People can’t get enough of meaningful conversations and it’s your job as a businessperson to engage your audience. If you’ve networked any time during the past decade, you know that virtual connections are as important as real life connections. When it comes to online platforms, however, it’s not only who you know, it’s what you know, and how you choose to share it with others.
LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, connects people to over 364 million members in 200 countries and territories. With an impressive sign-up rate of two new members per second, it has unlimited marketing potential. People wanting to connect to influential people in their chosen industry find the network’s wide range of membership options irresistible. One, in particular, LinkedIn’s Pulse, has caught the eye of marketers and business professionals worldwide.
With “content marketing” being huge buzz words these days with people looking to generate more traffic back to their businesses, LinkedIn Pulse gives people another valuable and credible place to share content that gets people’s attention. If you have put any focus on building a network on LinkedIn at all, you’ve already got a built-in audience that will potentially see and share any new articles you post on LinkedIn Pulse.
What is LinkedIn Pulse?
Pulse is the award-winning news application offered by LinkedIn. In addition to being named to Apple’s App Store Hall of Fame, it is an Android Editor’s Choice app, one of TIME’s top 50 iPhone apps of 2011, and recipient of the Apple Design Award. Pulse allows LinkedIn members to create and share content written by influencers in a variety of industries. Three different categories, Your News, Top Posts and Discover make posts accessible and digestible.
Benefits of Marketing with Pulse
The marketing potential of Pulse is almost untapped at the moment. Yet, every good marketer knows that connecting with the right audience at the right time has positive results. If you’re still on the fence as to whether or not to add LinkedIn’s tool to your arsenal, here are some compelling reasons to do so.
First and foremost, Pulse gives you access to influential people. These are the decision-makers that put your company in the spotlight. They’re the business connections you’d spend years acquiring if the internet didn’t exist.
Next, it’s possible to share your knowledge in a highly targeted way. Content marketing is hit or miss in many cases. You rely on search engine algorithms for making your blogs discoverable.
With LinkedIn Pulse, your audience already exists. You don’t have to jump through hoops to interest them. You do, however, need to create quality articles that they read, comment on and share with others in their inner circle.
More importantly, Pulse increases search engine visibility. Strategically placed backlinks make it possible to get people back to your website, where you really want them. It also opens the door to other blogging and public speaking opportunities. When people see value in your content, they’ll believe in your credibility. There’s a demand for your knowledge and expertise so make sure to share what you know and love.
Finally, since LinkedIn is still such an untapped content publishing platform by so many popular niches, simply posting on LinkedIn can boost your influence in your niche. Many people aren’t aware that LinkedIn Pulse is an open publishing platform that anyone can publish to. Having articles there can make you look like you are published in a highly visible, highly credible publication.
Drafting a Message That Gets Attention
After reading through the benefits of LinkedIn Pulse, it’s hard not to use it as a marketing tool going forward. With instant approval, business professionals don’t lose valuable time and traffic waiting for an article to post. Results are instantaneous and profitable. Even shorter articles under 1,000 words do their part in getting people interested in what a person has to say and offer so draft your words wisely.
Here’s how to publish long-form posts on LinkedIn:
Draft your message in the word processing program of your choice. Although it’s possible to write the article directly on LinkedIn, it’s not advisable. If your system fails, you lose the work. It’s better to copy the article and paste it into LinkedIn once drafted.
Proofread and edit your article. People are sticklers for good grammar. Don’t lose points with them by carelessly throwing up content filled with spelling and punctuation errors. Proofread your post to make sure it reads well. The free tool, Grammarly, is amazing to double-check your work.
Hyperlink text to drive traffic to the right page or pages of your website. Backlinks encourage people to learn more about your background, the company you work for, and the products and services it provides. Make sure to hyperlink relevant text to build credibility. We even like to add a little “bio” paragraph at the end of our posts that link back to our blogs.
Add photos and videos to add authority and increase interest. Text heavy content bores people to tears. Find ways to stand out by sharing a short video, infographic or photo of your company and its people in action. You’ll win more fans this way.
Pick 3 relevant tags that represent the content of your post. LinkedIn allows you to pick up to 3 tags for your post. These tags are used to help people find your post when they are reading related content. Look at the tags from other popular posts that are similar to your topic and use tags they use. This will help your post get sorted with their posts…
Click the Publish button in the top right corner of the page. You’ll see the article as it appears to others on LinkedIn. There’s no draft option so give the content you’re creating a second glance before confirming that you want to publish the post.
Share the post on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. The key to effective marketing is saturation. The more people see your name, the more likely they are to respond to your call of action. Draft interesting and insightful content on a regular basis and you’ll never run out of customers or fans.
LinkedIn suggests gaining the public’s interest by writing about the following topics:
- Concrete advice for people hoping to enter your field.
- Industry predictions for the next 5, 10, and 15 years.
- Problems that your industry needs to solve.
- Essential job skills that your company benefits from.
- What’s changed about your job, industry or profession since you started working at it.
- What you’d do differently if given the opportunity.
- How you got started in the industry you’re in.
- How to get ahead as a business professional.
- The challenges professionals face in the industry you work in.
Additional advantages of using Pulse include retained rights to original content, widespread distribution of posts, and traffic-generated, profitable results. If you’ve been giving away content for free through guest blogging but haven’t seen the numbers you’d like to see, save the valuable content for LinkedIn. You won’t wait around to see your article post. Instead, you’ll spend that time creating information for your audience to read, comment on, and share with others.
Keeping It Legit: How to Remain in the Good Graces of LinkedIn
As with any other website, there are rules that must be followed to publish through Pulse. Advertisements and posts for job openings are not permitted. Neither is “misleading, fraudulent, obscene, threatening, hateful, defamatory, discriminatory, or illegal” content. LinkedIn supports well-thought-out, professional posts with backlinks so feel free to share what you know often with an audience of 364 million potential customers and connections.
Repurpose What You’ve Got
The final piece of advice I’m going to give on LinkedIn is that it is ok to repurpose content that you’ve already written elsewhere. I’ve already used LinkedIn Pulse to revitalize older blog posts that don’t get as much attention as they used to. I also take a post that I’ve just put on my blog and repurpose it on LinkedIn with a different title as a method to test which title gets more attention.
Simply include a link at the top of the post that says something along the lines of “This post was originally featured on <Link To Article On My Site>”.
The true SEO benefits of this strategy have really yet to be seen, but you will get some additional traffic back to your site and, most importantly, you will get your voice, your name, and your content in front of a potential whole new audience.
Here are a couple of my posts on LinkedIn Pulse:
How to Do Rapid Research for an Article or Blog Post (Original For LinkedIn)
5 Facebook Ad Strategies Learned From Guys Spending Millions On Ads (Repurposed Article)
Want To Learn More About LinkedIn?
Check out this interview with LinkedIn Expert, Trevor Turnbull.
