How to Get a Relevant Audience With LinkedIn Articles
Knowing how to effectively use social media platforms such as LinkedIn can go a long way when building a new business or expanding and scaling an existing brand. With more than 690 million registered users, this platform offers an excellent way to reach professionals within your industry.
LinkedIn Article vs. LinkedIn Posts
Before diving into LinkedIn and launching your marketing strategy, it is important to distinguish the difference between LinkedIn articles and traditional posts.
What Is a LinkedIn Post?
A LinkedIn post is the default format of sharing content and publishing a new update on the platform. With a post, you can quickly share links, news, and updates with your LinkedIn followers and connections. While using a LinkedIn post is an efficient way to boost your online visibility and reach, it is much more limited and may not provide you with the click-through rate (CTR) and engagement you are looking for. For instance, a LinkedIn post has a limit of 1,300 characters.
What Is a LinkedIn Article?
Similar to a LinkedIn post, LinkedIn articles provide you with the ability to create posts and updates to share with friends and followers while boosting the level of exposure you receive based on your current network. Using LinkedIn articles can help to broaden your reach and appeal online, even if you currently have a small or expanding network.
The LinkedIn articles format also offers an extensive creative editor, optimal for those who prefer to utilize images, graphics, hyperlinks, and other common formatting techniques implemented with text posts and webpages. Another advantage of LinkedIn articles is the possibility to write up to 40,000 characters, which is 30 times more than the character limit of a post on LinkedIn.
Pros and Cons of LinkedIn Articles
Opting to create a LinkedIn article over a traditional post can provide you with the following benefits:
- Expand your online reach and the number of users you are capable of appealing to with the use of a LinkedIn article.
- LinkedIn articles typically last within feeds much longer than traditional LinkedIn posts, which is optimal for anyone looking to maximize their ability to reach a network or specific audience. This is highly advisable for anyone promoting a new business, brand, or money-making idea.
- Ensure your LinkedIn article is shared with and viewed by as many people as possible over sharing a traditional update in the form of a LinkedIn post.
- Your LinkedIn article will be searchable both on the platform itself as well as off the platform and with the use of top search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. If you are interested in finding ways to boost your website and brand’s SEO, or search engine optimization, a LinkedIn article can help to go a long way.
Some of the drawbacks of using LinkedIn articles over traditional posts and updates include:
- There’s no definitive way to determine who your LinkedIn article will be shared with or when, while a LinkedIn post is typically shared with all followers and network connections.
- A LinkedIn article’s SEO, hashtags, keywords, and phrases may impact its overall exposure rate as well as its CTR once it has been published.
- If increasing website traffic is your goal, LinkedIn articles don’t have a direct impact on that as the readers will stay on the platform to read the article.
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Why You Should Be Writing LinkedIn Articles
Developing a strong and effective content marketing strategy today requires more than the ability to purchase third-party banner advertisement space on a growing or popular website. Today, putting social media to use is essential to stand out from the competition while remaining a relevant brand or business to prospective clients and customers. LinkedIn is notorious for being up to 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook, even with Facebook’s own advertising solution in place.
With LinkedIn’s 690+ million registered users from across the world and 44% of all LinkedIn users generating more than $44,000 annually on average, it is no wonder that LinkedIn has become one of the biggest hot spots for digital marketers and online advertising campaigns.
LinkedIn’s article tool is ideal for individuals, business managers, and entrepreneurs alike who are looking for ways to connect with other professionals as well as individuals involved in their specific market and industry. LinkedIn articles are extremely beneficial for B2B purposes, especially when sharing information such as job positions and current companies worked for within LinkedIn accounts. Using LinkedIn articles can help you to quickly maximize your online reach while increasing your online visibility as well as the SEO for your website (based on the articles you publish and which websites you are linking to within the content you create).
How to Write a LinkedIn Article
Understanding how to post an article on LinkedIn is imperative before you get started with the publishing process. While it is possible to quickly share regurgitated or copied content from another location or a past article you have written, it is highly recommended that you craft original and highly engaging content every time you choose to use LinkedIn articles to promote your business or brand. Consider the following steps each time you are creating new content to publish using LinkedIn articles:
- Spend time researching the content of your local and online competitors to discover what type of content works best for increasing engagement as well as shares, reads, and clicks.
- Create an engaging headline that is unique and relevant and that will help attract attention while driving clicks to your content.
- Craft your article using language that is easy to read and digest, even for those who may be unfamiliar with the subject matter or topic you are covering.
- Be sure to include a CTA with every new article or piece of content you publish to increase your chances of generating leads or potential sales.
- Always check for grammatical and spelling errors prior to making your content live. First impressions are everything when it comes to attracting new followers, customers, and prospective leads.
- Utilize images and other rich media to help increase engagement while maintaining the interest of your readers and followers. Use relevant, high-quality images to help drive any point you are trying to make home to your readers. Share images across different social media platforms to help spread the word of your content while also boosting the overall SEO of your official websites and LinkedIn profile.
- Include relevant and trending hashtags that are suitable for your content and the type of information you intend to share with your audience. Spend time on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to discover trending hashtags that are currently the most relevant to your target audience.
