Getting Started with LinkedIn Publishing : LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn Publishing is the name the business networking service gives to its internal blogging platform. It's a tool members can use to publish articles that get distributed to the author's connections on LinkedIn and, if they choose this option, also are viewable to everyone on LinkedIn and the public as well.

The platform is designed to let users publish content that's longer than the typical status update, which is limited to 700 characters or under 140 words or so. LinkedIn Publishing, by contrast, allows articles to be several thousand words, though it recommends keeping blog posts shorter, to 400 to 600 words. 

Originally, the LinkedIn Publishing tool was only available to several hundred prominent individuals it called "Influencers" when the program launched in 2012. But in February 2014, LinkedIn announced it was going to roll the blogging tool out to all of its members on a gradual, phased-in basis.

"When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled," LinkedIn's Ryan Roslansky said in the announcement.

Who Should Use LinkedIn Publishing?

It's probably best to think of LinkedIn's blogging platform as a marketing tool for building a personal, professional or corporate brand. That's because the professional networking service has several hundred million users, many of whom regularly spend time on the network and browse their news feeds much as they do on Facebook, though perhaps not as frequently.

When someone publishes a blog post on the platform, it goes into the news feeds of all their connections on LinkedIn, and potentially gets distributed to other members, too, since LinkedIn allows members to follow one another without being "connected," much as Twitter does. An algorithm determines the frequency of display for each post, much like Facebook's new feed ranking system is also controlled by a formula. 

This makes it a useful way to potentially reach a large number of people. So for those who want to enhance their professional image and communicate their knowledge and expertise more widely, LinkedIn Publishing is extremely valuable.

It's important to note, however, that the blogging tool is not designed for direct self-promotion or marketing goods or services, so people who plan to use it for blatant marketing and sales purposes may want to rethink their blogging goals on LinkedIn. Commercial marketing is not the mission of LinkedIn. Members join to network with other professionals, learn more about their fields and develop their careers, not to buy goods and services. So heavy-handed marketing is frowned upon and can boomerang and have a negative impact on the reputation of anyone who does it.

How to Format Blog Posts

The LinkedIn platform has a simple formatting tool that allows members to add bullets or put text in bold without knowing any coding, much like WordPress allows. It's as simple as formatting text in Microsoft Word and other text editors. The tool allows for adding hyperlinks, bullets, italics, bold fonts and subheads. It also allows users to insert images and embed slides from SlideShare, which is another publishing tool owned by LinkedIn.

(More about the platform from LinkedIn's own help files.)

Where LinkedIn Blog Posts Appear

LinkedIn, of course, controls where and how often each blog post appears and can change the rules governing their display at any time. It's common for social networking platforms to constantly tweak the display algorithm for content, so the rules for display are not hard and fast. That said, the early display system for LinkedIn posts has them appearing in a variety of places.

First of all, each blog post has a standalone URL or web address, just like a blog post's typical permalink. It starts with https://linkedin.com/today/post/ and then is followed by a numerical identifier and keyword descriptor.

In the sidebar of the article, there will typically be a little widget box showing the author's other most recent posts. And on top of the article, the author's photo, name, and tag line phrase (sometimes called a "Headline" on LinkedIn) will appear, too, along with the total number of posts that person has published.

Also, on the profile page of each author, that person's three most recent blog posts appear in a horizontal strip as small tiles, above their profile summary and just below the large box at the very top containing the person's photo, personal tag line or "headline" and three-line summary of job titles and education.

And finally, when a post is new, LinkedIn displays it in the news feeds of the author's connections. And if the author chose to mak it public, the post also will be displayed elsewhere on the network, based on various content rules applied by the company. For example, if the topic is about crowdsourcing scientific discovery, it might appear in content channels pertaining to science and be shown to people who subscribe to those channels.

LinkedIn Pulse News Channels

What's important to know is that LinkedIn bought a news aggregation app called Pulse and incorporated it into the LinkedIn personalized news channels on the professional networking service. The news area of the network formerly called LinkedIn Today is powered by the Pulse app.

The company has been integrating its "influencer" blogging content into its Pulse news channels, meaning good blog content might be viewed by potentially large numbers of people who use the app.