LinkedIn posts are great!
But, apart from the regular posts that you’re putting out, LinkedIn articles are another good way of mixing up the content that you’re releasing and getting your prospects to engage with you.
In this quick guide, I’ll show you how to add publications to LinkedIn and pick out the ones that you should be featuring.
Why Use LinkedIn Articles?
LinkedIn articles are a great way to add more variety to the content that you put out.
They use the LinkedIn Publisher platform which allows you to write full-fledged articles with rich media like videos, photos, and even, Tweets.
Think of it as your blog for LinkedIn.
There are plenty of reasons why we like it so much.
Since LinkedIn is a professional platform, publishing articles there gives you an edge over a lot of your peers. You show your professionalism, highlight your work, and also give people a glimpse of the way you think.
This helps with branding.
People who get published – even those who self-publish – are usually thought leaders that take the time to give back to their prospects.
But, it’s not just that.
You get to give value to your prospects, and that’s what matters the most.
Another important benefit is being able to extend the reach of the publications that you’re putting out. This helps with creating an omnichannel presence.
A LinkedIn article can be indexed by Google, and you can have an article of yours appear in search. Now, this might not directly affect your website’s SEO, but this increases your personal visibility on search.
if you have a link within the article, you can use the incoming traffic and redirect it to your site or landing page.
However, LinkedIn articles also come with their own disadvantages.
First of all, they usually don’t get as many views as LinkedIn posts.
If you’re looking to go viral, that’s a little more difficult to do with LinkedIn articles.
Posts are easier to deal with because LinkedIn articles require the prospect to leave the comfort of their feeds to view them on another page.
People don’t really like that on social media. They prefer content that is easier to access.
So unless your title is intriguing enough or the perceived content value is high, you’re not getting as many engagements as regular posts.
This, in turn, affects its shareability, since they have to view the content to determine its worth and that likelihood is lower, they tend to share articles less often.
How to Add Publications to LinkedIn?
To add a publication to LinkedIn, head over to your newsfeed, and in the “Start a post” section, you’ll find an option to “Write article”. Go ahead and click on it.
This should take you to a publishing page that’s got a very intuitive UI where you can start working on your article.
It doesn’t have hyper-customizable features since you still have to follow LinkedIn’s standards.
You have the option to add a header image that also doubles as your featured image, create a Headline which is an H1, and the main text editor that allows you to put down the bulk of your text.
Confused about image dimensions? We have a guide here.
There’s plenty of rich media that you can add directly to your article by clicking the box in the margin to the right.
You can add popular image types, videos, slides or presentations, links, and even snippets.
Just like regular blog posts, you want to create a good mix of media in between your text to spice up your article.
This also serves as a reason to break up your text into readable chunks. As we regularly advise, make sure that you keep your paragraphs up to three lines only. This will help you optimize the article for mobile.
LinkedIn publishing also comes with an autosave function where it will routinely save the work that you do. this comes in useful if you want to take a break from writing.
You can access this menu from the left-hand side of the sticky navigation.
There are options to view your old drafts or check out the articles that you’ve published in the past.
Once you’re done writing your article, go hit the “Publish” on the upper right-hand side of the page and you’re done. You’ve not got an article on LinkedIn.
What Should I Be Posting About?
First of all, identify the ideal customer profiles that you’re targeting on the platform.
This should form the bulk of your audience, and these are the people you are going to be writing for.
Remember, LinkedIn articles are not LinkedIn posts, they are two completely separate things.
With LinkedIn articles, you are expected to take an in-depth look into the things that you write about, just as you would with your own blog on your website.
LinkedIn articles give you the leeway to write as many words as you would want – we know that there is a technical limit, but there is no way you’d hit that.
We advise that you write a minimum of 600-700 words, this gives your article some weight and makes it feel like a real article. You don’t want to go overboard though.
Remember, most of the people reading your articles are probably on their phones. Your goal is to educate and convert, not drone and bore.
As per topics, that’s completely up to your niche and target audience. Keep the topics interesting and make sure they’re relevant.
Comments
Comments should be enabled by default, and it’s a great way to keep the engagement going.
However, LinkedIn also allows you to disable the comments on your article should you wish to do so.
All you have to do is click “Comment settings” on the article followed by “Disable comments”.
Hashtags
Hashtags are still recommended in LinkedIn articles.
As with LinkedIn posts, you don’t want to use too many.
The goal is for you to be able to get LinkedIn to recognize and organize your content with the subjects that your hashtags are grouping your articles in.
Read more about LinkedIn hashtags here!
However, note that you can’t edit hashtags once you’ve published your article.
The Truncated Post
If you’re looking to drive traffic from LinkedIn to your website, then consider the truncated post approach.
A truncated post is a portion of an article from your website that is published on LinkedIn.
Here’s how it works.
Take a piece of highly engaging content and determine the parts with the most value, you want to include half of the value in your LinkedIn article, and then include a link to the entirety of the article on your website.
Say you have a listicle with ten items. All you have to do is include the first five in your LinkedIn article and then stick in a link to the original publication on your website so that your reader has access to all 10.
We like it because it’s a very efficient way to release content.
You don’t have to specially craft new content for LinkedIn, you can use something existing and maybe give it a new twist.
If you have a piece of content that hasn’t had traction lately, you can breathe new life into it by publishing it as a LinkedIn article. You get engagements on LinkedIn and you get some traffic going into your website.
Using Pods
LinkedIn Pods are a good way of getting the first volley of engagements for your LinkedIn article.
Apps like Lempod allow you to share posts and articles on their platform so that like-minded individuals can help comment and share the article.
This initial round of engagement can help get your content in front of more people.
Takeaways
Publications are that small detail in your profile that provides a lot of social proof.
It’s one of the best trust signals by association.
And, here’s why.
People trust major publications to speak the truth, and if you combine with the fact that it is often difficult to get published, you have a double-edged sword when it comes to building social proof.
Now we’ve talked a lot about social proof in the past.
And, it’s for good reason.
A little social proof can go a long way in driving conversions forward.
So, don’t skip out on the little details.
They might be small but they do a lot of big things.
