30 LinkedIn Tips: #11/30 – Publish articles on LinkedIn

• Originally written: October 11, 2017
  Text & Images Updated: March 19, 2022

Publish your ideas and insight on LinkedIn.

Your articles don't have to be long or too detailed. They just have to be useful and informative, so that the reader comes away with something more than when they began. Something that can start a conversation. An interesting anecdote. An insight you've had.

I share my knowledge about LinkedIn in my articles, and the result is I make more connections, my services and skills are better known, and I even generate business as a result of it. You might even call it part of my personal branding.

10 Good Reasons to publish on LinkedIn

Here are just a few of the advantages of publishing on LinkedIn...

1. Your articles can be featured at the top of your profile with a clear image. So your profile improves, and people immediately see you have a voice. And the total number you've published racks up each time you add a new article.
2. NEW! You can turn your articles into a Newsletter, and the first newsletter notification will go to ALL of your followers / connections to allow them to subscribe with a click. This of course means your writing will reach a regular (and hopefully growing) audience. You can also add a link to your newsletter to your 'featured' section on your profile, again with a one-click subscription option.
3. People can view all of your articles when they click through to see your recent activity or visit your newsletter URL. My LinkedIn newsletter 'Your LinkedIn Health' is published every two weeks on LinkedIn.
4. Your article URLs will normally include your name, making your personal brand more visible in search. This obviously builds over time.
5. The content of your articles is indexed by search engines, so your content can be found well beyond LinkedIn, and long after you publish. Articles I wrote back in 2015 and 2016 still get regular search traffic every day.
6. The links you make in your articles gain positive SEO for the sites you link to. You can of course link to your own web resources. You even get to choose the anchor text that links through to your website, which still counts for something. Even articles that have few readers have a use in adding to search visibility. One of my articles was on page 1 position 1 of a quite common Google search with 285 million results.
7. People can comment on, share and like your articles, so you can make connections with a new audience. You may have a small audience to start with, but don't be discouraged - you are building credibility and an audience with every article that goes out, especially if you go down the newsletter route. You are more likely to grow your LinkedIn followers by publishing articles regularly. And you can always refer back to things you've written when you are talking with new connections.
8. People can also follow your updates with a simple click - so they don't need to connect with you, but will still get notified of your new articles. I have around 4,400 connections on LinkedIn, but I currently have over 15,500 followers. So more than 11,000 more people than I am connected to know my name and want to see my updates simply because I publish articles and updates on LinkedIn.
9. You can see summary analytics and statistics for every article to show you what audience you are reaching, and which topics are of greatest interest across (and beyond) your network of connections. This feature used to be extremely useful as it was very granular, and I could like shares and comments from individuals, and view the profiles of people who had interacted, all from one stats screen. But LinkedIn, in its infinite wisdom, has removed that functionality.
10. Over time, your volume of work will help to position you as an authority on a particular subject in your LinkedIn network, and beyond. And regular publishing can be used to keep fresh content appearing at the top of your profile, to help you grow as an active and engaged authority.

Google Search Result as at 30-Jun-2020. 285 million results. My article is at Position 2, outranked only by LinkedIn's official Help page.

Search results from 04-Jul-20 for 'linkedin name pronunciation'. The article I wrote on LinkedIn just 3 days ago is on Page 1, second only to LinkedIn's official help page.

Remember that once you publish, you still need to promote your work - use the tool that appears once you hit 'publish' to share your writing with your LinkedIn network as a status update - and add some value with your comment there, and perhaps use one or two suitable hashtags.

You should also share what you publish on your social channels - LinkedIn allows you to publish to Facebook and Twitter right after publishing. And remember to repost and refer to topical articles over time.

So, why not start today?

Make a plan, maybe just something modest like one post a month, and get going. You could even just add a couple of paragraphs of commentary about something published elsewhere online, and link through to that. But remember to add some value with your own insight.

You can always save drafts and come back to them later when you have time, or prepare offline in your favourite word processor.

You may even have 'old' articles accumulated over time that you can dust off to add a fresh perspective. And if you're clever, you'll write a few evergreen articles that are timeless.

Just remember - don't do any hard selling or chest beating. Write something useful and remarkable that adds insight or real value. Or have a good old-fashioned rant — but show people your swag.

You can do it. You just need to start.

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