LinkedIn has two main features designed to help you share ideas about your business. You can either share content published somewhere or write an article.
While about 3 million users share content on LinkedIn weekly, the latter option has the potential to become an important part of your content marketing strategy.
The drawback is that a published article is attributed to an individual’s profile, not your company page. It also seems hard to measure the effectiveness of such publications. However, there are some tried and proven strategies to make blogging on LinkedIn serve your business objectives.
Sharing Articles Versus Writing On Linkedin Pulse
A LinkedIn update is similar to a post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. You can write a text post, share a photo, or a link. This option is a right choice when you need to drive traffic to your website using social media. It is also useful if your content strategy requires sharing third-party content, e.g. announcements and news from your partners.
Publishing articles on LinkedIn is, in fact, blogging on the Pulse platform opened to public in February 2016. The Pulse developers invested plenty of time and effort to marry the content on Pulse with the users’ identity. It was designed so that professionals could share and consume long-form content. For better mobile experience, users can download the Pulse mobile app (find out more about it here).
This content is called articles, not posts. Remember that by clicking on an article, people are expecting a story, not a link or a 100-word announcement. The stats show that longer articles are more popular.
Publishing On Linkedin Drawbacks
79% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn as an effective source for generating leads. The platform delivers value by creating brand awareness and engaging the right audiences while driving people to take actions.
LinkedIn articles are displayed on a profile of a user who published them and shared with his or her first-degree connections. They are attributed to individuals, so to make these posts work for your business, you need to ensure that the update is also posted on your company page.
They can be distributed more broadly if your content is relevant and also shared over other social networks, via email, or through LinkedIn groups. It makes sense to encourage your employees to become ambassadors and share valuable content associated with your business on LinkedIn as well as on other resources.
Keep in mind that LinkedIn can feature your article in some sections of the homepage for higher exposure and pull it into the Pulse app. The problem is that you cannot guarantee this since an algorithm makes a decision whether to promote your article or not.
You can track the basic stats related to every published article. The number of likes, shares, and comments show the level of engagement of your target audience. You can also view analytics after clicking on the icon as it is shown in the image below.
So, you will get access to a number of views and a source of views. Although the data is rather limited, you can compare the audience engagement on the Pulse platform with the one on your blog, for example. The point is the more engaging your content is, the more exposure it gets. Some stats show that every 5 likes will get you in front of about 2,000 people.
Getting Benefits From Linkedin Blogging
Despite the aforementioned, the LinkedIn still has a number of advantages for businesses. The publishing platform provides compelling options for content marketing. The articles are easy to find, they are engaging and shareable.
Your content gets in front of the target audience, and you also get other benefits by using Pulse:
- You can connect your content to your corporate page on LinkedIn and, therefore, increase its credibility, attract leads, inform employees, find partners, and communicate your ideas.
- You share expertise to attract new clients and build your professional network.
- The platform provides easy and sufficient features for blogging, no technical background is needed, so many of your employees can become your ambassadors online.
- Users who are not in your network can follow you, so your new content appears in their LinkedIn news feed.
- The platform is ranked highly by search engines, so your articles are more likely to appear in search results.
Blogging How-To’s
The detailed instruction on how to publish articles on LinkedIn is provided here. However, to reach your business goals, follow these hints.
Keep Your Company Page Updated
Before you start publishing on LinkedIn, make sure to update your company page. Your employees who publish content within your marketing strategy should also optimize their LinkedIn profiles: write their current company and position, add publications to their accomplishments, etc.
Create Unique, High-quality Articles
The articles on LinkedIn should be unique and well-written. The reason why you should invest your time in creating something specifically for LinkedIn is that you blog for the demographic on the platform.
However, some bloggers duplicate content they post on a corporate blog to gain higher exposure. To understand whether this works for you or not, test and then analyze statistics. Either way, it is recommended to change at least some text, mention where the content was previously published and provide the link, and republish an article from a few months before. Ensure that the content is up to date before submitting.
Prepare Visuals
Relevant and catching visuals help you attract the readers and stand out in the news feed. A chosen image should resonate with the demographics you target. Embed a YouTube video or a Slideshare presentation in the body of your article if appropriate. Though, keep in mind that video may take a long time to load on mobile, which is important since 57% of people who visit LinkedIn do so using a mobile device.
Provide Links
Linking to relevant resources across LinkedIn and the Web is a must. On the one hand, you recognize the work of others by citing quotes from opinion leaders, corporate reports, industry news, etc. On the other hand, you connect your ideas to the ideas of the community. That is why it is also worthy to share your article posted on LinkedIn inside and outside the platform.
Publication Frequency
Publishing frequency will affect the frequency of network updates. Again, there is competition in the news feed of your target audience. Besides, professionals without a personal website often use LinkedIn Pulse the same way they would use their blog. In most cases, you should not publish with the same frequency. Take a look on the research results on what’s the best time to post on Linkedin.
Use Networking Possibilities
You can partner with opinion leaders to reach more people. One of the best strategies is to get featured in a group. Groups are places where like-minded professionals discuss themed topics and share experience. For example, the Digital Marketing group has about 360,000 members. If you want to share your expert article on how artificial intelligence will change UX, for example, do not hesitate to become a member of this group and share your content there.
Final Thoughts
LinkedIn provides a good option for publishers. However, it is hard to get out of the crowd and engage a large audience with your content. The provided pieces of advice are tried and proven ways to get a higher exposure and share information about your business, technology, expertise, etc. For more information on how to improve your brand visibility, check out this article.
Linkedin Framework:
* Adapted lead image: 
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