Jason Miller leads global content and social initiatives for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, helping marketers understand how to use LinkedIn to achieve their marketing goals and deliver real ROI. Previously, he was the senior manager of social media strategy at Marketo.

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He's a frequent contributor to Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, MarketingProfs, and Copyblogger, and he has presented at numerous industry conferences, including Dreamforce, Social Media Marketing World, Social Fresh, Inbound, and more.

I invited Jason to Marketing Smarts to discuss his book, Welcome to the Funnel, Proven Tactics to Turn Your Content and Social Media Up to 11, and to share tips for how marketers can get more out of social media (especially LinkedIn).

Here are just a few highlights from our conversation:

If you're not on LinkedIn, what are you waiting for? (05:12): "As we move into 2015, it's the year of the personal brand. If you haven't figured out who you are, and put your best foot forward and put your accomplishments and a really nice description of who you are online, you're simply missing opportunities for yourself to move forward with your career, as well as marketing opportunities."

Don't be too modest (05:36): "I think it's OK to brag a little on LinkedIn, because, if you have accomplishments, put them up there. You can add a lot of visuals and rich media to your profile as well. but you have to spend some time with this...because people are constantly searching to connect, and if your profile isn't optimized to be found, who's to say that you won't be skipped over when your time comes?"

Publish posts on LinkedIn (06:19): "Anyone can start a blog...but it's not connected to your profile on LinkedIn. When you publish on LinkedIn, you're actually connecting your personal thoughts, your professional thoughts. You can do thought leadership, you can publish pretty much whatever you want on there—and it's up to you to keep it relevant, I think—but whatever thoughts you have there are connected to your profile, and it's just building up this rich...online identity. Everything in one place. People don't want to click around to do research with different websites. They want everything in one place, packaged up all nice and neat. And I think this is the opportunity for that."

Create "Big Rock" content pieces (23:11): "As a company, if you really want to break through, you don't need more content; you need more relevant content. So, how do you break through all of the noise and get to the number-one thing as a content marketing that you should be doing? That's answering your customer's and prospects' questions, but that's not only answering the questions—becoming the best answer to those questions. Investing in big content and repurposing it is the way that I see that, and the way that I've had success with it... If you want to own a conversation in social or on the Web, you write the book on it. It's the idea of moving from thinking like a publisher...to actually publishing like a publisher. Publishers publish books around certain topics that they want to now the conversation on, they want to corner the market, if you will.... The 'Big Rock' piece of content is where you get to the core of relevancy.... One 'Big Rock' piece of content—and this could be a substantial e-book or a video—can fuel your social and your demand gen channels for at least a quarter, and sometimes up to a year. I've seen 'Big Rocks' drive millions of dollars in business.... The first 'Big Rock' piece of content we created at LinkedIn over a year ago has driven more than $4.6 million in business."

To learn more about Jason or to get your copy of Welcome to the Funnel, visit WelcomeToTheFunnel.com, or follow him on Twitter: @JasonMillerCA.

Jason shared many more helpful tips, so be sure to listen to the entire show, which you can do above, or download the mp3 and listen at your convenience. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode!  

This episode brought to you by the MarketingProfs Professional Development Program.

Music credit: Noam Weinstein.

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Published on January 14, 2015