How to Write for Pulse's Audience

The most successful posts on LinkedIn pulse are featured in multiple pulse channels, this is the key to reaching your audience. Writing for a channel is a great idea to improve your changes of getting featured. If you are a good writer with ambitions for reach and lead generation, you'll want to aim to get featured on three pulse channels at the same time. That is the golden ratio or sweet spot of for views and more importantly, actual engagement. 

However, a lot of people don't realize the subscription based channels that are the most important, for reaching your top audiences. So let's organize it by tiers, a concept I've demonstrated in previous articles. 

Tier 1

These are the most popular channels and if your article is even featured in one of these it will get 5k views without an issue. 

Tier 2

These are substantially less common, although professional women is rising quickly and an important channel. 

Tier 3

Notice that customer experience, is actually ahead of the Retail & Ecommerce channel in terms of exposure. 

Tier 4

Career advice and Big Data are obviously core channels on LinkedIn and Big Data in particular should be trending up. 

Tier 5

This tier has more of a millennial and future flavor, and it's notable that the Retail channel doesn't even have 2 million subscribers as of February, 2016. 

Tier 6

Editor's Picks has an unnatural boon to it, and can boost your article tremendously. Such is the fail safe, the algorithm can't be fully trusted to run things yet. 

Tier 7

Nothing of note here, move along. 

Tier 8

I've written for the Logistics channel, and for whatever reason the algorithm could never recognize my keyword cloud tags. 

Tier 9

I'm a bit surprised PR would be so low, or product management for that matter, considering how universally important the UX is to all of technology. 

Tier 10

Here again, company culture and VC must be new channels, since in the startup world of today (or on Medium) these are just huge areas of interest. 

Tier 11

India in Business may be the fastest rising channel, we'll have to keep tabs on it. I've noticed it's worth writing for, since it's a highly futuristic audience. The leaders of tomorrow sort of thing. 

Tier 12

LinkedIn Tips has to be one of the most useful channels to actually follow, and by this I mean go to specifically.  You would think HR would be more popular, right? Here you are starting to see the topics where the ROI is getting non-existent. What's the incentive for me to write about blogging in such an ecosystem?

Tier 13

Here are two big ones for the future, Freelance and InfoSec. Watch them here, and here. Writing for these for me, is pure pleasure. You will notice more channels are popping up with have to do with the future, innovation and adaptation to disruption. 

Tier 14

Here you will notice the rise of regions, and this is key for LinkedIn's overall growth strategy. It's not secret how important Asia Pacific is in the rise of a LinkedIn as a global channel. 

Tier 15

LinkedIn has just horrible young Millennial and iGen engagement, student voices is a key initiative to help with that, that I'm keeping tabs on. 

Tier 16

I am not sure why Millennials is way down here, to me this is one of the most important and interesting channels, my only conclusion is that it is new. It's hands down my favorite channel besides Retail & Ecommerce. 

Tier 16

Ah yes, the Weekend essay, I hope that's easy reading. 

Combo Strategies 

So this is dependent on your industry and skill as a content strategist and writer. But getting featured on multiple channels simultaneously is the only real way to go if you care about views, likes and comments. 

So what combinations make the most sense to me as a writer?

The Omnichannel Trend:

This combines Social media, Marketing & Advertising and Millennials. This is a combo I have achieved with some success in the past. The bonus channel here is of course, Mobile. 

The Retail Technology Trend:

This combines Technology, Retail & Ecommerce and Customer Experience. 

The Disruptive Thinking Trend:

This combines Big Ideas & Innovation, Technology linking them with potential others such as Big Data, Banking and Finance (think FinTech), etc...

The LinkedIn Pop-Psych Trends: 

This is for that writer that wants easy views of spammed topics. A combo here does not sound too difficult, for instance: Leadership & Management, Best Advice, Your Career and such articles that have negatively impacted LinkedIn's reputation as a thought leadership blogging ecosystem. 

These combos tend to get a lot of views but are quite shallow typically on the quality side. You will also notice that typically LinkedIn is a short-form blogging channel. 

What combos do you prefer to write about?