LinkedIn is opening up its publishing platform to ALL members, not just the list of 500 or so LinkedIn Influencers. This means that anyone who has a LinkedIn profile (277 million members) will be able to publish long-form content (blog posts) on the site.
The move toward allowing user-generated content on a massive scale aims to drive more traffic and page views to LinkedIn and encourage members to spend more time on the site. However, it just makes sense that you should be able to showcase your insights in more ways on the world's largest professional social network. If you're already blogging and creating valuable content for your network, this is an opportunity to potentially achieve greater visibility and engagement.
Your Turn to Build Influence
I've long-stated the following about becoming a LinkedIn Influencer:
You don't have to be anointed as an "influencer" by anyone to become one!
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You do have to invest your time in the activities that build influence online, such as publishing and sharing your unique and relevant thought leadership content that can help your network members get smarter, solve problems, feel better, and achieve more.
When you invest in building influence, you don't have to sell or pitch your products and services. Building online influence will grow your business.
Given that any content you publish on LinkedIn is going to be associated with your profile and visible to your network, you will want to ensure that the content you publish on LinkedIn is of the highest quality. Your LinkedIn profile, after all, is your professional online identity. You will own the rights to any content you publish, and I recommend you take a look at your rights and responsibilities within LinkedIn's publishing guidelines. This will not be an opportunity to advertise or pitch your services!
Keep Your Existing Blog Intact
The LinkedIn publishing platform should not serve as your primary publishing hub on the web. Remember, you don't own your LinkedIn profile :). Continue to publish your content to your blog first so that your original post and authorship can be indexed by Google. I haven't seen any communication as to whether or not your LinkedIn posts will be indexed by Google. I'm assuming they will be.
When you publish a post to LinkedIn, you will want to include a link back to the original post on your site.
If you don't have access to the LinkedIn publishing platform yet, you will. It's being rolled out slowly over time. Currently there are only 25,000 beta testers. When you do have access, you will see a small pencil icon next to the share box on your LinkedIn home page.
When deciding what to publish to LinkedIn, you will want to ensure that the content is helpful to your network!
Continue to Grow Your LinkedIn Network
Now more than ever you should focus your time and energy on building a relevant, vibrant network on LinkedIn. If you don't have many connections or you haven't put much effort into building an intelligent network of connections, start now! The quality and size of your network will be critical to growing your visibility once you have access to the new publishing tool.
What are your thoughts about the new publishing platform on LinkedIn? Will you be taking advantage of this?