7 Step LinkedIn Article Publishing

Publishing an article on LinkedIn can help position you as a thought leader in your industry, and allows you to be discovered not only within LinkedIn but within Google search. But there is more to the process than hitting 'publish'.

Here are my 7 steps process for LinkedIn Article success;

1. Plan - this removes writer's block and decision making which can slow you down.
2. Produce - take advantage of being in the ‘zone’ to maximise your creative energy.
3. Publish - format, create graphics, embedding media and links.
4. Promote - using social media, email and other assets and scheduling tools.
5. Respond – engage with those who comment and share.
6. Review the performance - Who saw it, engaged and what did they do next?
7. Repeat - act on insights and stay consistent

Part 1 – Plan Your Content

To make your content creation and marketing easier, start with a plan.

1. First, be clear on your WHY… Why do you do what you do? What difference or impact are you trying to make? All content should support your bigger why. (Refer to Simon Sinek’s Gold Circle model and Start With Why TED Talk).
2. Get clear on WHO your audience is. Think ideal clients and referral partners that you wish to be seen by, engage and build a relationship with.
3. Think about WHAT challenges they have and big picture themes for your content. First brainstorm the potential categories for your content on a whiteboard, large sheet of paper, or post-it notes. Think about problems you solve for your ideal clients. Are some related? Group them together and see how many overarching themes you have. Will you work with a monthly theme, a quarterly theme or something else?
4. Within each of those themes are topics. Brainstorm additional problems that you solve for your audience within each theme. Think about the questions you are often asked, or ask your network what they really want to learn more about. Think about the common mistakes you see and the trends in your industry that may impact your clients. Consider sharing strategies or definitions in your subject matter expertise, resources lists from curated content where you bring together the best to save your clients time, such as a top 10, top 40 list or 101 recommended things. Use social media tools to research the questions your audience have, and use tools such as Quora and Ask The Public, groups or forums to see what questions are being asked.
5. Within your topics, create dot points for each article. One article could be “The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made By …”, with further articles about each point in more detail with a step by step plan to deal with the issue.  Think about the story you wish to tell in each article. Jot down the characters, the conflict, and the resolution. Some topics could be split into smaller articles or be part of a series (collectively they could be part of an ebook).
6. Consider the scalability of the content. It may start as an article, but may also become a SlideShare presentation, a white paper, online course, part of an ebook or a webinar.

Ensure the topics and theme align with your values and vision, and stick to what you want to be known for. But most importantly, always start with your why.

Part 2 – Produce Your Content

Schedule time to create your articles as per your plan. Have your audience in mind before writing to ensure it has relevance to your intended reader. For each piece of content, consider the story your content is telling, the tone you wish to take and the feeling or impression you want to make. Be sure to connect with your purpose. Is it to educate and inform, enlighten and inspire, and/or to entertain or evoke other emotion?

1. Who is your target audience? Write with them in mind.
2. How will you write your content and stories? 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person or a combination of all three?
3. Introduce the concept. What is the conflict or challenge? 
4. What is the solution and call to action?
5. Does your content align with your vision, mission and values?

Tips for crafting your LinkedIn articles content;

• Aim for 500 – 2000+ words
• Include relevant keywords and phrases in sentences
• Write conversationally, and invite the reader to engage
• Back up statistics and claims with data and reference points

Example framework for your article;

1. Intro paragraph – tell them what you are going to tell them - focus on the big picture challenge and solution to encourage our audience to read on.
2. Break your content into 3 main points with sub-headings
3. Point 1 - include stories and/or stats
4. Point 2 - include stories and/or stats
5. Point 3 - include stories and/or stats
6. Summarise what you have told them and what action the reader should take.
7. Ask a question to invite engagement or challenge your audience to take action.

If you find writing a challenge, start with a video or audio recording and have it transcribed using an app or service, or transcribe as you speak using the dictate feature in Microsft Word. Then all you need to do it edit and format the copy.

Creating content can be fun once you get into a flow. 

Part 3 – Publishing - Structuring your LinkedIn Article

Once you have written your content, you will want to edit and ensure it is well structured before publishing. As you edit your article it automatically saves it as a Draft. Once it is ready, then hit publish.

