100 LinkedIn Articles- Key Lessons

This week, I published my 100th article on LinkedIn (about being a digital nomad).

I wanted to share some of my reflections with you in the hope that it will inspire you to write more on LinkedIn and realise what a brilliant opportunity the platform gives us all. For all of my work, including my current work as The Influence Expert it has proved absolutely invaluable.

Plus, it was absolutely critical to setting up my charitable organisation, Young Charity Trustees- 6 years old today.

However, I think this is an opportunity that too few people are taking advantage of. I see so many LinkedIn profiles with no articles or very few- and I am evangelical about making people aware of the difference that it can make.

What I learned from writing 100 articles- 3 main things:

1-     Posting on LinkedIn helps your own thinking to evolve- When I have ideas in my head, unless I bring them out, test them and share them with others, they never grow. On LinkedIn there is an amazing community of people who have expertise and are brilliant in ways I will never be- I like being able to tap into their minds.

2-     Posting on LinkedIn helps new people to engage with your work- If the first point is about improving the quality of your ideas, the second is about improving the quantity of people who see it and are affected by it. As an ambitious person, there are changes that I want to make to the world. I need my ideas to get out to lots of people. Posting on LinkedIn helps me do that.

3-     People like to feel on a shared path- Quite often when we are struggling with a problem or grappling with an issue we think that we are doing so alone. When we put our ideas out there on LinkedIn we often find that there are others who think like us and who maybe have developed their thinking further than we have. There are other people who are less far along the path that we are travelling along. All three groups can enjoy the journey together if you post good articles on LinkedIn.

Who are some people I recommend you check out to learn more about writing for LinkedIn?

Robbie Swale – Robbie shares his thoughts in such a brilliant way on LinkedIn. He has one series that he writes on his commute (which just shows that you don’t need to take a lot of time to do this). Check out one of his articles here.

Nisha Kotecha (Declaration- she’s my wife, but I find the way she writes original content for LinkedIn inspiring and I wanted to share it with you). Here is an example.

Robert Ashton Robert is an entrepreneur who is always worth listening to- including on LinkedIn! You can see an example of his writing here.

Working from a cafe in Berlin, above

So, which were my most viewed articles?

My article about getting more people to read your LinkedIn posts has had more than 5000 clicks. It is clearly a subject that resonates.

Here is one of the kind comments:

Michael Knudsen

Contact Center Director at HCA, Founder The New Leaf Leader

Good one Alex. I landed here after desperately googling "how the heck can I get people to read my linkedin articles!?!" You come up #2 by the way. This was helpful.

Michael’s comment alerts me to another thing it is worth mentioning- LinkedIn articles come up in Google searches! This might seem obvious, but it is another great reason why you should write them and how you never know who might end up reading your work.

My article about 5 reasons why you should never get a job at a charity got almost as many views.

The point I’d make about this one is that I gave it a controversial title which really seems to have caught people’s attention. Being controversial isn’t easy and certainly not something that comes naturally to me. If you are too controversial you could be seen as rude or off-putting. However, having the right amount of controversy to encourage people to engage and to stimulate a debate is very helpful.

The number 1 article I have written on the platform in terms of popularity is...

How LinkedIn Changed My Life.

It currently has more than 10,000 clicks, 148 likes and 29 comments.

I think the reason it is my most popular is because I shared something personal about myself in the article- I was willing to be a bit vulnerable.

I am an unashamed massive fan of LinkedIn and the power it has to bring people together and I think it shone through in the article. If you can write about subjects you truly care about it is much more likely that people will be interested in what you have to say.

So, what are some other reasons why you should write posts for LinkedIn (or, if you do write for LinkedIn, why you should do so more frequently?).

Here are 6:

1-     It doesn’t need to take lots of time. Not every article on LinkedIn needs to be original, many of mine aren’t. You can take them from other places that you post and tweak them as appropriate for your LinkedIn audience.

