If you are thinking about working with a professional copywriter to create LinkedIn blogs, you’ll want to make sure the writer understands your goals for the project, your expectations, and especially your ideas. The blog content should originate with you.
A good copywriter will help you find your voice online, making sure the blog she or he writes reflects your personal style and the depth of your expertise as well as the message you want to convey.
Here are five pieces of information you will want to provide any LinkedIn blog copywriter to make sure your vision is realized.
1. What is the primary purpose of this blog post?
What expectations do you have for the blog? What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to educate, entertain, or advocate? Are you teaching or selling? Are you telling a story? Are you generating leads or establishing thought leadership?
You might be interested in educating readers about your product, how it works, who needs it, what problems it solves, or why it is the best option for solving those problems. You might be sharing wisdom, advice, and best practices.
On the flip side, you might be focused on generating leads and sales. You need to think about how sales-oriented you want to be. Do you want to sell hard or be more gentle?
You may also think about the most successful company in your field, competitors or bloggers you respect. What are they doing that you can emulate?
Remember that there’s no right answer, and for any question you might say “all of the above.”
Feel free to get as specific as you want with these questions and answers – your copywriter should understand your goals at the macro and micro levels.
2. Who are you trying to reach?
Once that primary purpose is established, you’ll also want to define out who you’re writing for.
Who is your audience? Clients, prospects, colleagues, industry thought leaders? Is it one specific target audience (like senior sales executives) or multiple, diverse target audiences?
Do you have an idea of demographics?
What is interesting to your desired readers? What are they currently focused on? What keeps them up at night? What gets them promoted (or fired)?
What type of writing does your audience tend to read? Are they likely to read carefully or skim? Will they be reading on a mobile device?
Think about whether you are trying to reach new people who haven’t yet found you, or whether you want to keep your name in front of people who already know who you are. Are you trying to establish credibility with a new audience? Do they need background information or explanations?
3. What voice and tone do you want to use?
Now how do you want to sound? Are you going for a style more like The Harvard Business Review or People Magazine? Is your tone high-level and professional, casual, professorial, or quirky? Are you serious or playful? Data-rich or practical? Polished or home-spun? Sarcastic or sincere?
4. What content resources can you provide?
Where should your writer get the information she will use to write the post?
Are you repurposing existing content such as white papers or other company writing? Can you provide PowerPoints, articles, briefings?
Should the blog copywriter conduct interviews with you, company subject matter experts, customers or partners?
Do you have other specific resources you can offer? Are there websites that provide reliable research and statistics?
What information should not be used, such as information from competitors?
5. What is your call to action?
What do you want your readers to do after they read your post?
You always want to end a blog post with a call to action, and encourage readers to take that next step.
You might want people to register for a webinar, view a video or demo, attend an event, read a whitepaper, or reach out to you to start a conversation. Whatever it is, make sure that you discuss this with your blog copywriter so that your blog post drives people to take that step.
Make sure you provide the link to your landing page or whatever information they need to take the action.
The ultimate goal of any LinkedIn blog post should be to communicate a new idea in an interesting way, reaching as many people as possible, and persuade them to take the next step. These questions should help you clarify your vision for the blog post and give your writer the information she or he needs to do an excellent job for you.