Your content must capture attention to encourage the viewer to click. Then it needs to be easy to read which starts with being scannable. Use paragraphs with white space, bullets and numbered lists, sub-headings and visual content, and an attention-grabbing keyword-rich headline.

Structure Tips

1. Keep Your Article Title Short but Engaging

Make your headline as concise as possible, while incorporating keywords, a hook and promise to capture attention. Think about the questions your reader type into Google search, such as “How to…”. Or use numbers, such as “The 3 Step Guide to …” or “The Top 10 Mistakes Made…” or “ 5 Questions to ask before…”

LinkedIn may truncate your long title, so put the important attention-grabbing phrase first

2. Use an Eye-Catching Hero Image

This image sits at the top of your article and is featured as a preview when the article is shared as a post on LinkedIn, or in the Featured section of your profile.

A high quality, vibrant image can persuade readers to click. Avoid, blurry, dark images, company logos and boring ‘done’ stock images. Take your own photos, or create graphics using stock images, branded with your logo or using your brand colours. The best tool for this is Canva. Use the stock images within the platform or upload your own images.

3. Embed Engaging Media

Use video, images, or sound bites in your article to enhance your message.

Include relevant images throughout the article to demonstrate concepts, enhance stories, or create sections for longer content.

Embed media such as video (hosted on YouTube or Vimeo) and slide decks as relevant to add more value.

4. Embrace White Space

Make your article scannable. Use headings, white space and lists to break up the text into readable chunks. Numbering and standard bullets are available within LinkedIn formatting, or you may choose to use characters or emojis that align with your brand.

5. Embed links to other content

Use your article to drive traffic to other LinkedIn articles and / or your website. You could use custom links using tools such as Bit.ly which creates short custom links and provides metrics.

Review where the links make sense, and where you want to send the reader. This can include to your other related LinkedIn articles, blogs, webpages, social media profiles or specific posts.

If quoting from other sources, it is good practice to reference your source, which can include links to the content for transparency and credibility.

6. Use Click to Tweet, to create tweetable quotes within your article, or other sharing tools.

7. Call to action 

Encourage the reader to take action. What would you like them to do next? Do you want their opinion in a poll? Do you want them to send you a question? Book a call with you? Subscribe or connect? Download your free checklist? Join your free challenge?

Your call to action may be the last sentence of your article, or you may choose to include it within the article.

Close the article with an Author Box written in 3rd person, about the author and how to get in touch.

Publish

Hit publish when you are happy with the structure, and be ready to craft a post to promote the content to your LinkedIn network. Should you notice a mistake or if you have forgotten something, the edit button can always be used to make tweaks.

Part 4 – Promotion

Hitting publish is important, but right now the article visibility is limited. Not all connections will see the post or click on the article. Your network may see your post, depending on the algorithm and it may get picked up through content searches, but to get more visibility it is important to promote the article multiples times within LinkedIn, in addition to outside LinkedIn.

1. Create a Promotion Plan

Create an article marketing plan to share the article. Here are some activities you could include;

• Routinely share to LinkedIn with a point from the article and question
• Share the link and image to your LinkedIn Company Page
• Share to your LinkedIn Group
• Share via LinkedIn message to relevant 'warm' connections
• Create and schedule a batch of tweets
• Schedule a Tweet Chat on the article topic via Twitter.
• Share a graphic on Instagram with a link
• Share the link via your Facebook Page or Group
• Broadcast via Facebook Live with a live Q&A linking to the article.
• Pin your images to boards on Pinterest
• Run a webinar based on the content.
• Share to your email list
• Add a link in your email signature
• Host a Room on Clubhouse to discuss the topic
• Create a video to go with the content. This could be slides with voice over, you talking to camera, an interview on the topic. Be creative. Share to YouTube with a link to the article. Bonus – embed the video in the article.

2. Create a Batch of Posts

Directly promoting your article as posts is important to increase the chance of your content being seen. For every article, you want to craft a range of posts with different focus points, this can be done in bulk or over time.

Avoid just sharing the title and link, as that limits the reason to click. Create posts focusing on the value, or one specific aspect of the article. This will increase the visibility and engagement. Commit to a realistic and sustainable posting schedule, working to the resources, time and budget you have available.

3. Repurpose for Other Platforms

Create different versions of the content to publish on your blog, Medium, or Tumblr, and repurpose into other pieces of content that could be embedded into them, or used to promote.

