Should I publish my content on LinkedIn? Or my own website?
“Should I publish my content on LinkedIn? Or on my own website?”
This is a common question we receive from our clients.
While the question may seem like a simple black and white, there is actually some nuance in the answer. LinkedIn is a pivotal part of your thought leadership strategy and it is important that you use it properly.
In this post, we will answer how we think about where to publish your content and how to handle LinkedIn.
The Short Answer: Publish on your site, promote on LinkedIn
If you are going to go through the effort of creating original content, then you should publish that original content on your own website. You should then promote that content via LinkedIn. There are several reasons behind this.
1. LinkedIn is not pushing their “Articles” feature anymore
Roughly 2-3 years ago LinkedIn was heavily pushing its Pulse feature, which was essentially a news feed of articles that people were publishing to their LinkedIn profiles.
Back then, it was worthwhile to publish your LinkedIn content through their Articles feature because the platform pushed a lot of traffic to articles. When you published articles, many of your connections were even notified with an alert that you had published.
This was great for a short period of time, but it didn’t last. Over time they moved away from Pulse in favor of a news feed that looks much more like Facebook. As a result, articles see much less traffic because they’re hidden in the interface.
Today, an article will often receive 1/10th the traffic that a social post in your LinkedIn news feed will.
2. You do not own LinkedIn
The second reason you want to publish on your website first is that you do not own LinkedIn. At any moment, LinkedIn could kill their article feature and delete all of your content. While it’s unlikely, it’s possible.
When you publish content on your own website, you have control over the content and it is kept safe within your own website.
3. LinkedIn is a distracting place to read articles
If you do publish your articles on LinkedIn, you have to also realize that LinkedIn is a horrible place to read long form content. While someone is on the interface, you run the risk of them receiving a message, seeing a new notification, or being distracted by a side bar advertisement or feature.
LinkedIn’s platform is meant to hook people in and keep them engaged, so if you sit on the website for too long, something will happen. That is why it’s a horrible place to try and get people to read your long form content.
Why you should publish articles on your own website
When you publish articles on your own website you will see many advantages.
1. You own your content and know it will be there for years to come
2. Less distractions when someone is consuming your content
3. You can optimize content for email opt-ins or free consultations
4. You control the branding and design of the content.
5. You can use re-targeting to run brand awareness advertisements to your market after reading.
6. You build SEO authority and credibility on your website, which is a long term asset.
These are just a few of the many reasons publishing content on your own website is the ideal way to go.
How to effectively promote content on LinkedIn
When you think about publishing content on LinkedIn, consider this…
“LinkedIn is a place to repurpose and promote content.”
For most people, LinkedIn is not an ideal place for completely original content. While there are some social influencers out there who are creating catchy social posts every day, that is unsustainable for your average business.
That’s because your average LinkedIn post has a life span of roughly 24-48 hours. Which means that each LinkedIn post you create will live and die within 2 days.
Can you keep up a pace of creating engaging and original content every 2 days? Most businesses have many other priorities at the top of their list.
That is why we operate on the philosophy that LinkedIn is a place to repurpose and promote content. It is not a place to put all of your new original ideas. Instead, you want to focus on taking your new ideas and turning those into articles or podcasts that live on your primary website.
Once you have those articles or podcasts, you repurpose them into LinkedIn social posts that drive awareness of your brand and traffic back to your original articles.
LinkedIn content promotion tactics
When it comes to promoting content on LinkedIn, there are currently two primary tactics at your disposal. The news feed, and the articles section.
LinkedIn’s platform is always changing, so new features like “LinkedIn Live” may come and go, but the news feed and articles section are two features that have been around for quite some time.
The LinkedIn news feed
Your #1 tactic for promoting your content is through the LinkedIn newsfeed. When you log-in to LinkedIn this is the first thing you see. These are all of the posts that you can scroll through in a very “Facebook-like” manner. LinkedIn prioritizes this feed because this is what is the most engaging to its users.
In today’s world of short attention spans, people like to scroll, like, and comment. It’s as simple as that.
Yet every individual’s news feed is customized to their own connections, likes and interests. So the question becomes “How do I get my content in the news feed of others?”
