Beyond Business: LinkedIn as a Powerful Marketing Tool

Pardon the pun, but one of LinkedIn’s newest features may be the missing link between networking and content marketing. What was once restricted to “influencers” (read: experts, big-wigs and beyond), is now open to all LinkedIn members because “every professional has valuable experience to share,” according to the official LinkedIn blog announcement.

Published posts allow you to build your brand and assert yourself as an authority on topics of your choosing. Your posts can be advice, photos and videos, inside looks at your company or repurposed blogs—either way, it’s a great place to claim your piece of the professional world. Once your post is up, it goes viral among your LinkedIn network, which helps build post views and your group of followers.

We assisted our client, Diane Yetter, a leading expert in sales and use tax, with her first published post, “Three Things You Need to Know about Sales Tax Compliance,” and were blown away by its success. The post received more than 1,000 views, 84 likes and was shared extensively across LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

After the success of Diane’s second post, we knew we wanted to dive in. Becka adapted her six-part series on the BatesMeron Manifesto into a quick list of tips for businesses and business owners and titled it, “6 Ways to Run a More Authentic Business.” It took a few hours of writing and formatting, but otherwise it is a completely free service. Though we didn’t get a thousand views (yet!), Becka saw a marked change in profile views (up 500% from the previous week). It was so exciting for us to pull the trigger on our first published post and we can’t wait to come up with even more ideas in the future to help position us as industry experts.

Have you tried out LinkedIn’s publishing platform yet? What do you think it can do for us and others in terms of ROI?