Turn your article into;

• Slides (PowerPoint, Keynote, GoogleSlides, Canva)
• Images with quotes / tips (Canva)
• Video (from Canva images)
• PDF (from Canva images to use as a LinkedIn document post)
• Audio grams or soundbytes
• Create an audio version of the article hosted on Soundcloud, then embed it in the article
• Video (using Lumen5)
• An eBook (Designrr)
• A checklist (Canva)
• GIF (Giphy or Canva)

Feel free to share your suggestions and favourite tools in the comments

4. Advertise Your Post

Share your article to your Company Page, then set up a Sponsored Post. Share via Facebook or Twitter and run promoted posts to drive traffic to LinkedIn if you have the budget for this.

5. Ask to be Featured

Send a friendly tweet with your post link to @LinkedInEditors 

CLICK TO TWEET

Part 5 – Respond & Reach Out

Promoting your content aims to encourage your network to click and comment. When people engage with your content on LinkedIn they are exposing your article to their network, which gives you the ability to be seen beyond your 1st level connections. The more people you are connected to who may be interested in your content, the more exposure and engagement you could have.

Review your notifications and respond to interaction appropriately, whether it is liking the comment or replying. Commenting back can extend the life of the post, increasing the visibility of the article.

1. Review Article Engagement

Respond to comments on the article and thank those who share your articles. This may encourage more engagement and more visibility to their network. It may also help you grow your network of connections and followers.

1. Review Notifications
2. Respond to engagement on the posts you share. Determine if the comment needs a reply, or if there is an opportunity to continue the conversation, or if it simply needs to be acknowledged by a Like. Comments can be a signal to start a private conversation through messaging, which may be appropriate to ask them specific questions in response to their comment. This action is more about relationship building rather than exposure to their network.
3. Build Your LinkedIn Network

Connections and followers are important in publishing. When you publish a post on LinkedIn, your connections and followers may see your update in their home feed, so it is important to build your network of relevant people. Look at who is engaging with your content that you aren't connected to. These people may be a good fit, and by connecting they have more chance of seeing future content.

Part 6 – Performance - LinkedIn Metrics

Content on LinkedIn has metrics that you can review. Articles and posts both have their own metrics. Without promotion, your Article views may appear low.

Once you activate a promotion plan, routinely review your metrics to determine success.   Look at Views, Likes & Reactions, Comments and Shares.

• Article views mean that someone has clicked on the article link.
• Post views mean that it entered a person's feed but doesn't mean they saw or read it.

LinkedIn doesn't do the best job of showing your Profile metrics in a useful way, it also doesn't show the tie stamp of posts which means you have no way of knowing the actual time and day the post was published.

Social media management tool Agorapulse has a useful feature for this. While content can be scheduled through the tool, it also shows content posted directly on LinkedIn in the content calendar, which includes the time and data.

Another useful tool specifically for LinkedIn content metrics is Shield. It aggregates the post data so that you are able to compare results and look for high performing content and patterns.

When looking at the numbers, particularly directly from the Article, consider;

• The amount of visibility
• The amount of engagement vs visibility
• Content being shared.

The data may highlight what to do more of or less of, and which articles could use more promotion. It also may give an indication of the future content to create.

Ready to Publish?

Publishing articles on LinkedIn, isn’t just a case of pulling together the content and hitting publish. It is important to understand the foundations of how to publish content on LinkedIn and why you are investing time and effort in the first place.

Attention is the new currency. Being seen and holding attention is part art, part science with a dose of luck and mercy of the platform. By understanding your audience, the challenges they have that you solve and coming up with content that adds value, demonstrates your expertise and taking time to leverage the nuances of LinkedIn, you will increase the return on your effort.

I recommend starting with your plan for the next quarter. If you need a template to help you plan your content access our resources available to members of our community.

Need help? 

I love helping clients build their personal brand and content strategy. If you are lost for ideas, speak to me. If you are unsure how to use LinkedIn or need hand-holding speak to me. And if you need accountability so that this becomes part of your regular tasks, definitely speak to me.

For LinkedIn Training and LinkedIn Workshops contact Jo Saunders of Wildfire Social Marketing, on 0422 431 039 to review and map out your LinkedIn strategy, navigate the network and train your team.