Publishing on LinkedIn was previously restricted to major influencers only. In 2014 the platform opened up to all members, offering everyone the opportunity to get their content in front of ready-made professional audiences.
In this article, we take a look at the case for using LinkedIn, and offer a few tips on how to go about it.
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Why publish on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a professional network with ‘built-in’ audiences, which means you are more likely to connect with a receptive readership right from the start. This also means that you have a greater opportunity to widen your circle of influence than you might have on your own blog or another social network.
Some specific LinkedIn advantages include:
- You have the opportunity to attract new audiences, clients, and connections through your content.
- The easy-use platform lets you start up a blog even if you lack funds or technical expertise.
- LinkedIn’s targeting options enable your posts to be seen by people within your industry or field who are likely to have a genuine interest in reading quality published content on relevant topics.
- You can establish yourself as a Thought Leader in your industry or area of knowledge or expertise – potentially enhancing your professional image.
- LinkedIn’s Group feature enables you to share your content with like-minded individuals and businesses, whether they are connected with you or not.
- The platform can be used for content syndication – for instance for repurposing existing material, or sharing your blog with fresh audiences.
- It allows others to follow you if they like your content – resulting in further posts from you appearing in their newsfeeds.
- It offers the capacity to embed various media such as images, videos, or SlideShares.
- It allows you to post longer articles of over 1,000 words – ideal for complex industry topics or delving deeper into issues that are of interest to your audience.
MORE: How to Promote Your Thought Leadership Content
Tips for using LinkedIn’s publishing platform
LinkedIn is great for publishing B2B content, allowing you to reach receptive audiences and build up your reputation, but like all platforms, you need a plan in order to get the most out of it.
- The first step is to establish your purpose in producing and posting content. This might be to increase your website traffic, improve awareness of your product, or to connect with people of influence. It’s also important to understand what your audience wants and needs from you. Knowing your purpose and understanding your audience in this way will give you a much clearer picture of the type of content you need to produce.
- Take your time to produce good quality content. Quality is always important, but may be especially so on a professional network like LinkedIn – where members tend to have their brands, professional identities and careers on the line!
- Be consistent and regular with content production. If you want to build credibility and establish yourself as having expertise, it isn’t going to happen if you post once and then produce nothing for weeks or months.
- Consider using popular search terms in your posts. These can help people to more easily find your posts when doing searches in Google or another search engine.
- Create catchy and succinct titles for your posts. Include keywords if appropriate – but not at the expense of an engaging headline.
- Respond to comments made on your posts. This can help you to build relationships and establish a community of followers.
- Make use of LinkedIn’s analytics for publishing tool. This enables you to measure the impact of your posts, including the numbers of views, likes and shares, and to determine which types of audiences are being reached (by industry, location or other attributes).
- Share your content in your other networks. Monitor the response to see what platform works best for you, rather than simply sharing your posts everywhere.
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Finally, even if your first efforts don’t immediately gain a lot of traction on LinkedIn, persist with it, refining and improving your methods as you go. Alternatively, if you don’t have the time or knowledge to be consistent, get in touch with a content marketing service or a LinkedIn specialist for help.
Leonie Seysan is the Director of Article Writers Australia, and manages the team of professional writers and editors. She holds a Bachelor of Communications Degree (Media Studies).
