Have you heard the news?

Or maybe you have already received an email that looks like this:

linkedinPublishing

Even if you haven’t yet seen an email like this in your inbox, this is great news for all of us: LinkedIn has decided to allow members, not just influencers, to publish “long-form” (essay type) posts to be shared with your connections and followers.

What does this mean? Let’s explore the possibilities:

  1. Your post will showcase your expertise and help lay down more foundation of your expert status because it will be added to your professional profile.
  2. Your post could reach a broader audience in your industry AND online because it is searchable both on and off LinkedIn.
  3. LinkedIn members who are NOT in your network connections can follow you and your posts. This will build trust, warm up more leads and eventually make a much easier connection for you in the future.
  4. This post can be shared across other social networks for even more visibility.
  5. Information is power! LinkedIn has connected this published post to your analytics page. All you have to do is check that page and see how much attention your post has received. Use this information to tailor your future posts on and off LinkedIn.

BUT, before you do a happy dance, there are some nitty gritty rules that I want you to consider first. (Yes, there is no free lunch folks, you know this!)

So while I love that LinkedIn has created this publishing feature, it does provide another layer of work for us all, added to what I know is an already overloaded schedule.

I know what you are thinking, “I will just repost from my own blog!”

Plain and simple that’s a big no-no and as much as you would like to, you should avoid just reposting from your own blog. Due to lovely Google and SEO you need to have new, fresh content in order for it to gain any ranking at all.

The answer? You need to create something new. But remember, new is compelling for ALL of your readers not just those smart Google bots that can sniff out identical work a mile (or a gigabyte) away.

To help you, I asked one of my mentors, Maggie Patterson of Marketing Moxie for Entrepreneurs, to give us some of her best advice surrounding this question:

“How do you create something new without needing to start from scratch?”

Here are her thoughts to consider when you start writing your LinkedIn published posts:

  1. Start by redefining the idea of “original” content. It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking or something that you’ve never written before. Instead, take what you’ve already got and recycle into a fresh new post.
  2. What blog posts or guest posts do you have that you could pull content from or repackage?
  3. Create a list post using all old posts as a “best of” type series.
  4. Take other types of content such as course materials, audio or video and have it transcribed. Pull your content from there.
  5. Breathe new life into content that didn’t get as much play as you’d hoped – give it a new seasonal spin, update with new information or present it differently.
  6. Take something like a trend you were discussing and do an update linking back to the original post.

I think Maggie hit the nail on the head with her ideas and has given me the kick I needed to keep this going amongst all my other to-dos! I hope you do too.

Need more info on these LinkedIn long-form posts? Click here.
Haven’t been invited to publish yet and want to apply for early access? Click here.
Want to take a look at my published posts? Click here.

The first step you should take today? Join my LinkedIn group where you can ask me any and all of your Q’s that come up in the safety of our group. In this group we explore all these tricky topics and more!

Second step today? Read this again and decide what will be the topic of your first published post on LinkedIn.

As always, to your success!