LinkedIn Pulse – Have you heard about this?
Most people are aware that you can share links to other blogs on LinkedIn but did you know that you can actually publish blogs within the LinkedIn platform? This area is called LinkedIn Pulse and can be a very effective tool for business growth.
Before we dive into using LinkedIn Pulse or even sharing a regular update, the first thing to consider is whether or not LinkedIn is the right platform for you. Not all social media platforms are created equal so you have to determine if LinkedIn is a good fit for you and your business. LinkedIn users are comprised of mostly professionals.
You’ll find a lot of executives and leaders and of course job-seekers. Here are some useful statistics about LinkedIn:
- 25% of all US adults are on LinkedIn
- 44% of users are women
- 45% of users earn over $75K (compared to just 13% that earn under $30K)
- 46 Million students and recent college graduates are on LinkedIn
- More than 70% of members are outside the US
- Two-thirds of millionaires use LinkedIn
- The most represented industry on LinkedIn is Information and Technology Services
- Only 17% of US small businesses use LinkedIn
- LinkedIn has 260 million monthly active users
- There are 87 million Millenials on LinkedIn with 11 million of those in decision-making positions
Now that you know a bit about who is on LinkedIn…
let’s look at how you share content with those users. The first way is through a LinkedIn update. This is really just like any post you would make to Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can use text, share a link, upload a video or share a photo. If you want to drive traffic to your website then this is the ideal choice. It’s also good for sharing high quality content from a reputable third party.
The other way to share content on LinkedIn is through their own Pulse platform. In short, you post your article directly into the LinkedIn platform and it’s hosted within their site. There are a couple of drawbacks to using this method. First of all, you don’t own the site so it’s not directly driving traffic to your site. Secondly, this isn’t the platform to just post a short 100-200 word post. Longer articles are definitely more successful. Lastly, you can’t guarantee that your article will show up in the LinkedIn Pulse feed.
But, it’s not all bad. There are some definite reasons why you should be posting articles to Pulse. While your content may not automatically show up in the overall Pulse feed, it will show up on your feed so your immediate network will see it. This is a great opportunity to share your expertise. The more people engage with your content and the more relevant your content is to what LinkedIn users are looking for, the more likely you are to be picked up into the main LinkedIn Pulse feed. Bonus – LinkedIn is very highly ranked by search engines, so these articles are likely to appear in search results!
To make the most of posting on LinkedIn Pulse, here are some of our other recommendations:
- Be sure to post the link to your article on your company page. This increases the company credibility
- Always include a company byline in your article giving folks a chance to click to check out your company website
- List posts and How-to articles perform the best on LinkedIn
- Split your article into 5, 7 or 9 headings to get the best performance results
- Keep your title more than 40 characters but less than 50 for best results
- This is one platform where video being included is not as good an idea. Those without video perform better here.
The good news…
is that publishing an article on LinkedIn Pulse is super easy. You don’t need much technical knowledge to get started. Look for our article next week with a quick tutorial on how to publish to Pulse so you can get started right away!
Written By
Holly Kile – Marketing Assistant
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