LinkedIn’s publishing platform allows users to create longer form posts, similar to blog posts, within the LinkedIn platform. Originally only open to LinkedIn Influencers, LinkedIn began opening its publishing platform to other users in early 2014.
When you publish a post on LinkedIn’s publishing platform, your post can be seen on your Profile, and a Notification will be sent to your Network, advising them that a new post is available. LinkedIn users who are not connected to you can also follow your posts and get notified when you’ve posted something new.
The LinkedIn publishing platform is a great way to expand your influence and demonstrate your professional knowledge. It is particularly good for those who would like to get started with blogging but do not have their own blogs, or whose firms do not have blogs. LinkedIn is a huge platform with many members, and your LinkedIn posts may even get more exposure than posts on your own blog.
For those who already have a blog, LinkedIn may be a way to gain more exposure for your content: re-work, split up, or develop a new twist on existing blog content and re-publish it to LinkedIn's publishing platform.
There is no word limit to a long form post on the publishing platform, but LinkedIn recommends that these posts be more than three paragraphs in length for the best visibility. Adding an image to your post will make it more interesting, and may entice others to click on it from your Profile.
Noah Kagan of AppSumo offers some additional tips for maximizing your LinkedIn long form posts based on a study of successful posts on the LinkedIn publisher platform:
- Titles between 40-49 characters in length get the most views
- One image added to your post is great(especially at the top – it acts as a header image for the post), but those with 8 images gained the most attention
- Adding multimedia elements such as videos or presentations may reduce your post’s visibility, based on Kagan’s study
- How-to or list-style posts perform well, especially if the headline indicates that the post is a how-to or list post
- Longer posts perform better than shorter ones
- Posts should be easy to read (Kagan recommends 11 year old reading level)
- Promote your long form LinkedIn posts on other social media channels
(See the full article – and the rest of Kagan’s list - at: http://okdork.com/2014/09/09/linkedin-publishing-success/)
To get started using the Publishing platform, simply click in the LinkedIn Updates box and then click on the pencil icon:
Doing so will bring up a window that looks like any other word processing program. It’s easy to use, with a familiar interface.
LinkedIn will also provide analytics so you can see how much attention your posts are getting:
If you're looking for a place to begin content marketing and haven't established your own platform yet, LinkedIn's publishing platform may be just the place to start - it's easy to use, professional-looking, and is ready to go as soon as you write your first post.
This is a great way to get more out of LinkedIn. I have a small quibble about the numbers, though. By itself, correlation does not imply causation. To take a ridiculous example, if you knew the time of day when each LinkedIn author was born, you could determine that LinkedIn posts by writers who were born between xx:xx and yy:yy got the most reads. A maximum, mean, and minimum must exist for any statistic.
It does make sense that posts with several photos attract more attention than posts with one or none. But should we really strive for titles with 40-49 characters? I'm not so sure.
Posted by: Steven Finell | February 11, 2015 at 01:02 PM