Perhaps I should rephrase, “don’t share the link to your blog posts on LinkedIn, publish the posts on it.”
Before you say, “I’m not hosting my blog on LinkedIn!” hear me out. I’m not saying that you should. I am, however, saying that you shouldn’t simply share a link to your blog in a LinkedIn update on your profile. I’m suggesting that you should publish a duplicate of each of your blog posts on LinkedIn instead.
While there are many benefits to driving traffic back to your website by sharing a link to your blog, making it easy to consume your content actually leads to more engagement. I recently learned this myself when I published a copy of a blog entry I originally posted here last month.
In less than 24 hours the version published on LinkedIn had more engagement than the version posted on my blog had accumulated in 3 weeks.
Why? Ease of consumption for starters.
When a user clicks on a link to your blog, they’re disrupted by being taken out of LinkedIn. Though this may seem trivial, knowing their click opens new tabs/ windows that they must later close is a deterrent for many. Frankly, unless your snippet is incredibly compelling and timely, it’s unlikely that someone is going to click it. However, when you publish within LinkedIn users can consume and engage with your content without leaving the platform, dramatically streamlining their experience. Though, the experience of consuming your content isn’t the be all and end all here.
The greater benefit of publishing on LinkedIn is that you’re giving your content the opportunity to be easily consumed by your professional network, i.e., the people you’re most likely to do business with. Furthermore, it provides you the ability to directly interact with those that engage with your posts. You would be surprised how far-reaching a well-written entry can make it through connections of connections who find it valuable.
These social shares are easy “ins” for those of you looking to make social selling a bigger part of your business this year.
So, if your goal is to showcase your expertise, in front of a relevant audience of your peers, clients, and potential customers in a polished way, and easily engage with them, this is the way to go about it. Don’t simply share, publish on LinkedIn.