When you write, write to start a conversation. Here's how.

Writers write to be read. Once someone engages with your post — a like, share, comment — your monologue turns into a conversation, expanding your idea, transforming it, maybe countering it. In the past, I’ve covered how to write a great post on LinkedIn and you can always get started here: Create a Post. But we thought it might be useful to explain in detail what happens after you hit publish.

The Basics

First, a quick LinkedIn content 101: On LinkedIn, you have connections and followers. Connections are people who you’ve met, done business with or want to interact with and — at some point — the two of you agreed to be connected. By default, your connections see most of your actions on LinkedIn, from sharing to updating your profile. Followers signal they want to see any content that you’re creating or interacting with — status updates, likes, and posts — by clicking the “Follow” button. You don’t approve followers, though you can control what they see. (For more granular details, see the Help Center links at the bottom of this post.)

Writing for Conversations

Second, some guidance: Write to start a conversation instead of to collect pageviews. While you can potentially get broad reach on LinkedIn, the real power and what sets LinkedIn apart is in the quality of the comments, feedback and engagement from real, non-anonymous professionals across the globe. Write to reach the right world, not the whole world. One favorite example: this lively debate on the future of radio traffic reports among people in the industry. We have seen posts that are most likely to drive conversations include some of the following:

• Expand upon or explain something in the news using the writer’s unique experience;
• Offer insight into industry-specific trends;
• Contain an intriguing deep-dive into something relevant to the professional world.

Ok, Where Your Post Goes

Let’s assume you’ve done all that: You’ve penned your brilliant and timely post, devised a clear and engaging headline (more tips here), added a great photo and hit publish. What now? Here are the main channels in which your post will get distributed:

1. Feed: Your post shows up in the feed for all of your connections and all of your followers. However, if they don’t check their feed that day or if there is a high number of items coursing through their feed (for instance, shares or posts by other connections or writers they’re following), they could miss yours.
2. Your Profile: Your post shows up at the top on your profile, seen by anyone viewing your profile for a meeting, interview, etc.
3. Notifications: Many of your connections — but not necessarily all — will get a notification that you published. These nudges come in various forms, including as a flag on LinkedIn desktop (upper right hand corner), and as an alert on the LinkedInPulse app. With notifications, we’re sensitive to make sure people don’t get over-notified — feedback from members is that the flag or badge is showing up too often — so in some case we’ll use an algorithm to determine which notifications get seen by whom. Engineering Manager Byron Ma wrote a post that gets into the weeds on how that works.
4. LinkedIn Highlights Email: All of your connections and followers who subscribe to the Highlights emails will get your post in their inbox. You can sign up for those emails, under the Updates and News section.
5. Channels (when featured): A small percentage of posts will get featured in LinkedIn channels (see here for a list of channels). A combination of algorithms and editors monitor the 150,000 LinkedIn posts a week to find those that are offering unique insight into what’s happening today or that are likely to start great conversations. (For more on how to write to get attention, see How to Crush it as a Writer on LinkedIn.) If you’re selected for a channel, you’ll get a notification congratulating you. If you think you have a post that should be featured, send a tip to us over at Twitter by adding “tip @linkedineditors” in your tweet (Here’s a good example). Note: Tipping doesn't mean an automatic channel tag, but it will flag your post for review. 

Own Your Post / Be a Marketer

Finally, when it comes to distribution, there’s the vital work that only you can do. We don’t live in a Field of Dreams world: If you write it, they won’t necessarily come. You’ve got to get out there and make sure people are paying attention.

• Share your work on Twitter, Facebook, Hacker News, Reddit, WhatsApp and whatever other social network makes most sense for your topic.
• Send it to your colleagues.
• Share status updates on LinkedIn to tease out parts of your story and use mentions to have LinkedIn notify a member when he or she is talked about in a piece or when the article is highly relevant to that person.
• Check your personal LinkedIn stats to see who is reacting to your post and double down on reaching that audience.
• Think about what comes next.

In other words: Once you’ve hit publish, you should change your mindset from writer to wrangler.

The big takeaways that I’d love to leave you with: Write about what people are talking about today; measure success on the conversations you’ve started not the views you’ve collected; finding an audience is tricky — keep trying; and remember that you’re your own best distributor.

Any other questions? Leave them in the comments.

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LinkedIn Help Center Links

1. Similarities and Differences Between Following and Connecting
2. Member Blocking - Overview
3. Managing Who Can Follow Your Updates
4. Mention People and Companies in Your Updates
5. Visibility of Mentions
6. Distribution of Long-Form Posts