Is LinkedIn’s New Publishing Feature Right For You?

LinkedIn is the ultimate networking platform for professionals. But many think of it primarily as a platform for promoting their professional experience in order to secure a new job, or use it as part of their background search when seeking potential new employees. Well, LinkedIn is hoping to change that.

The company recently launched its publishing platform, used successfully since 2012 by an elite group of LinkedIn Influencers, for all 277 million members on its network (via a staged rollout). Now when a LinkedIn member publishes a post on the social network their original content becomes part of their profile and shared with their network. Various content from images, videos and presentations can be shared. As a result, the content has the ability to reach a broader range of professionals.

“One of our big, strategic bets for the company is for LinkedIn to become the definitive, professional publishing platform,” says Ryan Roslansky, Head of Content Products at LinkedIn. “We do this because we want LinkedIn to be the place where members can become productive, successful professionals – not just when you’re trying to find a job, or search for another person.”

No doubt the company is making this feature available to all members in part because of the sharing success of its “influencers” group’s posts. Now 500+ strong, the content shared by this previously exclusive group sees over 20,000 unique views, over 250 likes and 80 comments, on average.

Clearly the ability to publish content on LinkedIn has the potential to deliver desirable benefits to its members, among them increased reach and engagement, an expanded professional network, and platform-searchable content. However, members should be advised that posts on LinkedIn will not be part of their actual company blog, which means you won’t see traffic to your site when publishing there. Also, its large membership base means there is bound to be a considerable amount of noise, so members should be thoughtful and strategic when generating LinkedIn content.

We thought we’d provide a few starter questions as you evaluate this new opportunity for you or your company. How often will you post on LinkedIn? How will you use LinkedIn publishing to grow your business? Will you create content that is tailored towards the LinkedIn audience that is different than the content you create for your own sites? Feel free to answer below in Comments, or add your own questions.