A common use of LinkedIn is the curation and sharing of content with fellow colleagues and users. The business oriented social platform has a wide variety of features that encourage users to share content, and earlier this year its own content creation platform was implemented for select users. Now, the company has rolled out the new publishing platform for all users to take advantage of.
About LinkedIn’s New Publishing Platform
Like other social networks, LinkedIn allows users to publish posts on their profile which are then visible to other users. In the past, there was a limit as to how long the posts could be, which influenced how users shared the content they generated. Most would simply copy and paste a link to their content into a post on their LinkedIn profile.
In an effort to make sharing thoughts, ideas, expertise, etc. easier, LinkedIn has implemented the long-form post. This feature allows you to create longer content, such as blog articles and opinion pieces, and post this directly on LinkedIn. In other words, you can now use LinkedIn as a blog which is shared with your connections.
If you create long-form content, this could be a useful way to get posts out to an even wider audience than through your blog. This is because when you publish a post on LinkedIn, it becomes part of your overall profile, with the post being visible under the Posts section of your profile. New long-form posts will also be published and shared with all of your contacts automatically.
This means that you could technically increase the overall reach of your content, especially if the content you produce is useful to your LinkedIn connections.
Writing Long-Form Content On LinkedIn
If you would like to start publishing long-form content using your LinkedIn profile, you should be able to do so by:
- Logging into your LinkedIn profile.
- Pressing the pencil in the box that says Share an update…
Note: This update is still rolling out to users, so you may not be able to produce long-form content just yet. If you don’t see the pencil in the Share an update… box, you will need to wait for a few weeks, or until you get an email from LinkedIn saying the feature is ready for you to use.
If you do see the pencil icon, click on it to open the long-form post screen. It looks like most other Web-based publishing and writing platforms with the usual formatting buttons and text field where you input the content.
You can write your article directly on this page, but many choose to write using a program they are comfortable with and then copy and paste into the text field. If you want to add images to your post, you can simply click where you would like the image to slot into the content and select the camera icon from the menu bar above the text field. Select the image and hit Submit. You can then resize the image by clicking and dragging on it.
Saving And Editing Your Content
Once you have finished writing we strongly recommend you hit the Save button at the bottom of the text field. This will save the content to your profile, but will not post it. This means you can edit the content before publishing. To do this, click on Preview which will open your post in another window, allowing you to see what the post will look like on your profile.
While in Preview mode, be sure to check the spelling and grammar, along with the overall formatting. If you spot anything that needs to be changed simply switch back to the editing tab on your browser and make any amendments.
When you have finished writing, formatting, and editing you can then hit the Publish button. This will then publish the content on your profile and share it with your connections.
If you have content that you think your connections and colleagues would benefit from reading, then this new LinkedIn feature could prove to be useful and should be considered as a larger part of your overall content strategy.
Looking to learn more about LinkedIn and how you can leverage it in your business? Contact us today to see how we can help.
Getting Content Shared: Part 1
One of the biggest Internet trends of the past half decade or so is the rise of mobile-based browsing. With the ever increasing number of smartphones and cheaper data plans, mobile Internet browsing is set to surpass desktop. Because of this, Google has recently introduced a slight change to their mobile search results that could have a big impact on sites that aren’t mobile optimized.
First, A Bit Of Background
Earlier this year, Matt Cutts from Google indicated that the company was on track to see the number of worldwide mobile Google Search queries surpass the number of desktop-based Google Search queries. This makes sense when you take into account the fact that there are an estimated 5+ billion mobile devices in the world, and only around 2 billion computers.
What figures like this mean is that mobile devices are quickly becoming the main way people use the Internet. Think about it for a second, when you suddenly want to find out some information online, you will often not be around a computer but will almost certainly always have your mobile device at the ready.
This trend will only increase, as more people spend more online time on their mobile devices. Essentially, the more people search on Google using their mobile device the more mobile traffic is driven to websites. Chances are, the number of mobile visits to your site has been increasing. Some businesses like those in the service industry, have seen the number of mobile visits on their sites increase year-on-year.
Google’s Recent Search For Mobile Change
In early July the company announced that, “In English search results in the US, we will indicate to searchers when our algorithms detect pages that may not work on their devices.” What this means is that when using Google Search on your mobile device you should see a warning message in the results list. This message will show up under the site name and address and will tell you that some page elements aren’t compatible with mobile devices and therefore won’t load.
For example, if you search for a restaurant and one of the pages in the results has an Adobe Flash-based site – which isn’t usually supported by most mobile operating systems – you will see a warning, telling you the site may not load correctly.
What Does This Mean For My Business’s Site?
The major issue here is that many businesses have sites that have been written in older programming languages, like Adobe Flash, which are no longer used by the major mobile systems. If a mobile user sees that your site won’t load properly on their mobile device, there is an extremely high chance that they will ignore it. This in turn means a likely decrease in the number of page visits and potential business.
Google has noted that they will not penalize sites not catering to mobile devices by showing them lower in mobile-based search results. But you can bet that sites with code that is not understood by mobile devices will see a decrease in traffic and over time come down lower in the results.
What Can My Business Do?
Let’s face it, mobile is here to stay so it would be a good idea to ensure your site is mobile optimized – it doesn’t have to be strictly mobile, but it needs to be accessible and readable on mobile devices. The first thing we recommend is to grab a mobile device – iOS or Android 4.1 and newer – and search for your site using the major search engines. When you find it, try to load the pages. If you can’t load the site, or see blank pages then you need to take steps to fix that.
In other words, if your site is older than a couple of years, you may want to think about redesigning, or modernizing it. We agree that this is an investment, but if your business relies on your website it is well worth it.
Looking for help ensuring your site is mobile optimized? Contact us today to see how we can help.
Published on 29th May 2014 by Jeanne DeWitt.
