By Ritchie Pettauer

Your expertise doesn’t fit into a status update? You definitely should take a closer look at LinkedIn’s publishing platform. Their content management system doesn’t require any special technical knowledge, thus enabling everybody to publish articles easily. While the user interface is easily accessible, finding the right content for your target group can prove a much more challenging task. And there are a few things to be considered before spreading your message. 

Why publish articles in a business network?

LinkedIn has focused on content marketing for quite some time. Until 2014, access to the publishing platform had been limited to a hand-picked group of “influencers” like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Barack Obama. In February 2014, LinkedIn opened the content management system to all its users.

In January 2015, LinkedIn users published 40.000 articles per week on average. Like everywhere else on the net, the golden rules applies, in this case, too: In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to identify the perfect topics and the right tonality – content, that strikes a chord with your intended audience.

How to publish a blog posting on LinkedIn

Don’t mind the interface! If you have ever used a word processor or a rich text editor like Outlook, you’re actually over-qualified to do this. Since LinkedIn clearly puts the focus on content, design options are quite limited.

Follow these steps to publish a blog posting / an article:

Best Practices: Publish on LinkedIn like a Pro

Notifications for new blog postings: Just like Facebook, LinkedIn filters content in your newsfeed. When you publish a status update, only a part of your network might see your message appear on their personalized homepage. This doesn’t apply to blog posting (might change in the future): Whenever you publish a new post, all your connections are notified via the small flag icon in the main menu. This kind of reach requires a well-planned strategy and very appealing content, as too high a frequency might annoy your network. Google indexability: LinkedIn blog posting are indexed by Google, which makes them accessible even to non-registered members. Keep this in mind and publish only content which is meant for the general public.

Multi-language capability: Unlike the rest of the platform, LinkedIn’s publishing tool does not support different language versions for single postings. The majority of articles are currently written in English. While it is possible to publish in other languages, there is currently no way to restrict notifications accordingly.

Full text versus teaser: Generally you should decide on one of these to strategies: Will you post full articles or teasers with a “read more” link to content hosted on your own homepage/blog? There is no right or wrong – your decision should be based on your primary goal: page visitors or LinkedIn visibility.

Featured Images: Always upload a featured image. On search and overview pages, postings with eye-catching images attract a lot more attention.

Moderation: Comments cannot be deactivated. Keep in mind to moderate your postings: answer questions and reply to comments.
Promoting your postings: Publishing your articles in related groups or re-posting them a couple of days later as a status update (just copy the article link from your browser) increases your reach drastically. LinkedIn’s publishing platform offers a wide range of options and a potentially high reach – if you manage to create content your clients find valuable, helpful and/or inspiring, you’re sure to succeed.

About the author:

Ritchie Pettauer is an independent consultant, specializing in the creating and implementation of online-marketing strategies. In addition to teaching at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna and at several universities of applied sciences in Austria (online content management, customer experience management, web analytics), he also holds discussions and workshops on “Corporate Online Marketing and Social Media.” The popular weblog, datenschmutz, has also been part of his work since 2006.  View his full resume on LinkedIn.