It seems a good time to take a break from talking about the new LinkedIn desktop user interface and get back to some of the many ways Linked in can help promote you and your brand.
Posting on LinkedIn – is it worth it?
If you expecting to start writing on LinkedIn and immediately have this huge following of people reading, liking and commenting on LinkedIn, I would suggest you save your time and effort for other marketing efforts (or spend your money on some other get-rich-quick scheme.) When LinkedIn first started allowing people to blog directly on LinkedIn there was definitely the potential for getting a lot of attention. If your blog was featured on one of their Pulse streams, it could really take off. I had over 7000 views on my second blog post. I’d like to tell you it was because it was an amazingly good post but I have to tell you it wasn’t – not even close! It was called “Do Just One Thing – Add a Good Headline” with a picture and sub-title about The Five Second Rule and perhaps people thought it was about food rather than about how long people will look at the top of your profile (name, photo, and headline.) It did not receive many likes or comments so may have just been affected by LinkedIn’s weird algorithm at the time which grouped blog posts together and counted it as a view if someone looked at the primary blog above. Somehow, and herein lies the problem, you can rarely identify what captured people’s attention or who might have shared it to cause it to go viral so that you can repeat the success. My following two posts had two hundred or so views so I certainly didn’t keep those viewers.
Note: Even if people are following you on LinkedIn, it does not mean that your blog post will appear in their newsfeed. LinkedIn has its own unique algorithm to decide what appears in your newsfeed “to make it more relevant.” I’m not going to talk about that here as it will take us down a whole new rabbit hole! Then, you’re assuming that people are looking at their newsfeed on LI. I live in LinkedIn all day, every day but only occasionally look at my newsfeed so I wouldn’t count on lots of people seeing your carefully crafted blog post.
Amplify what you’re already doing 
If you’re already writing a blog for your website, then yes, absolutely add it to LinkedIn. There are Google SEO implications so you should add it to LinkedIn at least two weeks after you’ve added it to your website. I get some views of my blog on my website but I get far more on LinkedIn and that’s where I’ve chosen to engage with people who comment. It also allows me to have other people promote it for me. When others like or comment on my posts, it is then potentially spread to their network.
So, now you’ve added it to LinkedIn. Be sure to share it in groups where your target audience might be members. Share it with some contacts who you think might be interested.
Engage Engage Engage
If you get readers who comment on your blog, be sure to respond. That one person commenting might not be a potential client, but her connection who sees she’s commented might be. It’s an oddly interconnected world and you never know where a lead might come from. I was listed as the only LinkedIn trainer in Northern CA (though of course I’m not the only one!) on a world map of LinkedIn trainers due to my posts being seen by the Spanish creator of that map. I was hired by a Swiss woman to help her daughter-in-law create a better LinkedIn profile in preparation for moving from California to Switzerland. I was invited to do a webinar for a company in Israel. I have met some amazing people.
Sharing a blog post from your website
When you write a blog on your website, by all means share an update with the link on LinkedIn – this is different from an article. Please don’t create an article (aka a blog post) and then just put the link to your article there. People resent having to click again and be taken out of LinkedIn. They will not comment on LI if your link takes them elsewhere nor are they likely to “like” or share within the LinkedIn platform.
Sharing blog posts that you’ve written for other sites
If I write a guest blog post for a company or organization that’s likely to be of general interest to my audience, I wait two weeks after the original post appeared and then share it to my network with a link and credit to the original site. That’s a win-win.
How much is too much and am I bothering my connections?
If you read my note above about posting on LinkedIn and how unlikely it is to even appear in someone’s newsfeed and then for someone to see it if it does appear, you’ll see that it’s difficult to overshare. The good news is that you can safely share more than once and people are not likely to see it! Now, why does it sound wrong to say that it’s good news they won’t see it? If they do, they’ll either ignore it the second time or decide it’s worth taking a look if they were too busy to look the first time. Remember that in most cases, it’s just a link and they can choose to click on it or not as they wish.
There are statistics about people having to see an ad seven times in order to buy. Repetition in other marketing efforts besides ads is also true.
Newsletters
The number one return on my marketing investment last year was doing a regular newsletter. If the topic is relevant, I will link it to a blog post – maybe a recent one or perhaps one of my older ones. If your newsletter is your blog post, remember it’s going to your targeted list of people who’ve expressed interest in your services. However, even then, they may or may not read it (I consistently read only one blog in newsletter format. But I read a minimum of two blogs a day on LinkedIn.
Your connections on LinkedIn are likely different than your newsletter distribution list. Even if they’re some of the same people, your connections on LI are much more likely to like and share on LI (they may not read it again but may share based on remembering it from your newsletter. You now have a chance for a much wider reach.
Other Social Media sharing
I recommend you get as much use from your blog posts as you possibly can. Writing is a painful experience for me so I certainly want to get as much as I can from each one. I share a link to old blog posts if they’re relevant to my Facebook business page. I have fifty blogs to choose from so I’m happy to get more mileage from them. When I post a blog anywhere, it automatically posts to Twitter also.
Happy sharing!