Wait for it: 230 million LinkedIn users around the world will soon be piling on the publishing bandwagon.
LinkedIn says it is “always looking for new ways for members to contribute professional insights.” That means it is allowing members – as well as the so-called “Influencers” – to publish “long-form posts about their expertise and interests.” Not everyone has the ability yet, but it is being rolled out to the aforementioned 230 million.
It’s a good idea, in theory, and I’ve noticed myself that publishing such a post creates a bit of a stir. LinkedIn waves the posts in front of people and many do view them. The posts certainly seem to increase your visibility and invite comment. Some people, like Alex Pirouz who cited the 230 million, say they’ve also generated leads and increased their following.
But. Is it just me, or is the noise of multiple posts getting louder and louder? It’s getting harder to see what your connections are doing and reading, because so many people are creating these long-form posts.
And I haven’t figured this out yet: Are these posts replacing blog posts (and is that LinkedIn’s evil plan?), or are they repeats of blog posts? Because who has time to blog incessantly, and write frequent long-form posts, and comment and like and tweet and write Facebook updates?
Are you writing long-form posts? How are you balancing them with blog posts? Please share in the comments.
Now it’s April 2015 and it seems everyone on Linkedin now has access to the post feature.
90% of updates I see under “notifications” is “so-and-so published a post”, “so-and-so published a post”, “so-and-so published a post”, etc.
My tactic is to write long form posts first on my own blog web site, then re-post the same (sometimes, slightly edited) post on Linkedin. I’d give Google a few days to index my original post, so they know that the Linkedin versions is syndicated.
Here’s an example on the topic of Email Newsletters
I always include the line: “Originally published on the [one of my two sites] blog under the title XYZ”
Since I started publishing on Linkedin I’ve added 10% of new followers who are not my direct connections.
Additionally, I always link the republished post on Linkedin to the original on my site, and tag the link with “lipost” so I can track how many visitors I get from this.
Thanks for sharing your tactics, Boris. So far, I’ve only (occasionally) reposted some articles that were originally blog posts, but I’m being selective.
Like you, I notice that most of the notifications these days are “so-and-so published a post.” As I say, I can see the value in all this posting, but it’s noisy. And truth be told, a little annoying.