attract the right audience, and establish yourself or your brand as an industry leader. Start integrating AI into your LinkedIn strategy today, and watch your follower count—and your opportunities—soar.

FAQ

How can I increase my LinkedIn followers?
Regularly post valuable content, engage with your network, and use relevant hashtags is the short answer.

Does sharing industry insights help in gaining followers on LinkedIn?
Yes, sharing expertise and insights positions you as a thought leader, attracting followers.

How effective are LinkedIn groups in increasing followers?
Participating in or creating LinkedIn groups can boost visibility and followers.

Can personalizing connection requests help gain more followers?
Personalized requests are more likely to be accepted, expanding your network.

Does posting frequency impact follower growth on LinkedIn?
Consistent posting keeps your profile active and engaging, aiding follower growth.

How important is a complete LinkedIn profile for gaining followers?
A complete profile with a professional photo and detailed information attracts more followers.

Can engaging with others’ content increase my LinkedIn followers?
Regularly commenting on and sharing others’ content can attract more followers.

Is it beneficial to tag relevant people and companies in posts?
Tagging increases visibility to broader networks, potentially increasing followers.

How do LinkedIn articles influence follower growth?
Publishing articles on LinkedIn can showcase your expertise, attracting followers.

Does cross-promoting LinkedIn on other social media help?
Sharing your LinkedIn profile on other platforms can drive traffic and increase followers.

Does networking at LinkedIn events help in gaining followers?
Networking at LinkedIn events can expand your connections, leading to more followers.

Is it useful to include a LinkedIn follow button on my website or blog?
Adding a follow button can direct your audience to your LinkedIn, increasing followers.

How can I use LinkedIn analytics to grow my follower base?
LinkedIn analytics provide insights into what content resonates, helping tailor your strategy.

Does collaborating with influencers or industry leaders boost followers?
Collaborating with popular LinkedIn users can expose you to a larger audience.

Can participating in LinkedIn Live sessions increase my followers?
Engaging in Live sessions can boost visibility and attract new followers.

How does optimizing my LinkedIn profile with keywords help?
Keyword optimization enhances searchability, making your profile more visible.

Is it beneficial to follow and engage with industry-related LinkedIn Pages?
Following and engaging with relevant Pages can increase your visibility.

How do recommendations and endorsements affect my follower count?
Recommendations enhance credibility, potentially attracting more followers.

Can promoting my LinkedIn profile at conferences and meetings be effective?
Promoting your LinkedIn in professional settings can lead to more connections.

Does setting my LinkedIn profile to public affect my follower growth?
A public profile is more accessible, potentially increasing your follower base.

How can hosting webinars or online workshops increase LinkedIn followers?
Hosting online events can showcase your expertise, attracting attendees to follow you.

Is using LinkedIn’s video feature effective for follower growth?
Videos often engage viewers more effectively, leading to an increase in followers.

Can asking engaging questions in posts attract more followers?
Posts with questions can spark conversations, drawing more people to your profile.

Does regular interaction with comments on my posts help gain followers?
Actively responding to comments builds community and can attract followers.

How does sharing my LinkedIn posts in newsletters contribute to follower growth?
Including LinkedIn content in newsletters can drive your subscribers to follow you on LinkedIn.

Is it helpful to set goals for LinkedIn activities to grow followers?
Setting specific goals for engagement can help focus efforts on effective follower growth strategies.

How can aligning my LinkedIn content with trending topics boost my following?
Posting about trending topics can increase your content’s visibility and reach.

Does offering free resources or advice in posts help in gaining followers?
Sharing valuable resources or advice can establish you as a helpful resource, attracting followers.

Can participating in relevant LinkedIn Polls increase my followers?
Engaging with polls exposes you to a broader audience, potentially increasing followers.

How effective is it to write testimonials or recommendations for connections?
Writing thoughtful testimonials can strengthen connections and encourage others to follow you.

Author bio:

Raul Tiru: Raul loves to build companies and help startups and scale-ups grow. Raul started his first website when he was 17 years old, has held several growth marketing positions in fast-growing companies, and has helped companies via his Freelance Marketing services. You can find Raul on his community GlobalOwls where he helps Nonprofits and Startups to do better marketing.

Top AI Marketing Generators

We live in a world where roughly ten percent of our waking time, we’re scrolling on social media.

What I’m seeing a lot of, still, is companies – startups, scale-ups, SMB’s most notably – who don’t know how to approach organic social media.

They either hardly ever post on social, or what and when they post is almost purely an expression of the feeling that “well, we have to post *something*”. And usually, that kind of shows.

Setting up a basic social media content strategy doesn’t have to be that hard.

Here’s some simple advice I give to people with this problem.

This generally breaks down into three layers:

Brand hygiene:
At the most basic level, posting regularly on the social media platforms where your customers are, is a hygiene factor. You want people to see you’re alive and well when they decide to look you up and have a look at your profile.

Thought leadership:
At a higher level, in our digital lifetime organic social media is a great way to load your brand, and if you’re in b2b, your thought leadership.

Increasing inbound leads & conversion:

Loading your brand and thought leadership finally, in the long term, can help you build up the brand awareness and trust that helps you get more direct traffic with buying intent, ‘hand raisers’, so to speak – and will increase your conversion rates across the customer journey.

Customer-facing employees who are personally active on say LinkedIn, within a b2b space will find that it can be an easy way to find and organically connect to prospects and to gain personal inbound leads.

Realize that it’s usually not a factor of increasing high-converting traffic straight from social media platforms to your website. Usually, metrics like reach, engagement, and direct traffic (this should rise if you’re doing organic social right), are KPIs you might want to use to measure the effectiveness of your organic social media efforts.

Common Social Media Marketing Goals

By doing a quick search on the internet, we found that we found that social media managers often set the following social media marketing goals for themselves and team.

