Let me start this off with a little bit of honesty: I did not want to love LinkedIn Publishing.
I’m a firm believer in the “never build your house on rented land” theory. If you haven’t heard it, the idea is simple: Don’t put all of your content marketing on a platform you don’t own.
Facebook can go away. Twitter can go away. LinkedIn can go away. But your website? You own that. No matter what happens with the social media platforms around you, your website/blog are your own.
Facebook is the perfect example. With organic reach plummeting day by day, you can’t guarantee that it will always be there for you. (If you are a business that has a Facebook page and no website, please email me or someone else who can help… today!) Your Facebook content is being seen by less and less people, and it’s all under the control of the Facebook algorithm gods.
Social media is the best thing in the world. Yes, I’m saying that because it’s 50% of my job. However, it’s only beneficial if it drives people to a place that you own.
With all that being said, why would I love LinkedIn Publishing? It’s building content right into the social media platforms that I just said to avoid depending on.
Here’s why:
I need my words to reach the right people. On a professional level, there is no other social media platform where I can reach all of the people I want to reach, especially when they’ve got business on the mind.
I’m relatively green to the industry. I have a few years of internships under my belt, and two years at JP Marketing. Although I’ve garnered the trust of my boss in a short time to earn the position that I have, to the outside world, I’m still inexperienced. And the outside world is right, I don’t have 20+ years of experience. But I do have the voice, skills, and determination to be that expert someday.
I am very lucky to be where I am, and I’m going to make the most of it. But people aren’t going to run to my blog and read it. They have no idea who I am.
LinkedIn Publishing has now given me the platform to talk to the very people that I need to prove myself to. With just one post, my reach expanded in a major way and I earned 40 more followers. More than 600 LinkedIn users looked at my words. And I’d guess that’s 590 people that didn’t know I existed before.
If you plan on publishing on LinkedIn, this is the number one advice I can give you: Showcase your knowledge; then use it as a platform to drive people to your website.
I’m still not building my house on rented land, but I do plan on camping here for a while.
