Integrating LinkedIn Long-Form Posts in Your Blogging Strategy

In 2012, LinkedIn launched Influencers, a publishing platform for users to share their knowledge about their field of expertise. It paved way for people like Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Guy Kawasaki, among countless others, to build a readership from this social networking site through the content they create.

Originally, aside from people established in their respective industries, Influencers handpicked other regular users to publish content and build their personal branding through this platform. While it is no longer accepting applications to their Influencers , however, LinkedIn has allowed all members the opportunity to  write long-form posts.

While it doesn’t bear the same weight as Influencers, you as a blogger can still find use to the LinkedIn long-form posts feature, especially if you have a blog. Below are ways on how you can do it.

Elaborate a point on your blog post

If there’s a topic or issue that you weren’t able to flesh out completely in your blog post, you can take that and turn it into a long-form post at LinkedIn. In fact, look back at other posts you’ve posted in different publications over the years and take out the points that you felt you could have explained further. Use these as talking points to your upcoming long-form posts so you can develop and publish posts in LinkedIn on a consistent basis.

To help drive traffic to your blog posts, link back to those where you took the point that was blown into a long-form post so readers can click on it for more information.

To help you organize your content, you should create an editorial calendar to help you schedule your content publishing in this platform.

Doing this allows you to include your LinkedIn long-form posts into your sales funnel, should you apply an inbound approach to your blogging strategy. Since the purpose your blog in this approach is to attract and convert visitors, you need to determine which part of the sales funnel your LinkedIn long-form posts fall under. To provide you will a visual guide for this, refer to the infographic below at Broke Bloke Blogs.

Share your professional experience

Since LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals, it is only appropriate that you write long-form posts about your experiences with your job. Share just the right amount of information that won’t get you into trouble but be descriptive with the information you’re sharing as much as possible.

While this has nothing to do with your blog, this plays an important role in building your personal brand, which can indirectly affect your blog traffic. As you publish this content type of LinkedIn, you are able to build trust and influence with your readers because you ground your posts with real-life experiences in the industry and not just cookie-cutter articles prevalent in the web.

As a result, this can lead them to check out your profile and visit your blog, assuming that you share and promote your latest posts in your profile.

Additional tips

• Observe the best practices of writing your blog content by following this guide over at Blogger Sidekick. This post details the step-by-step process of developing your blog content, from coming up with a topic idea to writing SEO-conscious content. Highly recommended reading for bloggers who wish to improve their processes of writing and publishing content.
• Promoting your long-form posts on LinkedIn will be easier since it will be shared within your personal network. Also you can join different Linkedin Groups related to your expertise so you not only can share your posts there, but also engage with like-minded professionals. Of course, observing the best social media marketing practices is a plus.

Final thoughts: With a built-in network where you can easily share your content to, as well as a clean publishing platform, LinkedIn long-form posts should be a welcome addition to your blogging strategy that will help achieve your blogging goals, whether it’s increasing its traffic or converting visitors into leads or customers.