LinkedIn members, rejoice! In February of this year, LinkedIn opened its publishing platform to those of us who have yet to reach Influencer status. This means long-form posts, once exclusively available to the likes of Bill Gates, Richard Branson and others, are now open to all LinkedIn users.
But, before you go rushing off to share your knowledge and experience with your respective field, it’s important to understand both the benefits and setbacks of publishing your content to LinkedIn, whether it be on your personal profile or your company’s page.
Benefits
1) New publishing outlet. Publishing long-form posts FINALLY gives users the opportunity to share their information directly on LinkedIn. There are many great bloggers, journalists, and industry leaders who aren’t quite up to Influencer status, and this is a great opportunity for those people to share their stuff.
2) Increased visibility. Your work gets posted to your professional profile, gets shared with your connections and followers, and can be searched both on and off LinkedIn. Increased visibility often means increased traffic to your other channels and can help generate leads.
3) Give your company a louder voice in the industry. By publishing to and among professionals in your industry, it will be much easier to position yourself or your company as a thought leader. Writing about and engaging in industry discussions helps clients and competitors alike understand who they’re working with.
Setbacks
1) Difficulty measuring success of posts. LinkedIn doesn’t show how many times your work has been shared through other social media channels. It simply shows views, likes, and comments on your LinkedIn page. For those of us who want to know where our information is being shared, the lack of metrics is certainly frustrating.
2) Content overload. In order for publications on LinkedIn to maintain success and relevancy, it’s important to treat these posts differently than you would a typical blog post. Posting once a week should be sufficient, and it’s important to ensure the quality of your post. Too many mediocre or poorly written posts will likely decrease you or your company’s influence.
3) Duplicate Content Risk. While LinkedIn allows you to republish your existing content (assuming you own the rights to the original content), there is a risk that Google could view these posts as duplicate content. A simple way to prevent any issues is to rewrite your existing content enough so that it won’t be seen as duplicate.
What has your experience been with LinkedIn Publisher? Are there any benefits or setbacks you’ve noticed that we haven’t discussed? Tell us about them in the comments section: