LinkedIn has opened the floodgates to a world of professional content with their publishing platform. Top influencers are publishing their content on LinkedIn and in turn, a lot of professionals are seeking out content on the platform to read. With this fact alone, it’s no surprise then that lawyers, accountants, and consultants who are looking to position themselves as the go-to-experts should be publishing their content here too. If you’re looking to achieve LinkedIn publishing success, here is how to generate impact from every post you publish.
What is LinkedIn publisher?
To achieve LinkedIn publishing success, you first need to understand what is LinkedIn publisher. LinkedIn publisher is a feature on LinkedIn which allows you to publish long-form posts to (potentially) anybody on LinkedIn. It’s about sharing content that’s useful, well written, attractively presented and interesting. Done well, it helps to develop business relationships, expertise and sales. It can put your expertise in front of all your contacts and others you don’t yet know. In fact, for many small firms, the LinkedIn posts they publish on pulse get more views than blogs on their own websites! LinkedIn publisher (dependent on your firm’s social media policy) is also a way you can publish your own blog posts if you don’t want to publish on your firm’s website. Read: 5 effective tips to build a LinkedIn profile that gets you found by potential clients
What NOT to do on LinkedIn
Again, before we move on to our sure-fire tips on achieving LinkedIn publishing success, it’s really useful to know what NOT to do first. The first thing you should know is that less is more! Don’t bombard your connections’ feeds with content because it could actually be doing more harm than good to your reputation. If you need help to plan or think through your content for LinkedIn then download our free content planning guide. Yes, there will always be a case where one person’s great content might be another person’s rubbish content. You can’t avoid that. What you can do is avoid these three big content mistakes:
- Short one or two line posts (might even be dubious as a status update – let alone a post).
- 300-400 words of pure advertising and most of it badly written
- Good sounding articles, barely disguised as sales copy.
The first step to achieving LinkedIn publishing success is to not annoy your connections with poor posts. Think interesting and useful content presented well! Read: The right (and wrong) way to stand out on LinkedIn and win work and find new opportunities
How to generate impact from a LinkedIn publisher post (5 tips!)
1. Make your headline clickable (not clever)
When you blog within Linkedin, your 1st-degree connections and LinkedIn followers may get a notification that you have published a blog post. (It used to be that everyone would be notified, but sadly those days are long gone) If they click on this notification or see your post in their feed, you then have a mere split second to convince your 1st-degree connections to click through to your blog. As you have probably guessed, that decision rests on your title. For LinkedIn publisher success, you need to take your time with your blog post title. Make sure your title clearly states what value they will get from reading your blog. If you try to be clever with your title but it isn’t clear, this can and most probably will result in your connection scrolling past and not giving you another thought. According to research that analysed approximately 3,000 of the most successful blog posts on the platform, the most successful titles are:
- Between 40 and 49 characters long,
- Either “How to…” or “List-style” headlines,
- Ones that use emotive and confident language like “must,” “need” and “success.”
The title of your LinkedIn post is the single biggest factor which will determine whether your content actually gets read by the people you care about. Make sure to spend some time getting it right and remember to fulfil the promise of the title in your blog post.
2. Share high-quality content not sales copy
LinkedIn publishing success isn’t guaranteed just because you’ve posted an old article or a piece of content. You still need good quality content that is relevant and of interest to your connections. As tempting as it may be, avoid sticking up any of the below at all costs:
- Sales copy,
- Blog posts which are really thinly veiled sales copy,
- Announcements about events you are running,
- Posts which are really just an introduction to a blog post on your blog.
If you really want to generate impact from your LinkedIn publisher post, you need to know your target audience. What issues or challenges do they have? Are there certain topics that they find interesting? Which areas could you help them solve? If you start with getting your client personas together, you can then write high-quality content that is valuable and useful to your connections. You can give them the content they deserve rather than poor posts which may cause them to ‘unsubscribe’ or ‘unfollow’ your feed. If you need help to plan or think through your content for LinkedIn then download our free content planning guide.
3. Put your best stuff first
You want to make a great first impression. You want to give your audience a taster so that they get hooked and keep coming back for more. This should be the purpose of your content – it’s not an academic essay or dissertation – so put your best stuff first. What we mean by this is, after you have convinced your reader to click through to your blog (from your amazing clickable headline), you need to keep that attention. This means giving them a reason to read on. To draw them into the contents of your blog post, you should:
- explain the value your reader will get from reading the post,
- include a story or something which will draw the reader into your blog post,
- put the most valuable stuff at the top of the post (e.g. do you have a free offer or extra value they can get?).
If you do this from the get-go, you’re well on your way to LinkedIn publishing success.
4. Make the blog post visually pleasing and easy to read
Yes, making your post look pretty is actually a tip for achieving LinkedIn publishing success. Think about it, your readers are making snap judgements on whether to read your post in the first place. If it looks nice and easy to read, they are far more likely to stick with it. If it has large chunks of text and no images, then they are most likely going to pass. To make your LinkedIn publishing post visually pleasing (so that it draws in the reader), you should use:
- Subheadings – to show the reader the value of the content in each section and to help them find exactly what they are looking for.
- Images – as well as your header image, use some to break up the text.
- Quotes – this feature allows you to pull out sound bites from your post that you want your reader to remember.
5. Circulate your content to the people who matter in your network
Once you have finished writing your blog – which has a clickable headline, your best stuff first, and is visually pleasing – you can then publish and think about sharing the content. Who will benefit most from this piece of content? Where and how should you circulate the post to gain maximum impact? Here are a few ways you can circulate your content to the people who matter most in your network:
- Send them an email with a link to the post. Say something like, ‘I’d be really interested in your thoughts on . Is this something you have to contend with?’
- Ask trusted contacts to like, share or comment on your post. The more likes you get, the more your post will circulate in your network.
Get the most out of your LinkedIn posts
You can generate impact from every single LinkedIn publisher post that you publish. You just need to write content that directly helps your target audience and show them this value instantly in your headline and beginning of your article. If you pair this with a post that is visually pleasing and easy to read, and you share it directly with the connections who will benefit from it…you’ve truly achieved LinkedIn publishing success!
