Do you want to build an expert position on LinkedIn? Online content publishing is a good way to showcase your skills and reach more audiences. A LinkedIn article is the perfect way to showcase your presence on a large platform.
Many small businesses run a blog on their site to publish new content. However, this requires the user to first visit your business page. Not all small businesses have an extensive website with a lot of traffic.
Why not use a different site with a stronger reach to publish your articles. LinkedIn comes with the help, which has a publishing platform until recently called LinkedIn Pulse, on which you can publish LinkedIn articles. It’s almost like having your own blog, but without the hassle of running one.
Is it worth publishing content in multiple places?
When creating content, keep in mind the advice of marketing personality Neil Patel, “Create a lot of content and place it in as many places as possible to increase views, readers and customers. If you want to increase brand awareness and engagement, you need to be active on as many platforms as possible to spread your brand online. Many companies miss a huge opportunity to publish content because they don’t realize that they can publish full articles on LinkedIn via LinkedIn Pulse. “
What is LinkedIn Pulse
LinkedIn Pulse is a news aggregation channel that was introduced in 2010, but initially was reserved for famous influencers on LinkedIn to publish to it. In 2014, LinkedIn made a long-form self-publishing platform available to all members. At this point, Pulse was on a separate platform, but in 2017, it began filtering messages on the members’ homepage.
LinkedIn no longer calls it “Pulse”, calling it a “publishing platform.” But many users still use the name “Pulse”.
For clarification, LinkedIn has another publishing option – posting updates to your wall. But this is a short form of publication. The updates you publish also appear in the news feeds on the home page. LinkedIn Short Posts can be up to 700 characters long for posts on a company website and 1,300 characters for statuses on individual accounts. On the other hand, articles have no character limit. However, there are reports that say articles with over 120,000 characters will be truncated by LinkedIn.
What do you gain with LinkedIn articles
In addition to increasing the reach of your publications and creating your position as an industry expert, publishing articles on Linkedn has additional advantages:
- Published articles are shared with your contacts and followers on their news feeds and sometimes via notifications.
- Members who are not on your network can start following you directly from your article, making your next article visible in their feeds.
- Your article may be searchable both on and off LinkedIn, depending on your profile settings. If your public profile is visible to everyone, your articles will be disseminated publicly and searchable even to users outside of LinkedIn.
Organic reach thanks to LinkedIn articles
LinkedIn articles are also indexed by Google and appear in organic search results. This allows you to reach users who would not normally come to your website or your company’s blog.
Additional benefits of publishing articles on LinkedIn:
- Anyone on LinkedIn can track the articles you post. They don’t have to be connected to you.
- LinkedIn provides article analytics so you can see your readers’ industries and positions. They allow you to better analyze your audience.
How to write an article on LinkedIn
On the LinkedIn main page, after logging into your account, you have the option to start publishing. It can be a short text update, adding a photo, video, job offer and the option to write an article.
After clicking on Write an article, you will be transferred to the LinkedIn platform, which will allow you to publish the article.
Tips before publishing an article
What you need to know before publishing an article:
- Write interesting new content or work on existing, pre-prepared content that will show your substantive knowledge and expert position in the industry
- Add an attractive title.
- Check your article several times before publishing. A single mistake in the article may be bad for experts’ perception.
- Add images, videos and / or other media to make the article more attractive.
- Add hashtags.
- After publishing, please share the article on other social media.
How to write an interesting article
As for the content of an article, you can write something completely new, rewrite content previously published elsewhere, or simply republish an article that was previously published on another website or blog. If you do not want to duplicate content from your website, so that Google indexes the content of your blog, rather than the LinkedIn article, you can use the LinkedIn article to publish a short sneak peek with a link directing you to read the full article on your website.
How to find the topic of the first article
Are you looking for an easy topic for your first article? Write about what you know related to your industry, your products and services.
Search Google for the same topics you want to write about and see what other experts are saying about them. Write an article with quotes from several of them, with appropriate attribution.
Also, see and write about LinkedIn Pulse articles by industry leaders and influencers with relevant sources.
You can also use articles and blog posts from other people. Read them, make a summary, add your comment and post by linking to the source articles.
Make sure you have a suitable article title to grab the reader’s attention immediately. Your Title will appear in various places on LinkedIn – in the article itself, in user news feeds, in your Activity profile – and on other search engines, so make sure it’s good.
Add a short biography at the bottom of your article that you will use in every future article. One or two paragraphs that introduce yourself and link to your website.
Article length
The best length of articles is under constant discussion. Some argue that only very long content attracts readers’ attention. Others argue that more frequent, shorter posts are a better option. The choice is yours, but we recommend publishing short articles from time to time. You will appear in the user feed more often. Even posts that are only a few paragraphs long will benefit you. Create your blogging strategy and learn the habit of posting on Pulse as often as possible.
However, refrain from promotional items. LinkedIn states in its Publishing Platform Guidelines: “Ads and promotions for events, products, or services are not appropriate for posting.” LinkedIn can block your articles from intrusive promotion. Also, users do not like when articles are a form of promotion, instead of sharing knowledge.
LinkedIn publishing platform guidelines
Before posting articles on LinkedIn, it’s a good idea to read the “Publishing Platform Guidelines”. Below you will find the most important information:
LinkedIn may distribute your content, annotate your content (e.g. to emphasize that your views may not be that of LinkedIn), and sell ads on pages where your content appears.
- Expect your articles to be public and shareable. You have no control over who shares them.
- Make sure your content is fully professional and don’t post anything that is misleading, fraudulent, obscene, threatening, hateful, defamatory, discriminatory or illegal.
- You are responsible for the content of your articles, including any damage caused to others by you or any damage caused to you as a result of using this service.
- LinkedIn may restrict, suspend, or terminate your LinkedIn account and / or disable your articles due to a breach of the User Agreement.
LinkedIn articles – your secret weapon
As you can see, publishing articles on LinkedIn is a good way to reach additional contacts on LinkedIn. Thanks to them, you can show that you are a valuable contact and expert in your industry. Use LinkedIn as a blog portal where your content will have greater reach than on your corporate blog.
Please visit our blog for more tips on using LinkedIn for sales. Join our community on LinkedIn and learn how to take full advantage of its sales opportunities.
Make an appointment with one of our Business Analysts and introduce automation to your sales on LinkedIn.