LinkedIn Social Media Strategy
Posted 23rd January 2015 at 04:20 PM by imarkedy
Effective LinkedIn social media strategy just took another giant leap forward. Recently, the company announced its long awaited blogging tool feature is now available to ALL USERS. Previously - it was only open to ‘Influencers’ (another word for famous).
This feature is a game changer for entrepreneurs and small businesses and its’ impact can hardly be overstated. Imagine being among the first to take advantage of Facebook Fan pages, YouTube video sharing features or even the WordPress content management system. Yes – we believe this new feature is just that important!
More than a year ago, we applied to use the blogging platform but hadn't heard back from LinkedIn. Although we don't believe the cliché “good things come to those who wait“, it’s always wise to see certain processes through until their conclusion. In our article marketing series, a statement was made which, in this instance anyway, we must back away from.
We taught that creating unique and engaging content should begin with your website’s needs and all others should be secondary. Understanding the value of being ‘first through the door’ with this new LinkedIn blog post feature, we unequivocally retract that statement! With 235 million potential readers, the upside potential far outweighs the downside. It is worth creating a 15 to 20 unique blog post series for LinkedIn just as soon as you possibly can.
If you can’t do so quickly, there is another way to get articles up on the platform. Although much has been said about some mysterious ‘Google penalty’ for duplicating your content, we've experienced no such penalty and have copied our own content, across multiple platforms, hundreds of times. We’d advise using some of your currently published website articles to at least get the process started on LinkedIn.
So where should you begin? Often times, answering that question is less important than beginning itself. We don't know your industry but it is best to create informative and engaging articles NOW. With a couple hundred blog posts on this website and growing, our plan is to feature half of our website content on LinkedIn. Although it isn’t new content, it will be to LinkedIn readership.
We do not yet know how LinkedIn content whether original or not, will affect search engine results. We’ll have to measure how our content is indexed within Google, Yahoo and Bing before having enough data-driven authority to comment.
One of the greatest features of a LinkedIn article is the ability it provides to backlink to your own business website. Keep in mind, however, that since this feature is new, LinkedIn will monitor not only who abuses the privilege, but how. For them not to do so would be the height of irresponsibility.
What does this new feature mean for their advertising platform? Reluctantly, we included the paid search advertising feature in our LinkedIn for Business marketing course. Although we demonstrated how to run advertising campaigns, we strongly discouraged students away from using ad(s) because of cost. At a hefty $2 per click, not only did we find this, through testing, much too expensive, the return on investment didn’t make it worth our while.
We also call to your attention another key feature which, although not brand-new, is worth taking a look at - ‘company pages’. Think of a company page as a profile for your business as opposed to a personal LinkedIn profile.
Of course, there are limitations with the free version of company pages unless upgrading to premium features but it is worth setting up nonetheless. When both company pages and blog posts are properly utilized, entrepreneurs and small businesses can immediately begin to gain traction. Make no mistake - traction comes through building trust with other LinkedIn users.
We would like readers to click on the banner above and enroll in our LinkedIn for Business video course. We’ll close this article where we began - blog posts and to some extent company pages, are both game changers. Although we would hardly order anyone to take advantage of either, we strongly suggest doing so and as the old folks used to say – ‘right soon.’
Brian D. Dale
Linkedin Marketing for Business Course
This feature is a game changer for entrepreneurs and small businesses and its’ impact can hardly be overstated. Imagine being among the first to take advantage of Facebook Fan pages, YouTube video sharing features or even the WordPress content management system. Yes – we believe this new feature is just that important!
More than a year ago, we applied to use the blogging platform but hadn't heard back from LinkedIn. Although we don't believe the cliché “good things come to those who wait“, it’s always wise to see certain processes through until their conclusion. In our article marketing series, a statement was made which, in this instance anyway, we must back away from.
We taught that creating unique and engaging content should begin with your website’s needs and all others should be secondary. Understanding the value of being ‘first through the door’ with this new LinkedIn blog post feature, we unequivocally retract that statement! With 235 million potential readers, the upside potential far outweighs the downside. It is worth creating a 15 to 20 unique blog post series for LinkedIn just as soon as you possibly can.
If you can’t do so quickly, there is another way to get articles up on the platform. Although much has been said about some mysterious ‘Google penalty’ for duplicating your content, we've experienced no such penalty and have copied our own content, across multiple platforms, hundreds of times. We’d advise using some of your currently published website articles to at least get the process started on LinkedIn.
So where should you begin? Often times, answering that question is less important than beginning itself. We don't know your industry but it is best to create informative and engaging articles NOW. With a couple hundred blog posts on this website and growing, our plan is to feature half of our website content on LinkedIn. Although it isn’t new content, it will be to LinkedIn readership.
We do not yet know how LinkedIn content whether original or not, will affect search engine results. We’ll have to measure how our content is indexed within Google, Yahoo and Bing before having enough data-driven authority to comment.
One of the greatest features of a LinkedIn article is the ability it provides to backlink to your own business website. Keep in mind, however, that since this feature is new, LinkedIn will monitor not only who abuses the privilege, but how. For them not to do so would be the height of irresponsibility.
What does this new feature mean for their advertising platform? Reluctantly, we included the paid search advertising feature in our LinkedIn for Business marketing course. Although we demonstrated how to run advertising campaigns, we strongly discouraged students away from using ad(s) because of cost. At a hefty $2 per click, not only did we find this, through testing, much too expensive, the return on investment didn’t make it worth our while.
We also call to your attention another key feature which, although not brand-new, is worth taking a look at - ‘company pages’. Think of a company page as a profile for your business as opposed to a personal LinkedIn profile.
Of course, there are limitations with the free version of company pages unless upgrading to premium features but it is worth setting up nonetheless. When both company pages and blog posts are properly utilized, entrepreneurs and small businesses can immediately begin to gain traction. Make no mistake - traction comes through building trust with other LinkedIn users.
We would like readers to click on the banner above and enroll in our LinkedIn for Business video course. We’ll close this article where we began - blog posts and to some extent company pages, are both game changers. Although we would hardly order anyone to take advantage of either, we strongly suggest doing so and as the old folks used to say – ‘right soon.’
Brian D. Dale
Linkedin Marketing for Business Course
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