• Increase brand awareness by x %;
• Increase community engagement by x %;
• Create x number of social posts per month;
• Create x number of video content per month;
• Get x number of leads from Social Media per month;
• Get x number of traffic to the website per month;
• Grow social media following by x %;
• Leave x number of comments on LinkedIn a month;
• Improve social media ads ROI by x %;

Get our free resources to get started with documenting your goals and KPIs.

How to set the right goals for your Social Media Marketing Strategy?

To set the right goals for your strategy, think about the following:

1. Look back, what can you learn from previous month / years?
2. What is realistic to achieve this year?
3. Will these new goals actually help my business or are they just vanity metrics?
4. Have you communicated your new goals with colleagues and management? Do you have buy-in?
5. Do you have a process in place to easily track your progress?

2. Think of your organic social messaging as a cyclic customer journey

As marketers, we have this wonderful false sense that the journey a customer takes to come to a decision to buy, follows some kind of more or less linear path that we can map out. We also know that the customer journey is just a model. As such, it can help.

1. Map out what your customer is thinking, wondering, experiencing, and what she wants or needs through the phases we call Awareness, Acquisition, and Activation (or See, Think, Do). You do this by talking to your customer.
2. Translate your brand message into (5) categories, pillars, or themes for your content that answers the questions your prospective buyers might have along these phases. Read more about this below.
3. Create a cyclic customer journey with your content on social media and the order in which you push it out, for instance, weekly. Understand that you don’t know when which person who comes across your message on their social feed, is in what phase.

3. Define 5 content themes so you have guidelines on what to post and how it should look and sound.

Based on the needs you identified your prospective customer has along the See, Think, Do phases, consider splitting up your messaging aling the following five lines:

Problem and brand awareness
Talk about the problem your product or service solves, in the way that your ideal customer experiences it. Talk about your view on why it’s so important and urgent that it’s solved, and your view on how it should be approached.

Vision, sub-topics, how-to
Talk about (and curate) trends in your market, and talk about your vision for problems your customers are facing in three or so areas related to your overarching niche. For instance; if I’m offering content marketing services, one sub-topic I might want to talk about is content strategy; what problems people have with it, and how to solve it. See what I did, there?

Personality and trust
Show yourself; the personality and values of your brand and specifically the people involved in it. Show the people on your team and celebrate then for their expertise and personality. Do the same with your business partners and best customers: share the love.

 Brand & product positioning, USPs, and proof:
Only in 1/5 posts, talk about your brand mission, your specific solutions or overarching offering, and your USPs. Add proof, by way of customer quotes and/or actual numbers and percentages of proven improvement in metrics that matter to your prospects.

Responsibility, ethics, and miscellaneous:
If you have a purpose for your business, show it. By showing how you think about how your work or your market can add to actually leaving the world better than you found it, and about what you do to put it into practice. This is the space for your CSR vision and initiatives, alternated by miscellaneous news about your company or industry.

4. Decide what content types you want to connect to your content themes, what channels you want to post on and what you want to emphasize on which channel.

Ideally, post about three times per week on LinkedIn and daily on Twitter.

After you’ve done your groundwork with the exercises presented in this article, the following two tools should help you scale content creation quite easily.

Create great Social Media Captions with StoryLab.ai’s Social Caption Generator

We’ve created our AI-Powered Social Media Caption Generator to help content creators to have a 24/7 buddy to spar with for gathering new social media post ideas and even complete social media post captions.

Simply describe our AI Buddy what your would like to post about and the AI will do the heavy lifting.

After you’ve created a list of potential captions, add your unique human touch and perfect them.

Here’s what it looks like:

AI Tool for the Pros

If you really want to take it up a notch, check out the AI-Powered Blog to Social Media Post Generator. Simply copy/paste a piece of text from a blog post and get up to 25 different social media captions. This way, you can promote your content from different angles and really get people excited about your topic / content over a longer period of time.

Check out this short video to learn more:

Make sure 1 out of every 2 posts to have some kind of moving image like an animated element (you can get this easily and cheaply in tools like Canva).

Don’t forget to think about how to supplement and integrate your social media strategy with other channels such as SEO, SEA, email, and so forth.

Don’t forget to set up at least a basic structure for inviting your team members to boost your social media footprint by

1. Liking and commenting on your posts and
2. Much more importantly – sharing their own updates around your strategic content themes on their own platforms.

If you follow these steps, it becomes much easier to know what to post about, when and where to post and in what format – in order to help solidify your brand and boost commercial results across the board.

Hope this has been helpful in creating your Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Here’s a summary of what we’ve discussed in a short video format.

Now let’s have look at a couple of more tactical aspects of getting more out of your Social Media Marketing efforts.

Setting up your Social Media Distribution Strategy

After you’ve set up your overall Social Media Marketing strategy, it’s time to have a look at how you distribute content on social media. It often comes down to the following:

• Which social media channels do you want to be active on?
• How often do you want to post on each channel?
• Which content format do you want to post per channel?

It can look something like this:

Here you can see that you want to take your ‘long-form content’ and create social posts for:

• Twitter;
• LinkedIn;
• Pinterest.

You also see that you want to create fewer posts for LinkedIn because you find that posting on Twitter and Pinterest a couple of times a day is fine, but maybe you don’t want to do that on LinkedIn.

You also see that you want to take that long-form content and create short-form content like:

This is a simple illustration of channel and format choices you can make for your social media distribution strategy. Head over to our free Content Distribution Sheet (no email signup is required) and fill in:

• On the Y-axis your long-form content (starting with your most important content)
• On the X-axis your social media channels (starting with your most important channels)

Here’s how it will look like:

Then, start to work on the sheet.

Start creating Social Media content for promoting your content and keep track of which posts your created for which content on which channels. By starting with your most important content and channels, you’ll see that the top left part of the sheet should be your priority and you should work your way down and to the right.

