LinkedIn is opening its publishing platform to all its members. Last week, the platform was opened to about 25,000 users. More will be added gradually until every member has publishing privileges. Multiple languages will also be supported when the service is fully implemented.
Until recently, the ability to publish articles was reserved for well-known leaders like Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, and Richard Branson. With publishing privileges being opened to all members soon, LinkedIn can become a place where you build your brand and share your expertise too.
In a recent post on the official LinkedIn blog, Ryan Roslansky, director of product management, explained:
“The valuable Influencer posts and the wide range of professional content from millions of publishers that we currently aggregate on LinkedIn are powerful, but only the tip of the iceberg. Combined, our members have extremely valuable and varied experiences; however, their knowledge and expertise has not yet been captured and shared.”
Posts you publish will appear as part of your professional profile. From there they can be shared with your immediate network. Your network will be able to comment, like, and share your posts within their networks.
Photos, videos, other images, and SlideShare presentations can be shared through Influencer posts too, Roslansky noted.
Influencer posts can also reach a much broader audience through the LinkedIn network. Other members not in your immediate network can follow your Influencer posts and like them, sharing them with their networks.
LinkedIn introduced Influencers in 2012. At that time, only 150 Influencers were selected to post content. Since then, dozens more Influencers have been added.
Recent topics from Influencer posts range from hiring advice to business trends. Last July, LinkedIn added a social feature to Influencer posts that allowed you to comment on, like, and share these posts with your network, a previous post on the official LinkedIn blog explains.
Image: LinkedIn
This is smart move of LinkedIn in order to become a content creator hub. Do you think they have learned from Open Forum powered by American Express?
Martin,
Or Quora?
Ivan: Are you actively using Quora at the moment? I haven’t started yet. And then I saw Jelly and flipped through it for awhile… 😉
Joshua Sophy
I agree that this is a good idea. I can’t say where the inspiration came from but it certainly gives everyone on LinkedIn a voice and a chance to share their expertise or even their struggles.
Joshua: It will be interesting to follow along. The question is: where is the best place to have your content?
Joshua Sophy
With so many options, is there a right answer to that question?
Martin, I think the best place to have one’s content might vary from person to person. The best place isn’t the same for everyone. A particular platform that works for you mightn’t work for me.
I think this is one of those ideas that sounds good in theory.once launched, I am afraid the site will be flooded with volumes of irrelevant, inane articles written by subscribers looking for validation or forr imagined seo purposes. The Haggler, a writer in the NYT lambasted the PR industry for doing the same with press releases. If I like what someone has to say, I follow their twitter feed or blog.
Well, fingers crossed, let’s see what happens (or doesn’t happen as the case may be).
It will be a shame if irrelevant fluff is the way it goes. I hope LinkedIn will have something in place to minimise the chances of that happening.
Joshua: Probably not, but I had to ask…! 😉 I asked the question because I listen to John Jantsch’s interview with Mike Stelzner the other day, and there they discussed the future of social media with big channels like Facebook and LinkedIn are doing “pay for play” in order to show your content. The solution for you as a small business owner and content creator? Create and distribute content through your channels (hubs), e.g., your blog and podcast.
Hopefully LinkedIn doesn’t become a dumping ground of crappy SEO-related content. #fingerscrossed
Gosh, I hope that won’t be the case. (touch wood) | Wouldn’t be good for LinkedIn’s reputation either (well, from where I’m standing anyway. I regard the site as quite professional and dapper.)
I don’t use LinkedIn that much, but the publishing element of it is interesting and might pull me in to use the site more often. We’ll see. I’m certainly open to trying it out.
Aira Bongco
While this is a great place to start putting your content, companies still need to be careful on what type of information they put out there. After all, content can make or break a brand. That’s why they have to make sure that the content is always consistent with the brand.
I’m assuming a lot of companies that’ll get to use the publishing element of LinkedIn won’t be alien to publishing content anyway. The ones that need to be mindful of your good advice would be those who are new or fairly new to publishing.