Why Linkedin Publishing is Worth Your Time
With the huge amount of content available online, it has never been easier to find an expert opinion, article or commentary on (literally) any subject. Furthermore, professional social networks such as LinkedIn and Quora have allowed people to easily engage with the creators of this content, and for those creators to be recognised as experts by a much larger network than they could otherwise physically reach.
So why is the LinkedIn Publishing feature worth your time and effort?
Sector Expertise
The old adage that ‘people buy from people’ is now more relevant than ever, and just because you represent an authoritative and respected company or institution doesn’t mean your personal brand is not important.
People expect to find ‘real-life’ evidence of your personal experience and proficiency that stretches beyond the biography on your website. Although there is no guarantee that sharing your knowledge will directly win you work, it will certainly give you a competitive advantage over those that have provided less or no evidence of their expertise.
Audience Volume
Where else will you find a network of 870,000 people who follow any content that is posted about ‘Finance and Banking’ or 703,000 who have signed up to see content about ‘Law and Government’?
LinkedIn allows you to reach a much bigger network than is possible to reach through other channels or by offline networking. Furthermore, the people on LinkedIn have signed up to see the kind of content you are posting. And your content isn’t just limited to your contacts – LinkedIn publishing allows anyone to see your content, then to follow your publishing feed.
As an example, I recently posted an article about consumer insights. Within a single day the article had received over 300 views from around the world, with a significant number of those viewers representing my ‘target audience’ in terms of sector and seniority. The article was shared to Twitter and liked on LinkedIn, and views of my profile shot up overnight. What’s more, I gained around 20 followers from various parts of the world, including 2 or 3 highly desirable individuals who I would love to see my future content.
How could I have realistically achieved this in one day anywhere else?
Size Doesn’t Matter
I mentioned that the reach of your published articles is not limited to your immediate contacts, but it is also true to say that the size of your immediate network has little effect on how viral your content can go. Good quality, catchy content can go very far, regardless, as this post shows. The author usually receives around 200 views per post, yet this one has over 61,000!
More important than connections and followers is analysis of the success of your content. Linkedin allows you to easily see how well your content has been received, in turn allowing you to make more informed decisions about the style and nature of future articles.
Virgin Territory
The issue with many channels is that they are saturated with content, making it hard for your content to be noticed. Granted, the volume of content being published on LinkedIn is significantly increasing, but it is still new enough to allow you to get an early foothold.
All the signs point to the fact that this feature will continue to grow in stature, and it appears that LinkedIn has started to act as a platform for people seeking expertise and industry insight. If you think of LinkedIn as a search engine for individuals seeking content from other individuals, the importance of contributing becomes even clearer.
In summary, once you have populated and optimised your LinkedIn profile, if you only consider then using LinkedIn for one thing, use it for publishing content.
