LinkedIn has been a little late to the social media party. Although it was founded before Facebook it has taken a while for the platform to get its functionality up to the level of fellow social media leaders.
Now owned by Microsoft with a large cadre of tech expertise behind it, it has slowly transformed itself from a platform for job seekers to a platform for sharing content. With this has come the opportunity for marketers to leverage its tools and reach to become in some cases their primary content marketing channel.
Due to its nascency in this regard, now is the time to start using LinkedIn as a marketing channel for your business. Unlike Facebook where users have to pay for their posts to get any sort of real reach, the organic reach from LinkedIn presently is really high.
Here’s how you can take advantage of this:
1. Write an article
LinkedIn’s publishing feature now enables any member to contribute content to the platform. In exchange for publishing your content on Linkedin for which they will be privy to and own all the data related to the article, you will get increased exposure of your article. That’s right, LinkedIn’s algorithms ensure LinkedIn articles achieve greater reach than articles shared from 3rd party platforms.
To get started, look at the top of your feed for the “Write an article” call-to-action.
2. Engage with other articles
This tactic is massively undervalued. By commenting on posts related to your business niche, over time you can build a serious brand for yourself and your company.
Start by searching for what is trending on LinkedIn. You can do this using a new feature called “What People Are Talking About Now” which appears at the top right of your news feed.
By clicking on these stories you’ll be able to comment on stories which have the largest real time reach.
You can also find trending articles to comment on by using a hashtag search for different subject areas.
By clicking on the subject you’ve searched for you’ll be able to see all the content being posted which carried the given hashtag.
In order to make an impact with this strategy you HAVE TO get two things right:
1. You need be commenting on least 30 posts a day.
2. All your comments need to be credible. Don’t just say “nice article” or “great read”. The comments you make need to be short-form content themselves. They need to augment what has already been written.
3. Upload presentations to LinkedIn Slideshare
I’ve saved the best until last. This one is a little known secret. Back in 2012 LinkedIn bought slide sharing platform, Slideshare. To this day the product still lives at https://www.slideshare.net/.
Savvy marketers are using slideshare as an optimal content marketing tool. They give away valuable learning resources for free in exchange for brand visibility. Content marketing 101.
Take a look at Carol Smith’s profile below. She only has 1,700 followers (hardly an influencer), but her AI and Machine Learning Demystified presentation has been viewed over 3.6 million times!
Go on! Upload your first presentation.
