How would you like to get your blog in front of 6,500,000+ people? Seems quite impossible even if you have already assembled a large following on your own email list and blog.
A couple of months ago our own data analyst pointed out that we were not putting efforts into our content marketing. I took his words to heart and redefined our content marketing efforts.
I made a commitment to have our team produce at least 2 quality blogs per week – The result? Tredigital.com traffic quadrupled over the course of 2 months. We are getting a steady flow of leads for our email list – Hurrah! I have hundreds of people reading my blog regularly.
Since we work with B2B companies a lot, I’ve spent a lot of time studying LinkedIn. I see a flood of new LinkedIn blog posts published daily. It is hardly a surprise given that 1 in 3 professional are now in LinkedIn.
This week I also decided to experiment with long form blog posts on LinkedIn myself. In just a few hours my LinkedIn post was featured in the one of the largest communities on LinkedIn.
My blog appeared next to the posts from Guy Kawasaki, Ash Maurya, Sir Richard Branson and more. Out of 6.5M people that it was exposed to, over 1000 people read the post, 100+ liked it and dozens commented. This is quite exciting for my first blog.
I’ve studied hundreds of long form blogs on LinkedIn. Not every blog on LinkedIn gets amazing results. Before you all rush to start publishing your blogs on LinkedIn, I encourage you to be really thoughtful of how you use the medium and follow some simple best practices:
High quality of content
LinkedIn content is more than giving step by step instructions on how to increase followers to your blog post. It is designed to help people learn learn, make them question a beaten path. Top performing blogs are filled with references to other sites to provide in-depth information on the topic.
Relevant topics and strong headlines
LinkedIn is a professional community. People go there to learn more about leadership skills, entrepreneurial skills, lifehacks.
The goal of blogging on LinkedIn is quite different from SEO related blogging. The purpose is to establish the author as a strong thought leader in her field. This means that you should be sharing distinct point of view vs talking about the tricks of the trade.
Strong headlines are critical to your success. Posts like “10 Habits of Genuinely Charming People” and “The Unsurprising Truth About Female Leaders” perform significantly better than “Four Simple Tricks to Getting Social Media Shares”.
If you are struggling to come up with exciting topics and headlines, you can learn more about Magnetic Headlines formula or experiment with the blog topic generation tools.
Short and to the point
The latest advice for bloggers is to focus on longer form content. There are a lot of myths out there regarding the perfect length of a blog post. Typically, for the web blog, the longer your post is the better. Longer posts allow you to utilize a variety of keyword combinations. This in turns improves your SEO score.
LinkedIn is about building your credibility, not necessarily your web traffic (though it can help). Most top performing blogs on LinkedIn are around 400-600 words. The content of these blogs is packed with powerful information and every word counts.
N0 Bait and Switch approach
I am a fan of using lead magnets throughout a blog and website content. Lead Magnets are a great way for your customers to experience your services before commit to buying.
However, LinkedIn is not an appropriate platform for these types of techniques. It is ok to add a link back to your website here and there. I have yet to see a blog post with a traditional lead magnet perform well. Whatever you do, stay away from the salesy blog posts.
Image is everything
Personally, I am not a fan of cartoon-like images on any platform. In certain circumstances, vector image may work for blogs and social media platforms. LinkedIn is the least forgiving when it comes to the type of the image.
I found that the clear, compelling photos perform the best on LinkedIn. There are quite a few sites that offer free images for blogging and LinkedIn. My two favorite platforms for sourcing images are Pixabay and DollorPhotoClub.
Conclusion
Social media has redefined the world of content marketing. Anyone can learn how to get their work out to a large audience. It is a matter of knowing what platform is best for you and understanding the rules of that platform. I would like to hear more about your own blogging experience – Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Also, we have created a blogging template that can help you maximize results of your writing whether it is on LinkedIn or on your blog. Read more about blog formatting formulas.