Here’s how that looks like:

How to select the right Social Media Channels

So how do you select the social media channels that will help you to be most effective?

The most important thing is to understand the reason people are on a social media platform and if your audience is actually on that platform.

People go to:

• Pinterest to be inspired;
• YouTube to learn;
• TikTok to be entertained;
• Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends;
• LinkedIn to learn and connect;
• etc.

It will of course not hold true for everyone but in general, that’s how most people see social media platforms.

After you’ve found out if your audience is on a platform and you can create content that matches that platform, it’s time to see if it’s worth your time. You can decide if a social platform is worth your time investment by looking at historical data.

Have you been on Twitter for years, creating a ton of quality content but are you stuck in terms of impressions, followers, clicks to your website, etc.?

If so, check if you can create new content formats that the platform is pushing or maybe decide to increase your efforts on other platforms.

For instance. Your growth can be stale on Pinterest, Google, Instagram, and YouTube because you’ve been creating legacy content formats. If so, try creating:

• Pinterest Idea pins;
• Google Web Stories;
• Instagram Reels;
• YouTube Shorts.

Social Media Platforms often add new content formats to keep up with other platforms. While doing so, they need a lot of content in that format. If you’re a creator that can help out, you’re content will most likely be pushed to a larger audience than you’ve ever reached before.

So before giving up on a social platform, check if you’ve tried out all (especially new) formats. If you’re still not getting the results you expect (compared to other channels) then it might be time to invest less time.

Being active on Mainstream vs New Social Media Platforms

The next question is, how often / quickly should you jump on new social media platforms coming out and how much time should you keep investing in mainstream / traditional social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.?

Social media platforms come and go. Some faster than others and some stay but organic reach is decreasing year over year (Facebook for instance).

As we saw in our social media distribution section, there is a lot we can do but prioritizing is key.

There is no one answer I can give you. Like everything in marketing, it depends. Here are a couple of things to consider though:

Just getting started with fresh Social Media accounts: 

• Create 3 mainstream social media accounts where your audience is active;
• Create content in new formats;
• Create 3 social media accounts on new up-and-coming platforms;
• You have your work cut out for you, don’t start with social platforms that are just getting off the ground.

Already have a strong presence on mainstream Social Media platforms: 

• Keep going strong;
• Create content in new formats;
• Create 2 social media accounts on new up-and-coming platforms;
• Create 1 social media account on a platform you believe in but is just going mainstream.

I would always opt in for trying new social media channels. The question is of course how much time you invest in them.

Creating short-form content for Social Media

As you’ve seen earlier in the article, social media platforms are pushing hard for new short-form content formats. Not just video.

Google Web Stories and Pinterest Idea Pins do not need to be video.

Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikToks do need to be video.

People seem to love consuming short-form content. That’s the data these platforms are receiving and they want to provide. Because if YouTube does not provide, then TikTok will!

The question is, are you a social media manager that also wants to provide short-form content to your audience? If not, someone else will.

We use Canva Pro to create our YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok videos and Pinterest provides a simple way to create Idea Pins while Google offers an easy way to create Google Web Stories if you’re using WordPress.

The challenge is to tell your story in a short and catchy way but also to make your short-form content fit your overall social media marketing strategy.

Long-form content will not disappear. But short-form is where the attention is at the moment and where you can get the most impressions.

Be sure to implement it into your strategy.

FAQs

Should I create a Persona for my Social Media Strategy?

You can create a Persona for your social media strategy but be mindful that on social, you might want to interact with a larger community. It is always good to know who your Persona / Target Audience is to determine where they might hang out. On which social platforms you might be able to reach them best. Don’t only engage with your Persona. Especially not when someone outside of your Persona engages with you. Don’t think it’s not worth your time engaging because they’re not in your target audience.

Should I create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for my Social Media Strategy?

We do not advise creating an  Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for your social media strategy. This might narrow your activities too much and deter you from engaging with a larger audience. An Ideal Customer Profile has its own place in an organization, but we would not advise spending time setting that up if you don’t already have it set up to improve your Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Should I do a Competitive Analysis for my Social Media Strategy?

It is always good to learn more about what works and what does not. For your Social Media Strategy, you can have a closer look at your competitors and see what you can learn from them. What types of posts are they creating, who is following them, who is engaging with them, etc? Don’t just look at your competitors. Take it one or several levels higher and look at what is working (and not working) in your niche / industry beyond your competitors.

What is Social Media Listening?

Social Media Listening is setting alerts to get notifications when someone mentions you, a competitor, or topic. You often get notified when someone tags you, but sometimes, people accidentally don’t tag you properly. It’s always good to set up Social Media Listening for variations of your Social Media Handle Name. You can also set up Social Media listening to get notified when someone talks about a competitor or topic you’re interested in. Usually, you need additional Social Media Tools to set up Social Listening.

How often do I need to do a Social Media Audit?

It’s good to do a Social Media Audit every quarter. At the end of the year, you can do a more in-depth social media audit to prepare for the year to come.

How to do a Social Media Audit?

When doing a Social Media Audit, you can look at the following aspects:

• What is and is not working for you (check the goals you’ve set)?
• Are you posting at the frequency you’ve set for yourself?
• What types of posts are doing well / not so well?
• Which social platforms are doing well / not so well at the moment?
• Who is engaging with you on which platforms?
• Which of your relationships are the most valuable can you invite them to collaborate on a different platform?
• How does the competition’s social media presence compare to yours?

What is a social media marketing strategy?
A social media marketing strategy is a plan of action to build a brand and increase its visibility through different social media platforms, focusing on content creation, audience engagement, and marketing goals.

Why is a social media marketing strategy important?
It’s essential for targeting the right audience, engaging with followers effectively, maximizing ROI from social platforms, and ensuring a consistent and effective brand message across different channels.

What are the key components of a successful social media marketing strategy?
Key components include understanding your target audience, setting clear objectives, choosing the right platforms, creating engaging content, regular posting, and analyzing performance metrics.

