Have you published on LinkedIn?
Do you want to become a thought leader in your industry?
Would you like people to be drawn to you?
LinkedIn Publisher recently rolled out a new design for it’s publishing platform. Not all browsers are working correctly for everyone. So be patient! Right!
LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform is an ideal forum to develop and strengthen your professional identity by sharing your knowledge and expertise in your job. It will be tied to your professional profile.
- Content published on LinkedIn’s publishing platform remains your work. You own the rights to any original posts you publish.
LinkedIn was founded in 2003, and is one of the oldest social networks out there. In 2015 their annual revenue was right at $3 Billion although they didn’t make a profit. Today they boast 450 million users, with 128 million being here in the United States.
- 56% of the users are male, while 44% are female.
Its core mission is to “…connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful”.
HISTORY OF LINKEDIN PUBLISHER
Inform. Inspire. Educate.
Looking through the company’s history, there are a few events in LinkedIn’s timeline you could argue were the precursor to its push towards publishing. One of those came in 2011, when LinkedIn Today launched as a news aggregator – perhaps loosely similar to something like Flipboard.
- You could look up topic-specific articles on things that were relevant to you, whether that’s IT, social media marketing or sales management.
The next phase came in October 2012, LinkedIn launched a new initiative that allowed users to subscribe to their favorite so-called “thought leaders”.
Finger on the Pulse
Pulse was always a fantastic little news aggregation service, taking your favorite websites and transforming them into an interactive mosaic.
It was much like Flipboard, and for many it was actually better. But then LinkedIn weighed in with an offer to acquire the startup in 2013.
Now called ‘LinkedIn Pulse’, the service represents a major part of LinkedIn’s distribution mechanism. In effect, LinkedIn looks at what’s being written by people, classifies it into channels for them, and then broadcasts it out into the Pulse ecosystem. This effectively means that a lesser-known ‘Influencer’ can get a much broader reach, and it doesn’t matter quite so much if they only happen to have a handful of followers on LinkedIn.
The LinkedIn Influencer Program rolled out with around 150 prominent business figures, each sharing their thoughts via long-form posts. The influencers included the likes of Caterina Fake, Andrew Chen, Ryan Holmes, Emily Chang, Jeff Weiner…and The Next Web’s very own founder Boris.
Two months after, serial entrepreneur Richard Branson became the first thought leader to pass one million followers. Richard Branson now has 9.5 Million followers on LinkedIn.
While the Influencer program represented a huge step forwards for LinkedIn building its credentials as an online publishing platform, it was still very restrictive about who could post their words.
While the number of ‘Influencers’ on the platform has slowly grown, the vast majority of LinkedIn users have been unable to post their own thoughts and ideas in a similar format. Anyone can post a quick status update, but it’s never been a blogging platform.
“LinkedIn thought there are a lot of people out there who have information that they want to share, who currently don’t have as much visibility as someone like Sir Richard [Branson],” Users who could become thought leaders by publishing their own content.
“So in March of 2014 it finally opened it’s publishing platform.” LinkedIn initially rolled it out to 25,000 users, and gradually over the next several months opened it up to more users. Currently today it is open to all users.
But how can they possibly find an audience, if most people haven’t even heard of them? This is the challenge LinkedIn has set itself – to help those people gain an audience.
WHY?
With more content, LinkedIn hopes you’ll visit its site and mobile apps more often: “We believe in giving our members access to the business knowledge they need to be great at what they do,” Ryan Roslansky, Director of Product Management at LinkedIn said. “
WHERE TO START
- Click on the home button.
- Look to the right and down slightly from your photo you will see Write an article.
- Click on that to open up the new LinekdIn Publisher Design
NEW LINKEDIN PUBLISHER DESIGN
One thing is for certain in social media. Social Media will change, and change quickly. And they don’t send you the memo!
You must be able to adapt and be flexible. It not you’ll get crushed. Be clear about your goals and objectives, but be flexible about how you will get there.
Here’s a look at the top header design for LinkedIn Publisher. It’s plain and simple to use. If you click on the word Normal, it will give you three choices for font size. Heading 1 is the largest size.
- Heading 1
- Heading 2
- Normal
Then you have B, I and U. B is for Bold, I is for Italic and U is for underline. Very similar to your Microsoft Word. Then it will have numbers and bullet point. To the right of that is ” for quotation marks and a link icon to put copy and paste links.
What’s odd about the new design, they don’t have a center text or right align feature. Also, some time ago they did away with the undo button. Go figure?
Although when you are typing it is saving right away which is a nice feature.
MORE BUTTON
At the top right of the publishing platform is the More button with a drop down arrow. A nice feature is the draft, which allows you to save and come back later before you post your article.
They’ve also added a new feature under your posts where it gives you analytics on Likes and Shares.
PHOTO HEADLINE
Especially in Social Media Marketing, photos are #1 for engagement. People like to see a photo at the top of your article. I have found that 700 X 400 works best for size. Just click on the +, and then find your photo and insert.
My favorite photo tool is Canva, which allows me to create customized sizes. It also provide you all the social media photo templates and sizes which is awesome!
HEADLINE
Just like Google in search, your headline is critical to reaching your LinkedIn audience and becoming an influencer. Think carefully about your keyword or phrases that help with you and your brand.
People have asked, where did the photo and video button go? Well…right under headline is a square box with a + sign. Click on that and it opens what you see below.
You can still add:
- Photos
- Video
- Slides – That’s from Slideshare, the company LinkedIn purchased.
- Embed – This is a great feature because when the article gets shared, the video, etc. will follow it where ever it goes.
So you can see it’s a pretty simple design. Here is an idea of what a headline photo looks like, but pay attention to the new Add Credit or Caption right below the photo. This is new and allows you to personalize your content. Be strategic about this.
TAGS VS HASHTAGS
In previous publishers you were allowed 3 tags, which were populated at the bottom of your post. These tags allowed your content to be categorized for easier search by the users.
It would appear that now once you click the publish button, you can now add #hastags in the box that pops up. No longer is their a database within LinkedIn that starts to populate those tags like before, and there doesn’t appear to be a limit of three.
So, be strategic and tactical in your approach to these hashtags!
- How people will find you with these.
- How people will perceive your brand.
- How you will position yourself as a thought leader.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In my coaching I’m always amazed at the number of LinkedIn users who do not know about this fantastic tool you can use to separate yourself from the competition.
Never before have you the individual had such tools at your fingertips. You now have a voice! You now have control! You now have a tool to brand YOU!
Waiting for all the lights to be on green before you go is not a successful strategy. Make a commitment, TAKE ACTION NOW!!!
You might be surprised by the influence you have.
About Blair
Blair Evan Ball is a Social Media Coach and founder of Prepare1, a company that works with businesses, individuals and non-profits. He is a former executive with a Fortune 50 company, and his national division did $1Billion+ in sales annually.
Blair has written three e-books: Facebook for Business Made Easy, Facebook Pages for Business Made Easy, and WordPress Blog Setup Made Easy.
Blair also educates, trains entrepreneurs and business professionals how to amplify their brand, increase revenues, and raise more funds.
The Race is ON! | PREPARE | Get into the Game and WIN!
Comments on this entry are closed.