August 5, 2015 / in Content Marketing, LinkedIn / by Mic Johnson
Post written by Mic Johnson, Content Marketing Coach | LinkedIn Trainer | Website Guy | Rational Optimist | Jayhawk | Sushi Fan | @MJMeetings Husband
You may or may not know that LinkedIn has become a force when it comes to published content. It wasn’t always that way. People thought of LinkedIn as a business networking site and a place to look for a job. It’s so much more than that and they really changed the game and their trajectory when they announced in February 2014 (rather boldly, I might add) that they were “The Definitive Professional Publishing Platform.”
In that post, they said:
“Starting today, LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. Now members have the ability to follow other members that are not in their network and build their own group of followers.”
LinkedIn has 400 million people on it. One of the hardest things to do for any person or company is to gain followers and traction. There are so many people. There is so much content. It’s hard to break through and have your voice heard.
But LinkedIn said, “Hey, we’ve got the audience. We’ve given you the platform. Want to improve your personal brand? Want to encourage more people to learn about you and your company? Ok, then write something worthwhile. And then see what happens.”
Now I’ve been blogging for nearly 6 years. During that time I’ve posted all of my posts on the Blue Gurus Blog and then published the blog post links to our social accounts. That isn’t going to change anytime soon. That brings people to our website. That helps SEO. That’s just a good business practice for any business trying to market themselves.
But LinkedIn’s publishing platform intrigued me, so I tried it out. I didn’t put every post I’ve ever written out there, but I put a few. And recently I published “Don’t Look At My LinkedIn Profile.”
LinkedIn Pulse picked up my article and shared it in their “LinkedIn Tips” category. I’m not exactly sure how this all works, but suffice it to say that LinkedIn has people who are looking at the content that users are publishing.
And if they like it and have a place for it (it probably didn’t hurt that my post was actually an article about LinkedIn), then they’ll promote it for you.
I’ve never had so much traction for one post in my life. Sure, the title was eye catching and the content of the post was helpful, but the key was that LinkedIn Pulse picked it up and promoted it for me. All I had to do was take the time to write a quality post and publish it on LinkedIn.
They don’t do this with every article I write, but one thing I know for sure…they aren’t going to promote content you’re proud of if you don’t put it out there.
So the next time you write a blog post, put it on your company website, but also think about publishing it on LinkedIn. It lives on your profile going forward so people that visit your profile can always see it. And it just might get picked up by LinkedIn Pulse and give you much more visibility than you could’ve gotten by yourself.
I can’t imagine why any business professional wouldn’t take advantage of this opportunity. Creating awareness for any person or business is hard work. REALLY hard work.
LinkedIn has made that a whole lot easier. Publish a post today…and see what happens.
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