How do you measure the success of a social media marketing strategy?
Success can be measured using metrics such as engagement rates, follower growth, website traffic referred from social media, conversions, and overall ROI.

What role does content play in a social media marketing strategy?
Content is crucial as it attracts and engages the target audience, reflects the brand’s identity, and drives social interactions and conversions.

How often should a social media marketing strategy be updated?
It should be reviewed and updated regularly, ideally quarterly or bi-annually, to adapt to changing social media trends, audience preferences, and the brand’s evolving goals.

Can a social media marketing strategy improve customer service?
Yes, it can significantly improve customer service by providing platforms for quick responses, engaging with customers, and addressing their concerns publicly and efficiently.

What’s the importance of choosing the right social media platforms?
Different platforms cater to different demographics and content types. Choosing the right platform ensures you’re reaching your target audience effectively.

How can small businesses develop an effective social media marketing strategy?
Small businesses should focus on platforms where their audience is most active, use cost-effective content strategies like user-generated content, and leverage analytics to understand what works.

What is the role of influencers in a social media marketing strategy?
Influencers can extend the reach of your brand to their followers, provide authentic endorsements, and create content that resonates with a broader audience.

How does audience targeting impact a social media marketing strategy?
Effective audience targeting ensures that your marketing efforts reach the most relevant and interested users, increasing engagement and the likelihood of conversions.

What is the significance of a content calendar in social media marketing?
A content calendar helps in planning and organizing posts in advance, ensuring a consistent posting schedule and a balanced mix of content types aligned with strategic goals.

How do you integrate branding into a social media marketing strategy?
Branding can be integrated by consistently using brand colors, logos, and voice across all posts and interactions, reinforcing brand identity and recognition.

Can social listening tools enhance a social media marketing strategy?
Social listening tools track mentions, keywords, and sentiments about your brand, providing insights that can refine and improve your marketing strategy.

What role does video content play in social media marketing?
Video content is highly engaging and can significantly increase reach and engagement, making it a crucial component of contemporary social media strategies.

How important is engagement in a social media marketing strategy?
Engagement is critical as it builds relationships with the audience, fosters community, and increases the organic reach of your content through likes, comments, and shares.

Can user-generated content be part of a social media marketing strategy?
User-generated content is powerful for building community and trust, as it showcases real customers and their experiences, adding authenticity to your brand.

What is the impact of hashtags on a social media marketing strategy?
Hashtags increase the discoverability of your content on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, helping to target niche audiences and participate in relevant conversations.

How does a social media marketing strategy drive website traffic?
By sharing links to your website in your posts and bio, and creating compelling content that invites clicks, social media can be a significant driver of traffic to your site.

What is the importance of analytics in refining a social media marketing strategy?
Analytics provide data on what’s working and what’s not, allowing for data-driven adjustments to the strategy to improve engagement, reach, and effectiveness.

How does personalization enhance a social media marketing strategy?
Personalization, such as using audience data to tailor content, can significantly increase engagement and relevance, making the strategy more effective in attracting and retaining followers.

What role does community management play in social media marketing?
Community management involves interacting with followers, responding to comments, and fostering a community around your brand, which is vital for building loyal customer relationships.

How can collaborations with other brands or influencers benefit a social media strategy?
Collaborations can expand your reach to new audiences, bring fresh content to your platforms, and increase credibility through association with respected figures or brands.

What is the importance of consistency in social media marketing?
Consistency in posting frequency, content quality, and brand voice helps in building a reliable brand image, which is key to maintaining and growing a social media presence.

Can a social media marketing strategy drive offline engagement?
Yes, social media can be used to promote offline events or engagements, creating a seamless experience that encourages online followers to engage in real-world activities.

What’s the role of storytelling in a social media marketing strategy?
Effective storytelling can captivate audiences, evoke emotions, and build a stronger personal connection with the brand, enhancing the overall impact of the strategy.

How do promotional contests and giveaways fit into a social media strategy?
Contests and giveaways can quickly increase engagement and reach, encouraging user participation and spreading brand awareness through user shares and mentions.

How critical is the visual aesthetic of content in social media marketing?
A consistent and appealing visual aesthetic is crucial as it helps in establishing brand identity, making content instantly recognizable, and enhancing the visual appeal for the audience.

What is the impact of social media algorithms on marketing strategies?
Understanding social media algorithms is essential for optimizing content for better visibility and engagement, as these algorithms determine how and to whom the content is shown.

How can a social media strategy adapt to changing platform trends?
Staying informed about platform updates and changing user behaviors is key, allowing marketers to adjust their strategies to leverage new features and trends effectively.

Jump back to a section

Author bio:

Erwin Lima: What inspires Erwin is helping people, teams and brands to become the best version of themselves. Guiding them with curiosity, empathy, and Growth Storytelling.

Over the past 10+ years as a copywriter, author, consultant, and coach, he’s helped dozens of Brands, Teams, and individual human beings to grow their sense of motivation and focus, but also their reach, engagement, and revenue— through the power of their own story. You can find Erwin on LinkedIn and on his website.

Author bio:

Raul Tiru: Raul loves to build companies and help startups and scale-ups grow. Raul started his first website when he was 17 years old, has held several growth marketing positions in fast-growing companies, and has helped companies via his Freelance Marketing services. You can find Raul on his community GlobalOwls where he helps Nonprofits and Startups to do better marketing.

Top AI Marketing Generators

Have you ever heard the story that humans are much slower than the fastest animals on earth?

Have you also heard that if you add a bike to the equation, humans all of a sudden win? Not even to talk about cars and planes.

The moral of the story is:

Humans are tool-making creatures.

Tools are how we have advanced our lives and everything we have around us.

If you want to boost your Instagram Marketing efforts, you need to right tools. Not just the right tools, but also understanding how they should work together, what you need before using the tools, and more.

