Over 675 million people use LinkedIn at least once a month to look for jobs, connect with business partners, friends, clients, and check-in on people’s professional lives.
It’s not uncommon to see other users posting about promotions and job anniversaries, asking for career advice, promoting the company they work for, endorsing their peer’s skills, and showing off their latest work, but fewer take advantage of the social network’s tool for more personal and corporate branding: article writing. In fact, only three million LinkedIn users share thought leadership content every week.
Read on to learn more about the value of writing articles for LinkedIn.
1. Opportunity for personal and professional branding
Creating articles that provide value to peers in your network or that help your customers doesn’t just get your message out in the world. It also is a great way to build a brand, personal or professional.When you write and share high-quality content using LinkedIn Articles, your insights can help you make more (and stronger) connections. In fact, according to DemandMetric, 82% of consumers feel increased positivity about a company after reading custom content, while 90% find good content makes them more likely to take action.
Publishing relevant articles based on your area of expertise is a great way to attract your target audience. If you’re in HR, that might mean sharing a piece about the “5 best interview questions” or if you’re a professional trainer that might mean writing about the “benefits of using an exercise ball over a swivel chair.” Pick topics that you can write about that others might find valuable, and your LinkedIn articles will help you gain your reader’s trust.
2. Reach more people
It’s easy to think if you don’t have many connections on LinkedIn that exposure to your article will be limited. Did you know that every time you post an article your first level-connections get a notification? From there, once just one of your first-level connections likes, comments, and/or shares your content, your LinkedIn Article will be shown to your second- and third-level connections, too.Additionally, if your account is public, anyone on LinkedIn can follow your posts (yes, even those you are not connected to). If you start to regularly published content using LinkedIn Articles, you have the opportunity to build your professional reputation.
3. Get insights from LinkedIn Analytics
While Google Analytics can tell you a lot of things about your website and its audiences, the service doesn’t provide a lot of nitty-gritty specifics. LinkedIn Analytics is different. Once you have published an article on LinkedIn, they will provide you with informative reports on page views, likes, followers, and other types of performance metrics.The best part about the stats is that you can view performance information on individual LinkedIn articles, including details about where your content’s viewers work, their titles, and the geographic regions where they live.
To view stats: click “write an article” on your LinkedIn homepage, click “more,” and then select “articles.” That will prompt a pop-up window to appear from which you can select an article you’d like to get analytics for. Click “view stats” to see more about its performance.4. Give new life to old content
You might not always have time to create fresh new content to share as LinkedIn Articles, and that’s okay.Do you have well-received presentation that you shared at a conference a couple years ago sitting on Google Drive? Have an old post on your personal blog that still resonates today? Good content is good content, whether it was created five hours, five days, or five months ago. Recycle your past works that hold up as new LinkedIn Articles.
You don’t have to post content every day, but the more often you share things of value, the quicker (and easier) it will be to see results from your LinkedIn profile. So rehash that older, yet still relevant, content as LinkedIn Articles for additional exposure and more engagement.
If you’ve just scratched the surface of using LinkedIn, now is a great time to try LinkedIn Articles to extend your reach. With the cost of traditional marketing growing and the ability to be “seen” keeps getting harder across all social media channels, sharing thought leadership on LinkedIn is a great way to get seen, build your reputation, and support lead generation—all without a high price tag that comes with typical forms of paid advertising.
It’s time to publish that article you’ve been sitting on for months and take advantage of LinkedIn Articles and start reaching more people and making more connections.
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