- Use official LinkedIn Publishing Guidelines to help with the process of crafting and sharing digestible content that is appealing and useful to those you intend to reach.
How to Submit Articles on LinkedIn
To submit an article on LinkedIn, simply log in to your account to access your LinkedIn homepage. Once you are logged in, click “Write an Article”, located near the top center of the page, beneath the traditional LinkedIn update/post section. The LinkedIn articles publisher will then load, providing you with a complete editor to begin writing or pasting your content.
How to Write Meaningful LinkedIn Content
Knowing how to create short articles on LinkedIn which are meaningful, useful, and original can go a long way, especially if you are promoting a new business or brand that has yet to establish itself. The more valuable and interesting your content is to readers as well as prospective customers, the easier it is to build and gain trust from those who have a genuine interest in learning more about your brand as well as supporting it.
Before you begin publishing articles to LinkedIn, it is important to consider the overall wants and needs of the target audience or demographics you intend to reach. How familiar are you with your current competition? Do your top competitors provide blogs, free content, or extensive newsletters? What types of topics are they covering on their official websites, blogs, and even social media platforms? How does your target audience respond to competitors in your niche whenever they publish new content or articles to social media? What problems can you work toward solving for your readers and the type of clients you intend to reach with LinkedIn?
As you become more familiar with various competitors and the overall industry you are working in and representing, it will get easier to craft unique, engaging, and meaningful content for your readers, online followers, and loyal customers. Diving in and immersing yourself in the culture and community your current competitors have developed is a way to drastically increase your knowledge of the wants and needs of your intended audience.
Whenever you are brainstorming new article title or topic ideas, it is also essential to keep in mind the amount of similar content already available online. To truly stand out as a unique and useful business or brand, it is important to get a bit creative while developing content and publishing new articles, even if you are only doing so using social media platforms like LinkedIn.
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Tips to Increase the Reach of Your LinkedIn Articles
Knowing how to increase the exposure your LinkedIn articles receives goes a long way, especially for new businesses and brands just getting off of the ground or launching for the first time. Similar to alternative social media platforms, there are a few tips and tricks to remember each time you opt to create and publish a new LinkedIn article on the network.
When to Post on LinkedIn
Timing is everything when it comes to developing a working social media marketing strategy for any business, regardless of industry or niche. Posting on social media can make or break a campaign based on timing and the demographics you are trying to reach.
When you are posting on LinkedIn, it is advisable to do so no more than once a day during the week. Limiting the number of LinkedIn posts and LinkedIn articles that you publish to no more than 20 each month is also highly recommended. Ideally, the best time to post a new LinkedIn article is between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. or between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
How to Promote LinkedIn Content
While it is possible to promote your LinkedIn articles and content via LinkedIn itself, using various social media platforms and marketing methods can maximize your reach while boosting your website’s SEO and online visibility.
Brand your LinkedIn articles to blend with any brand image you have developed and created for your company or organization. Using branded content can help users to become familiar with your company while also helping you to better establish yourself as an authoritative voice. When users feel comfortable with your brand because they recognize your logo or the type of content you produce, it is much easier to garner their trust while also generating leads and sales.
Share your LinkedIn article within your company’s official newsletter and with the use of other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Pinterest, depending on the audience you are trying to reach. Cross-promotion goes a long way when it comes to developing an online presence and expanding your visibility with the use of social media.
Create colorful calls to action (CTAs) to help attract users to your content and to entice them into learning more about your business and brand and what you represent. Test your CTAs with each new update, article, or email you publish to determine which messaging methods work best when targeting specific groups of users or demographics.
Use hashtags whenever you are creating, sharing, and promoting new LinkedIn articles and digital content. When publishing new articles on LinkedIn, be sure to implement relevant and useful hashtags into the publisher itself. To learn more about keywords and phrases that are trending within your market and niche, use tools such as Google Trends.
Tweak LinkedIn Settings
Once you have a working LinkedIn article strategy in mind, it is important to tweak and update your LinkedIn settings to ensure your work is published publicly and is visible to the world, not just your LinkedIn connections and network of followers. Access your articles as well as your settings by choosing “Articles” from your profile. You can also access your profile settings directly to update or change your privacy settings for each new LinkedIn article you publish live.
Publishing to LinkedIn Pulse
LinkedIn Pulse was originally launched as a news aggregation solution that helped to spread and share content to relevant audiences and prospective customers, followers, or connections via LinkedIn. However, as of 2017, LinkedIn Pulse ceased as a standalone app, and instead, LinkedIn articles simply merged with current newsfeeds and content directories. Today, it is much easier to dive into the craft of content creation with the use of LinkedIn articles without requiring additional navigation and setup.
Demonstrate Your Expertise With LinkedIn Articles
Using LinkedIn articles is not only highly recommended for professionals in any industry, but it is also a way to branch out and solidify your brand’s position in your market in less time. With the use of LinkedIn articles, it’s possible to better demonstrate your own expertise, build brand awareness, and drastically increase your online reach and your ability to appeal to a much wider audience of highly targeted users at all times.
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