In this article, we’ll go over which Instagram Marketing Tools you should be using and how.

Let’s get into it!

1. Set up your Social Media Strategy with StoryLab.ai’s Growth Storytelling Framework

Before learning how to ride a bike, it’s good to know why you want to learn how to ride it. You want to get somewhere faster or you want to have fun, right? Knowing the why can motivate you to put in the work.

For boosting your Instagram Marketing, you really need to hone in on a couple of things before you just start creating Insta posts and scheduling them.

We’ve created a Growth Storytelling Framework which you can access for free here (no email signup is needed). It consists of the following spreadsheets AND guides to walk you through it. Use what you need, trash what you don’t. Make it your own and use it to your advantage. Included in the framework:

1. Content Marketing Strategy Guide
2. Brand Story Guide
3. Content Marketing Goals and KPI Guide
4. Setting up your Brand Style Guidelines
5. How to tell better stories
6. How to come up with Effective Content Ideas
7. How to find the best Instagram Hashtags
8. Content Distribution Strategy

2. Having a clear Instagram Marketing Strategy

I hope you will use a couple of our guides from our Growth Storytelling Framework or that you already have a clear vision about who your target audience is, what content they like to consume, and how to effectively communicate with them.

When you have this crystal clear, you can move to the next step which is actually creating some awesome Insta posts!

Related: How to Create a Great Social Media Marketing Strategy.

3. Make use of an Instagram Caption Generator

In order to really boost your Instagram Marketing efforts, you need to create a lot of high-quality posts. An Instagram Caption Generator can help you with brainstorming the caption (copy) of your post.

Simply input what you would like to post about and the tool provides you with awesome ideas. Then, you make a couple of small edits and done! You have your Insta caption. Here’s what we got on the first run:

After a quick re-write, we ended up with the following captions. And that’s just from running the Instagram Caption Generator once! I can re-run the tool as often as I like and get more inspirational pieces.

Insta caption 1

We all know that Instagram is a powerful platform for building your brand, and one of the best ways to do so is by leveraging the best tools. Our team has put together a list of 6 Instagram marketing tools that you can use to boost your engagement, as well as grow your follower base.

Insta caption 2

Instagram is one of the most engaging and visual platforms out there which has made it a hotbed for marketers. Brands are creating new and exciting content daily to help get their followers engaged and interested, but growing your following can feel like a full-time job with minimal results if you’re not utilizing the right tools. Check out our list of awesome Instagram Tools and learn how to use them properly.

Actually, I got excited about the outputs and how I want to visualize the power of the Instagram tools I’ll be discussing today and how they work together, so I ran the Caption Generator again and got the following results:

With these outputs, I created the following captions:

Insta caption 3

Whether you’re looking to build your brand or sell a product, growing your audience on Instagram can be extremely helpful. Check out how the following Instagram tools can help you do just that!

Insta caption 4

Despite the fact that I’ve been in business for well over ten years, and have been a marketing consultant now for almost seven years, I still get really excited when there are tools introduced to make my job even easier. Today I want to put a smile on your face by sharing the golden nuggets I have received over the past couple of years. Check out how these Instagram Tools make my life easier and how they can help you boost your marketing efforts.

Insta caption 5

The world of Instagram marketing is a dynamic one. There are new tools and strategies popping up all the time. There’s also a lot of clutter surrounding what actually works for your brand and what doesn’t. Today, I want to share with you my time-tested Instagram tips and tools.

So now I got 5 potential Instagram Captions to work with which I created in just 2 minutes or so.

Let’s get into creating some nice visuals!

3. Create beautiful visuals fast with Canva

I’ve already set up my Brand Style Guide, I also already set up Instagram Templates in Canva, so creating new visuals for this post and the captions we’ve just created should be a breeze!

I simply duplicate the template in Canva, check out the caption, think about how I want to draw in attention (stop people from scrolling down), and maybe change some colors around while staying on brand.

Here’s what I’ve created in about 5 minutes:

Your brand might be more complex so it might take you a bit longer, but having a great visual tool, guidelines written on paper and templates will help a lot nonetheless!

If you’re not using Canva yet, you should! It’s super easy to get started, learn how to use it and scale content creation. Here’s a print screen of our Canva visuals:

4. Find the best Hashtags

Using the right hashtags is important to reach an audience beyond your followers. We’ve already written a guide on how to find the best hashtags and the template is included in the Growth Storytelling Framework, so we won’t go too in-depth about it here. Because I wanted to showcase all tools needed to be successful on Instagram, I did want to mention it.

There are a couple of tools you can use to find data on Instagram Hashtags, I simply use Instagram’s data for my research. here’s how that looks like:

You can find how many people have posted using that hashtag which gives you an estimate of how competitive a hashtag is and guidance on whether to include it in your hashtag mix or not.

5. Time to Schedule your Instagram Posts with Buffer

Well. We’ve just created 5 Instagram captions in two minutes and 3 visuals in 5 minutes, how long do you think it will take to schedule the posts? Exactly, 5 hours!

I mean 5 minutes. My bad!

I already have My Buffer account set up. All I need to do is copy / paste the caption, upload the images, add the hashtags and we’re good to go! Here’s what scheduling in Buffer looks like:

Scheduling posts is possible in Buffer’s free version, but a limited number of posts.

If other Social Media Planners are a better fit for you, or you don’t like to schedule posts, that’s of course fine. Some alternatives are Hootsuite, Coosto, and AgoraPulse.

6. Let’s get some traffic to your website

Instagram doesn’t allow you to link to your website from individual posts. In order to get traffic from Instagram you need to build your brand or mention in your post that they can find a link in your bio.

In your bio you are allowed to add one link. You can either choose to link to your homepage, resources page or change it every time you post something new.

Or!