Post at least 2-3 times per week
The lifespan of a LinkedIn post is 48 hours. As a result, your optimal posting schedule is 2-3 days per week. There is no downside to posting 5 days per week, but unless you are strategically going heavy into LinkedIn, this is not necessary.
At 2-3 days per week, you will see plenty of engagement on your LinkedIn content which will maximize the chances of your post appearing in others’ news feeds.
The news feed is an algorithm that rewards engaging content
The news feed on LinkedIn is an algorithm that rewards high performance content. Whenever the algorithm sees a high level of interest from users, it will show that content to more similar users.
For example, if people stop scrolling in their news feed to read or view your post, that shows engagement. If someone clicks “read more” , that shows engagement. If someone comments or likes, that shows engagement.
The more engaging your content is, the more traffic and visibility it will see.
You can see samples of engaging LinkedIn posts that we have created at Content Allies here.
Start with a hook
In order to make your content engaging, one thing you need to do is start with a hook. The first line of your post should be compelling, interesting or engaging. Some common ways to write a hook are:
Say something unexpected
Say something contrarian
Start in the middle of a story
Use a statistic
Ask a question
All of these will capture someone’s attention within seconds of reading your post, which will help maximize engagement and ensure it gets the maximum amount of traffic.
Use images
LinkedIn also tends to reward posts that use images over standard text posts. You can either post your own picture along with a post, or use a tool like Canva to create a quote block or social image to accompany your message.
Publishing a link in your post kills organic reach
LinkedIn is a social platform that makes money by having its users see advertisements on the platform. This means they are incentivized to keep people on their platform. That is why if you post a link to something off of LinkedIn in your news feed posts, it will actually kill the reach of that post. On average this will reduce traffic by 1/6th when you compare it to a post that does not link off site.
This is unfortunate as we want to eventually get users back to your website. There are a few ways to counteract this effect.
First, you can ask your leads to leave a comment if they would like to see the full article or report. This is a great way to encourage engagement with your post and boost the reach. My friend Ahmad Munawar does an amazing job with this! {{Embed post}}
Second, you can say “link in comments” within your social post. Then, right after the post goes live you leave a link to the article within the comments section of the post. This can look odd but it will help increase the organic reach of your post.
The LinkedIn Articles feature
The second feature to consider when promoting your content on LinkedIn is the articles feature. 2-3 years ago, this was the place to go if you wanted to promote your content. Today it is much less important but still has some benefits that make it worth using.
The #1 reason that the LinkedIn Articles feature is so powerful is that those articles are stored as thumbnails on your LinkedIn profile. See below.
This is extremely powerful because anyone who stumbles on your LinkedIn profile can now click into and read your most compelling writing. It is a natural way to position yourself and your company by backing up your message with content.
The downside is that these articles will receive very little organic traffic on LinkedIn. That is why we do NOT recommend you post all of your articles to the articles section.
Post only your top 1-3 articles to LinkedIn Articles
Instead, we recommend you post your top 1-3 articles on LinkedIn. Specifically, you should post the #1 article last so that it is the most recent article and appears as a thumbnail on your profile. This helps ensure that anyone who visits your profile has a chance to see your most compelling cornerstone content.
Make your LinkedIn articles into teasers that link to the full post on your website
As we mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is a distracting place to try and consume content. That is why we do not recommend publishing your full articles as LinkedIn articles. Instead, publish each LinkedIn article as a teaser.
Post the first 2-5 paragraphs that are meant to hook the reader. Then post something like “Read the full post at…”
This helps route a visitor who happens to stumble on your profile from LinkedIn to your website. This is great because it moves them from a social platform to your own website where they are much more likely to take action with an email opt-in or by filling out a contact form.
Publish on your website, promote on LinkedIn
Our goal with this post was to educate you on how to think about handling your content across your own website and LinkedIn. In summary:
Publish original content and ideas to your own website. You own this.
Repurpose and promote content via LinkedIn as news feed snippets.
Post your top 1-3 articles as LinkedIn Articles.
That is the key to gaining the most traction and value with your content.
Now, the next step is to start creating content. Get started or reach out to Content Allies for help. We support our clients with original content creation and LinkedIn content promotion.