2-     LinkedIn is a quick and easy way to share your thoughts with a wide audience if you don’t have, or don’t want your own website. In LinkedIn posts you have the ability to build in links, add photos and videos- all sorts of good things.

3-     Your LinkedIn posts get shown beyond your network of first connections (remember to use tags to help with this). This means that your ability to network and to get your work in front of a wide number of people is enhanced. One of the things that people struggle with when they start their own website is that they can’t always get it seen by many people beyond their existing friends and networks- LinkedIn helps with this.

4-     Also, everything that you write adds credibility to your claims on your LinkedIn profile. If you say that you are an expert in X, your LinkedIn posts give you the opportunity to show it.

5-     Posting good quality content regularly that people want to read on LinkedIn creates a ‘feedback loop’. More posts of higher quality mean more people see your posts, which mean more connection requests (also when people are viewing your profile if you have written a decent number of posts they know you are someone serious about your profession and worth linking to). More connection requests means you build your network on LinkedIn. Having a bigger (and more engaged) network on LinkedIn means that you have a bigger audience for your posts- and the cycle continues!

6-     LinkedIn posts are also a good way to show your contacts what you are up to, what you are thinking about and why you should be kept at the front of their minds. It is a way to keep engaged with people you want to be, without constantly bombarding their inbox with information.

The 100 articles I have written so far break down into a number of categories. I thought I would share the most important ones with you.

The first category is articles I’ve written about using LinkedIn itself.

For example I’ve written about how charities can use LinkedIn; about using LinkedIn as a charity leader; about learning at LinkedIn HQ in London; about why your business needs a LinkedIn company page and my Mastermind guide to getting more out of LinkedIn.

The second category is articles that relate to the subject of influence, which is the focus of my business.

I wrote this post before my business was even started because I was exploring ideas around influence and seeing if there was interest. This post is about lessons from the first year of my business. This post is about what it means to be the best, this one is about my free course to help people get better at networking, this is about my free book on influence and this post is encouraging others to write their own book.

The third category includes various ideas to encourage people to engage with my work.

For example:

-         The launch of my new website

-         Engaging with me in the year ahead

-         Promoting my interview series with people changing the world

-         My move to Berlin as a digital nomad

To give a practical example of how this can work well, look at this article explaining about my move to Lisbon (where I am currently writing this article from).

I explained why I was moving to Lisbon and that it would be really great to meet up with people there. As well as lots of positive, kind comments that made me look forward to going even more, it led to three meetings with brilliant people- Karin, Harry and Cae- with hopefully another meeting coming up in the next month.

The fourth and final category is about sharing things with people that I think it is important to draw their attention to or that I think they would enjoy.

This includes a wide variety of subjects:

-         The most mind-blowing website in the world

-         Starting off as a digital nomad

-         Why you need influence to change the world

-         My wife’s product, a guided positivity Journal

-         Why adding value to others should be your life’s mission

-         Why you need to pick yourself

-         How I found my tribe

-         The best conference I’ve ever been to

My current location, above

For another useful perspective, check out this article ‘Ten Things You Will Learn From Writing On LinkedIn’ by Brian Sooy and this one ‘Why I Write On LinkedIn (And Why You Should Too)’ by Glenn Leibowitz.

I want to give a huge thanks to everyone who has shared, liked, commented on and influenced my first 100 LinkedIn articles. You have made a huge difference and your encouragement keeps me going! I hope that in turn I have been supportive of the work of others on here.

I also hope that some of the ideas above have been helpful for you writing your own articles on here. If you have LinkedIn articles you would particularly like to share, please feel free to post them in the comments below. Or of course, please share if you have other tips about using LinkedIn to post.

Alex Swallow is The Influence Expert and author of 'How To Become An Influencer'. A free copy of the book and many tips about growing your influence can be found at www.theinfluenceexpert.com. You can join his online course, 'How To Network' free here. He is also the Owner of the social good interview series, Social Good Six, you can access all the interviews here.