You can opt-in for a Link Tool (not sure what they’re called) like LinkTree.

this way you can set up your links in LinkTree and when people click on your Instagram link, they see the pages you’ve chosen. Here’s what it looks like (you can also check it out on our Instagram account:

7. Time to set some goals and look at the data

Ok. You’ve now thought about your strategy, have the tools to create awesome Instagram posts at scale, know how to schedule them, also know how to get traffic to your website, how do you know if what you’re doing week over week, month over month is working?

You need to set goals and dig into the data.

In our Growth Storytelling Framework there is a sheet to help you set your goals. Here’s the complete guide to content marketing goals and KPIs that walks you through it step-by-step.

Please check out the resources we’ve provided in this article. We’ve created them with care and based on our decades of marketing experience to make marketing and content creation easier.

If you have any questions, join our LinkedIn Group and ask us anything.

FAQ

What are Instagram Marketing Tools?
Instagram Marketing Tools are software and platforms designed to enhance marketing efforts on Instagram. They assist in tasks like scheduling posts, analyzing engagement, managing ads, and understanding audience behavior.

How do Instagram scheduling tools benefit marketers?
Scheduling tools allow marketers to plan and automate the posting of content. This helps maintain a consistent presence on Instagram without needing to manually post in real-time.

What features do Instagram analytics tools provide?
Analytics tools offer insights into follower demographics, engagement rates, best posting times, content performance, and more, helping to refine and target marketing strategies.

How do Instagram ad management tools work?
These tools streamline the creation, management, and optimization of Instagram ads. They provide features for targeting specific audiences, budgeting, and performance tracking.

Can Instagram Marketing Tools help in influencer collaborations?
Yes, some tools are designed to identify potential influencers, manage collaborations, and track the performance of influencer marketing campaigns.

What are Instagram content creation tools?
Content creation tools aid in designing visually appealing posts and stories. They offer features like templates, image editing, and graphic design to enhance the visual quality of Instagram content.

How do hashtag research tools assist in Instagram marketing?
Hashtag research tools help identify trending and relevant hashtags, which can increase the visibility and discoverability of posts to a wider audience.

Are there tools for managing Instagram Direct Messages?
Yes, there are tools that help organize and respond to direct messages efficiently, which is crucial for customer service and engagement on Instagram.

What role do Instagram bio link tools play in marketing?
Bio link tools enhance the single link allowed in an Instagram bio by directing users to a landing page with multiple links, leading to different websites, products, or resources.

Can Instagram Marketing Tools track competitor performance?
Some tools offer competitor analysis features, allowing marketers to track the performance, content strategy, and follower growth of their competitors on Instagram.

How do Instagram story analytics tools enhance marketing strategies?
Story analytics tools provide insights into viewer engagement, retention rates, and interactions with Instagram stories, helping marketers optimize content for better performance.

What is the importance of audience engagement tools on Instagram?
Audience engagement tools help in tracking and analyzing interactions like comments and likes, enabling marketers to engage effectively and build a loyal community.

How can reposting tools be used effectively in Instagram marketing?
Reposting tools allow marketers to easily share user-generated content or posts from other accounts, fostering community engagement and providing diverse content.

Are there tools specialized for Instagram video content?
Yes, certain tools are designed specifically for creating and editing Instagram videos, including features for adding captions, effects, and appropriate formatting for IGTV or Reels.

How do Instagram analytics tools aid in content optimization?
These tools analyze which types of content (photos, videos, stories) perform best, helping to tailor future posts to audience preferences and increase engagement.

What are Instagram hashtag generators and their significance?
Hashtag generators suggest relevant and popular hashtags based on keywords, helping to increase post visibility and reach target audiences more effectively.

Can Instagram Marketing Tools assist in managing multiple accounts?
Some tools are designed to manage multiple Instagram accounts, allowing for streamlined posting, scheduling, and analytics, which is beneficial for agencies or marketers managing client accounts.

How do Instagram growth tools work?
Instagram growth tools use various strategies, like targeted follow/unfollow, engaging with potential followers, and automated interactions, to organically increase follower count.

What is the role of Instagram Shopping tools in marketing?
Instagram Shopping tools enable businesses to tag products in posts and stories, create a digital storefront, and streamline the shopping experience directly on Instagram.

Can Instagram Marketing Tools provide insights into ROI?
Advanced tools offer features to track the return on investment (ROI) by correlating marketing efforts with sales conversions, website traffic, and engagement metrics.

Author bio:

Raul Tiru: Raul loves to build companies and help startups and scale-ups grow. Raul started his first website when he was 17 years old, has held several growth marketing positions in fast-growing companies, and has helped companies via his Freelance Marketing services. You can find Raul on his community GlobalOwls where he helps Nonprofits and Startups to do better marketing.

Are you planning to create more YouTube videos and looking to set yourself up for success?

Or are you a freelancer trying to help a client to optimize their existing YouTube account?

Whatever your role is, doing a deep dive into a YouTube account as a whole and optimizing your Video Marketing strategy can help you get more views, website traffic, and even sales.

In this audit walkthrough, we’re going to look at:

• YouTube keyword research – optimizing for SEO means knowing how to select the right keywords
• The videos – what can we optimize?
• The channel as a whole – how can we improve?
• Promotion – your videos should not only live on YouTube.

Let’s get started!

Related: Conducting an Effective SEO Audit

How to Conduct a YouTube Keyword Research

Alright! We’ve learned that focusing on the right keyword and adding them to the video titles and in the description will help us rank better!

Cool. What are the right keywords?

[Crickets]

Yes. The scenario sketched above actually occurs.

Let’s make sure you’ll never end up in such a situation.

Let’s have a look at how to conduct keyword research to rank well with YouTube videos.

Using tools to conduct a YouTube Keyword Research

To be honest, keyword research tools for YouTube should mostly be used to get a general idea if people are actually searching for a topic. The estimations the tools give you are broad. To say te least.

