5 Compelling Reasons to Blog on LinkedIn — Personal Branding Tips
This is a guest blog post by Judy Schramm, CEO of ProResource. Follow Judy's Linkedin blog.
More than 1 million people have published blog posts on LinkedIn, with more than 130,000 posts published each week.
A blog gives you a way to share your insights directly and immediately with your audience – it’s a time-honored way to establish yourself as an industry expert and thought leader. Most people publish their blog posts on their company’s website or on a publishing platform such as Medium.com. But increasingly, professionals and executives who want to establish a personal brand are publishing on LinkedIn.
Let’s look at why LinkedIn has become so popular.
1. Your LinkedIn network automatically gets notified.
When you publish a blog post, a notification is sent out to all of your connections. This delivers built-in readers. And your blog is easily accessible – readers just click on the notification and go straight to your post. There’s no easier way to get people reading your blog.
Publish on your own website, and you have to get people to subscribe, then email them the blog post and hope it gets past their spam filters.
Clients who have blogged for years tell us their readership skyrockets when they start publishing on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn also makes it easy to spread the word. When your connections like or comment on your blog post, their connections can see the interaction, which can get them interested in reading it. And with just a click, they can share it with their own connections.
2. No-stress setup.
LinkedIn has an extremely simple blog user interface. There is no need to set up a blog site – your blog is built into your LinkedIn profile.
Just go to your homepage, click on “Write an Article” and start typing.
Then add the feature image, headline and article body. Add videos, photos, quotes and infographics to make the blog more visually interesting.
There’s no cost - even people who have the free version of LinkedIn have the ability to blog. Note that this feature is not available to a few geographical locations.
You don’t have to come up with a name for your blog, define tags and categories, or have graphics designed. It could not be simpler. Read Kaitlin Zhang's Linkedin Blog here.
3. Linkedin Blogs are searchable on Google.
Blog posts published on LinkedIn are searchable from Google and other search engines. Since LinkedIn is such a popular website, it is considered an authority site, which means that a blog post published on LinkedIn might even rank higher than a blog post published on your own website.
4. No commitment. Just get started.
One concern many of our clients have when they think about blogging is whether they will be able to find time to blog regularly. When you publish on LinkedIn, there is less expectation that you will publish on a regular schedule. Many executives blog once a month – some do it once every couple months.
If you’re too busy to stick to a schedule it's not a problem. Dates are not visible until you click through on the post. As a result, if you publish sporadically, it isn't obvious. However, we still recommend blogging regularly and consistently to keep your personal brand on the minds of your network.
Image Credit: Kaitlin Zhang
5. Use the "Boost" functions to reach your ideal audience.
When you publish on LinkedIn, you have the option of “boosting” your blog post so it is seen by more than just your connections. LinkedIn Sponsored Content ads insert your blog posts into the LinkedIn news feed of the people you want to reach, whether or not they are connected to you.
For example, you can reach lawyers in Atlanta, women who graduated from Harvard Business School, or CEOs of mid-size technology firms.
Thousands of people see what you are blogging about, and start associating your name with those topics. This provides a targeted way to do personal branding. You only pay when someone is interested enough to click on your post to read it.
Ready to start blogging? Welcome to the club! Before you know it, you will be having colleagues, clients, and prospects tell you how much they enjoy reading your blog posts.
Do you have a blog on Linkedin? Share your top tips with us in the comments below.
