Last week I was on Linkedin Marketing Labs webinar where Hillary Lyons and Johnny Cullen took us through some of their tips for building a winning content strategy.

Here's a summary of the key takeaways that I came away with.

Why content marketing?

Early on in the webinar, Hillary referenced some research that we often talk about at Passle. Google & Forrester's research into the buyer journey is well known, for good reasons.

• Customers make it through 90% of the purchase process before reaching out.
• 10 pieces of content are consumed in the buying process.

What content works?

As for what content performs best, data from LinkedIn seemed to match with research from Edelman into the same question.

• News, trends and inspiration were all content winners with customers preferring positive content over negative.
• Short, relevant, educational, timely and inspirational content are all highly preferred by LinkedIn members.

How to develop your strategy.

Bringing together a winning strategy requires a deep and specific understanding of what the market wants, your own goals and how you need to position your offerings in the mind of your buyers.

• Align your expertise, your audience pain points and your "content tilt" (essentially your positioning and messaging).
• Talk to real people, whether that be customer facing support staff, sales, direct with customers or through research.
• Set intelligent, data-based goals around your interaction goals.