Check out Ahrefs’s data on the keywords ‘Social Media Marketing Strategy’ for YouTube:

Ahrefs estimates it to be around 1900 searches a month.

That seems a bit low to me.

Let’s see what results a different YouTube keyword research tool gives us. This time we’re using TubeBuddy, which uses data from Keywordtool.io.

70,000!

That seems to be a bit on the high side….

The nice thing about TubeBuddy is that they do try to give you some guidance on how easy it would probably be to rank for that keyword. They look at the number of videos with that keyword and how well-optimized they are.

We all know that oftentimes… not very well optimized.

Doing YouTube keyword research using common sense

Up to you if you want to use YouTube keyword research tools or not.

We often check YouTube’s auto-complete to see which keywords they suggest using.

If YouTube suggests so many variations of your keyword, you’re almost certain that the topic is popular.

You can add a space at the start of the search bar and get even more keyword suggestions from YouTube:

Now you can select the best matching keyword and try to optimize for it.

We’ll show you how in the audits we’re going to do below.

YouTube Video Audit Checklist

How many of the points below can you tick off the checklist for your (or your client’s) videos?

1. Optimize your YouTube Video File Name for SEO

The more data you can provide YouTube on what the video is about, the better your chances to rank well and get more views. That also includes the video file name.

Looking at the videos that are posted on the YouTube channel, can you say the videos have a descriptive file name? Preferably with the main keywords the video targets included in the file name?

Or is the file name something like; December 16 – final – final?

If the video file names are not optimized, you can’t simply change them and we don’t advise taking the video down to make the change and re-upload them.

It is something you can note and be mindful of when creating and uploading future videos.

2. YouTube Video Title Optimization for SEO

Next on the checklist is the video title.

A perfect YouTube video title has the following elements:

1. It helps people understand what the video is about
2. It’s catchy but not spammy to get high click-through rates
3. It includes the main keyword to signal to users and YouTube what the video is about

How well are the video titles optimized?

Do they simply mention the company name or do they actually try to let people and YouTube know what the value of the video is?

The good news is that you can actually go ahead and change and optimize all video titles!

So if the account has 100 videos with titles that don’t make much sense for YouTube or users, this is your chance to improve greatly.

Note down all the video URLs and titles in a sheet and suggest new titles.

Try to add the main keyword at the start of the title to give it an extra boost.

To help you out, check out our Title Generator and how it can help you brainstorm new catchy titles. Simply input what the video is about and the AI will help spark creativity.

Here’s what it looks like:

3. YouTube Video Description Optimization for SEO and website traffic

The video description on YouTube is very important. It helps you to:

• Further optimize your video for SEO;
• Go deeper on telling your story;
• Activate people to take action and visit your website;
• Interlink to other videos and build relevance;
• Add relevant hashtags.

This is at the same time exactly how you should structure your video description.

3.1 Video description and SEO

Start the first section of your video description by repeating your main keyword and other relevant keywords. Explain briefly the problems and solutions you’re covering in your video.

If you need help, Check out our Intro Generator.

3.2 Video description, Company Story and next steps

Use the next section of your video description to dive deeper into the brand story.

Try to activate people to take the next step. Link to a valuable resource that is related to the video they are watching.

3.3 Interlink to related videos in your description

It is important to build topical relevancy and expertise on YouTube. One way you can do that is by linking in your description to other related videos of yours. More tips will follow later in this audit.

3.4 Add relevant hashtags to your description

In the last section of your video description, you can add three relevant hashtags which will help with SEO even more. These three hashtags will also be shown just below the video:

4. Create eye-catching YouTube Video Thumbnails

The more people click on your result, the better you will rank on YouTube.

Having an eye-catching YouTube Video Thumbnail makes a big difference.

When uploading your video, YouTube tries to help you with a couple of thumbnail suggestions. This is ok, but uploading your own design is almost always better.

If you need help, check out Canva. You can select from their design templates or create your own.

5. Adding Tags to your YouTube Videos

Here’s YouTube’s official short explanation of using Tags for your YouTube Videos:

Tags are useful if content in your video is often misspelled. Furthermore, tags hardly play a role when it comes to helping viewers find your video.

So two no-nos straight off the bat:

1. Don’t skip adding tags.
2. Don’t overdue it.

Also, pay attention to the word ‘hardly’ 😉

A best practice is to start by adding your main keyword and variations of that keyword to your video. Any other relevant or often misspelled words (like your name if you’re using that in your title) are a big plus.

Try to also match tags with your other videos. For us for instance, our videos are often about content creation. We tag all our videos that are on that topic with that tag to build up relevancy between our videos.

6. Adding End Screens and Cards to your YouTube videos

Adding end screens and cards to your videos helps to get people to take action, build relevancy amongst your videos and get people to subscribe and watch more videos.

What we like to do for instance is to upload a long-form video but also cut it down into short videos.

The short videos link in the description and end screen to the full video.

Here’s an example:

7. Adding Pinned Comments to your YouTube videos

A fine way to draw attention to a next step you want people to take or to get people to leave a comment on your video is to comment first and to pin that comment at the top.

Some people don’t bother to open the video description but scroll down to the comments section.

This is a great way to get your message in front of people.

It’s obviously not a must, but can be a nice addition, and did want to mention it.

YouTube Channel Audit Checklist

Alright. We’ve gone over steps to take in your YouTube audit and looking at videos individually and optimizing.

Now let’s have a look at doing an audit of the channel as a whole. What should you pay attention to and optimize?

8. Does the YouTube channel look professional?

This is a bit of a broad question maybe, but I’m sure you can answer it for yourself.

Just by looking at the various tabs and links people can click on a YouTube channel, does everything look on-brand and professional?

Many set up a YouTube channel, create playlists, etc. but don’t really bother to optimize their profile.

It’s up to you during the audit to do click on all the possible tabs (home, videos, playlist, channel, about, and the links that have been added and find misfits.

