In my experience, LinkedIn is often underutilized by many people beyond just having a personal profile or company page. Participating in groups and sharing thought leader content in update posts represents a huge positioning opportunity, which can lead to sales if relationships are nurtured well.
But publishing articles as native content directly on platform can take it up a notch further still. Articles can reach a much broader audience beyond just your contacts, or those in groups you participate in.
You can “start a post” or “write an article” on Linkedin. Posts tend to be where we share interesting things we have found – links to articles written by others, videos and images, curated content with an introduction reflecting our own views, or perhaps a link to a blog post we have written ourselves with a brief introduction. Posts tend to be a regular drip of shorter content that we share. They are viewable only to our network connections. They’re great for interacting with others, sharing opinions, and positioning as a thought leader.
Written articles are like blog posts published in native form on LinkedIn. I tend to re-publish blog posts on LinkedIn that have performed well on my website. Occasionally I will edit or reconfigure an article specifically for LinkedIn. Written articles have headlines, featured images, and are usually much longer. They are also publicly viewable beyond your LinkedIn network. LinkedIn may choose to distribute or feature your content, but you own the rights to anything published there. Company pages can not publish written articles, but individuals can publish from their personal profile. Written articles can be a great way to profile knowledge and thought leadership in a particular area.
6 Tips for success when you’re publishing articles directly on LinkedIn
Here are 6 tips I pulled from a discussion with Viveka Von Rosen at Social Media Marketing World last year about publishing written articles on LinkedIn.
1. Headlines should be 40-50 characters. Consider how they will be viewed on a mobile device as well as laptop. Text wrap should be avoided.
2. “List” and “How to” headlines tend to perform well. Headlines that are “questions” do not do as well.
3. Being a little verbose is OK on LinkedIn. In fact it is preferred. People like to read long-form content on LinkedIn. Research suggests 1,500 – 2,000 words in ideal.
4. Use images in the article. Highlight one up front under the headline and use 5 additional images within the article. But don’t add videos. Multimedia assets lead to fewer views.
5. Promote your LinkedIn article on other social media networks. Research suggests that Twitter has the highest correlation to LinkedIn metrics.
6. Publish articles on Thursday. Total views on LinkedIn is highest on Thursdays, followed by Sunday. Friday has the lowest views of the entire week.
One of my goals is to utilize LinkedIn more consciously in 2019. I have always been active there, but whenever I make even the slightest accelerated effort, inevitably it pays dividends for my business. Perhaps you can benefit from this prompt and insight as well!
