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Back in 2014, LinkedIn realized that hosting your own blog within your profile would be a valuable way to build an audience and share your thought leadership. This was a major milestone in the evolution of your LinkedIn profile from an e-resume and networking resource to a platform for showcasing your ideas and point of view. It was a brilliant move.
After all, creating and maintaining a blog used to be a lot of work—and often with little payoff, since your readers had to know exactly where your blog was being published. Building an audience was hard, and the content you created was not viewed as much as you’d hoped. Engagement was sometimes non-existent (except for that encouraging note from your mom on each post). LinkedIn had the perfect antidote: its site already had hundreds of millions of eyeballs to see your work. And for LinkedIn, it was a big win too—the perfect way to keep people interested in the site instead of wandering off to look for content elsewhere.
Over the past eight years, LinkedIn has been consistently enhancing these features and adding new ones that make it the de facto center for creating and sharing your thought leadership. Recently LinkedIn announced some new updates and functionality that will make your life as a content creator and thought leader a lot simpler and more impactful:
More Data
LinkedIn is making it easier for you to see what’s working and where you can improve your content strategy. You’ll get more insights and analytics in the coming months that go beyond impressions and basic engagement stats. In addition, you’ll see improved individual post analytics. You’ll be able to see your analytics detailed in a summary page. This data is available for all post types, whether your preferred medium is articles, videos or text posts.
More Views From Followers
Those who follow you will more likely see what you publish. That’s because they can be notified every time you make a post. Your audience members can choose to receive a notification whenever you post something new on LinkedIn by hitting the “subscribe” bell at the top of your profile. Now, your followers won’t be playing roulette, wondering if they’ve missed any of your content.
More Newsletter Views
In addition to no longer needing a special website for blogging, LinkedIn eliminated the need for you to have your own newsletter. Last year they offered members the opportunity to use a newsletter publishing system, and it has become extremely popular. Since the launch, there has been a 625 percent increase in the number of newsletters being published on LinkedIn, and an 89 percent increase in the number of subscriptions to newsletters across the globe.
New Profile Video Tools
Adding a video to your profile is a great way to authentically share your story with followers, and LinkedIn has amped up the experience. Now, you’ll see prompts to help inspire you regarding what to share, along with stats on how many people viewed your video. Plus, your Profile Video ring will be showcased in the feed and search so people can easily learn more about you and follow your updates, discovering what makes you unique.
Effective thought leadership is about delivering value to your audience—valuable expertise, new insight, and thought-provoking perspectives that keep your community growing and thriving. With these new LinkedIn features, your wisdom just became even more valuable.
William Arruda is a keynote speaker, author, co-founder of CareerBlast.TV and creator of the LinkedIn Profile Type Indicator (LPTI) which measures your LinkedIn profile likability and credibility.