9. Are YouTube Playlists being created and are they optimized for SEO?

Playlists are great for building more topical relevancy and increasing the number of views. When someone watches a video from within a playlist, the next video will play automatically. Sweet!

We often times see that Playlists are created but not being SEO optimized. They often don’t even have a great descriptive name. We’ve seen playlists like these: [company name playlist 1], [company name playlist 2], etc.

That’s not helpful for anyone.

Here’s what one of our playlists looks like:

It includes:

• A descriptive name with relevant keywords;
• An in-depth description that includes relevant keywords;
• A link to a resource of ours about Content Creation (playlist topic);
• Videos on various content creation topics
• Videos in that playlist also have the tags ‘content creation’.
• We’ve also thought about the order of the videos. They’re not sorted randomly.

How many of the above points can you tick off for the playlists that have been created?

You can actually go in and make the edits that are needed to optimize every playlist.

10. How is the channel reacting to comments?

Receiving comments on your videos is highly important for increasing engagement and growing in organic rankings.

Do an audit on how the channel is reacting to comments. It’s usually one of the following:

• Noone reacts to comments;
• The channel manager reacts to comments but only very short comments and not trying to get more people to comment (spark conversation more);
• The channel manager is doing a perfect job.

I think you can already guess which of the above is optimal and which next steps you can propose if any of the above scenarios occur.

You want to have a process in place for reacting timely to comments and trying to get the conversation going every time the YouTube manager interacts.

Over to you

Alright. If you’re looking to do a YouTube audit, take the steps mentioned above into consideration. It’s not a full list of everything one could do to optimize their YouTube channel to get more views but also to take people to take action but you need to start somewhere and prioritize the most important items you or a team can pick up and start making improvements.

Access our Google Sheet here for free to input all your videos and go over the points mentioned step-by-step.

FAQ

What is a YouTube audit?
A YouTube audit is a comprehensive review of a YouTube channel to assess its performance, content strategy, SEO, audience engagement, and overall effectiveness in meeting its goals.

Why is conducting a YouTube audit important?
Conducting a YouTube audit is important for identifying areas of improvement, understanding audience preferences, optimizing content and strategy, and maximizing channel growth and engagement.

What key metrics are analyzed in a YouTube audit?
Key metrics include view counts, subscriber growth, watch time, engagement rates (likes, comments, shares), and the performance of specific videos.

How can a YouTube audit improve content strategy?
An audit can reveal insights into what types of content are most successful, helping to refine content strategy to better align with audience interests and trends.

What role does SEO play in a YouTube audit?
SEO in a YouTube audit involves evaluating video titles, descriptions, tags, and keywords to ensure they are optimized for YouTube search and discoverability.

Can a YouTube audit help in understanding the target audience better?
Yes, by analyzing audience demographics, viewing patterns, and engagement, a YouTube audit can provide a deeper understanding of who the target audience is and what they prefer.

How does a YouTube audit address video engagement?
The audit assesses factors that influence engagement, such as video length, quality, content relevance, and the effectiveness of calls-to-action.

What is the significance of thumbnail analysis in a YouTube audit?
Thumbnail analysis is significant as thumbnails play a crucial role in click-through rates. The audit evaluates their appeal, relevance, and consistency.

How can channel branding be assessed in a YouTube audit?
Channel branding is assessed by reviewing the channel’s visual identity (logo, banner), consistency in messaging, and how effectively the channel communicates its value proposition.

Can a YouTube audit provide insights into content monetization?
Yes, it can offer insights into monetization strategies, including ad revenue performance, effectiveness of sponsored content, and opportunities for merchandise sales or memberships.

How can a YouTube audit identify opportunities for audience growth?
An audit can reveal gaps in content, untapped audience segments, and areas where competitors are succeeding, providing opportunities for audience growth and channel expansion.

What impact does video frequency have on a YouTube channel, as analyzed in an audit?
An audit assesses how posting frequency correlates with viewer engagement and subscriber growth, helping to optimize the content calendar for consistent audience retention.

How does an audit evaluate the effectiveness of video descriptions and CTAs?
The audit reviews whether video descriptions are informative and keyword-optimized and whether calls-to-action (CTAs) effectively encourage viewer interaction and conversion.

Can a YouTube audit assist in improving video quality and production?
Yes, by evaluating visual and audio quality, editing, and presentation styles, an audit can provide insights into production improvements that enhance viewer engagement.

What role do comments and community engagement play in a YouTube audit?
Analyzing comments and community interaction can provide feedback on viewer sentiment, content preferences, and engagement levels, guiding content and community management strategies.

How are playlist strategies evaluated in a YouTube audit?
Playlists are evaluated for their organization, relevance, and ability to enhance viewer experience and guide them to more content, improving watch time and engagement.

Can a YouTube audit help in refining video topics and themes?
By analyzing which topics and themes resonate most with the audience, an audit can guide the creation of future content that aligns with viewer interests.

What insights can a YouTube audit provide on competitor analysis?
A competitor analysis in an audit can reveal what content strategies, video formats, and topics are successful for similar channels, offering ideas for improvement and differentiation.

How does a YouTube audit assess channel optimization for mobile viewers?
The audit evaluates how the channel and its content perform on mobile devices, considering factors like video format, viewing experience, and mobile engagement.

What is the importance of analyzing viewer retention rates in a YouTube audit?
Analyzing viewer retention rates is crucial for understanding at what points viewers are most engaged or tend to drop off, informing strategies to improve content and maintain viewer interest.

Author bio:

Raul Tiru: Raul loves to build companies and help startups and scale-ups grow. Raul started his first website when he was 17 years old, has held several growth marketing positions in fast-growing companies, and has helped companies via his Freelance Marketing services. You can find Raul on his community GlobalOwls where he helps Nonprofits and Startups to do better marketing.

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