The Best Media Format for Consuming Content on LinkedIn

Solutions Review is currently undertaking a multi-quarter polling exercise across our Universe of Influence on LinkedIn and direct mail to marketing and lead generation leaders in the business software space. Our goal is a simple one: to unearth various LinkedIn tips and tricks for helping firms expand their reach on the platform, as well as understand our own audience better.

In conjunction with our surveying, we’ve shared techniques for growing organic impressions that have worked for us, merging theory and practice to provide you with a roadmap to get started on your own. And in recent blogs, we offered up some tips for driving Showcase Page engagement and outlined the key LinkedIn features for marketing.

With these concepts in tow, we decided to poll our readers to find out the best media format for consuming content on LinkedIn. Given that there are more avenues for sharing resources than ever before, it can be a challenge for marketing teams to discern which is the best media format according to LinkedIn users.

Now that we’ve covered some LinkedIn marketing features, we wanted to find out where most audiences prefer to consume their content. There are more avenues for content than ever before, making it challenging for marketing teams to discern where their most valuable content should go and how to promote it. With that in mind, we went back to the well and polled a cross-section of our audience of business software marketing and demand generation leaders to add perspective.

Over a week-long period, we polled readers across our collection of Solutions Review LinkedIn Showcase Pages and asked them a simple question: “In which media format do you prefer to consume content?” We provided four multiple-choice answers.

• Online articles/blogs
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Downloadable PDF

We received 170 responses. Here’s what we learned, along with some basic tips to get started:

Traditional Articles and Blogs are Preferred

If you want to get your audience’s eyes on your content, the most straightforward avenue might be best. According to our survey, most respondents (42 percent) say they prefer to consume content via online articles and blogs. Online articles are easy to access, can be read on mobile devices anywhere, and are easily shareable on social media or via messaging platforms. Creating these articles is also the most straightforward (and proven) form of content creation, which doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

There is Great Value in Video

Video content has been growing for years, but is it still a valuable medium for news and marketing? Based on our findings, the answer is yes, as 31-percent of our audience said that video is the format they prefer to use for content consumption. Like online articles, videos can be watched across mobile devices, making them an easy-to-access avenue for consuming and sharing information. Video content can be easier to engage with than reading an article, so it shouldn’t be surprising to see it rank so closely to the tried-and-true format of online articles and blogs.

Don’t Count Out Downloadable PDFs

For years, downloadable PDFs and whitepapers have been a staple of any content marketing strategy, but their purpose has always been slightly different from online articles or videos. Unlike those latter categories, downloadable PDFs are meant for people farther along their “buying journey.” These content pieces tend to offer a more in-depth examination of a topic, so, by design, they don’t attract the broader audiences that other formats do. Our survey results seem to agree with this trend, as 18-percent of respondents said they prefer downloadable PDFs. You can’t hinge your entire content strategy on these documents, but they can (and should) be a staple.

Podcasts: Is Anyone Listening?

Podcasts are a tricky medium to gain traction in, especially for marketers and news outlets. Only 9-percent of our audience selected podcasts as their preferred medium to consume content. Creating podcasts is far more expensive and time-consuming than online articles and yields less engagement than video. There isn’t a total absence of interest, but it seems to speak to a more specific niche of audiences, so businesses should approach it with some caution.