How to Effectively Publish on LinkedIn, Part 1

The Transcript

How to Effectively Publish on LinkedIn, Part 1

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM is brought to you by the Showrunner Podcasting Course, your step-by-step guide to developing, launching, and running a remarkable show. Registration for the course is open August 3rd through the 14th, 2015. Go to ShowrunnerCourse.com to learn more. That’s ShowrunnerCourse.com.

Voiceover: This is The Missing Link with your host, the insufferable, but never boring, Sean Jackson.

Sean Jackson: Hello, everyone. It is Sean Jackson, your host, and I am joined, as always, by the eloquent Mica Gadhia. Mica, how are you today?

Mica Gadhia: I’m wonderful, Sean. How are you doing today?

Sean Jackson: As always, I am fantastic. Did you like that eloquent little plug I gave for you there?

Mica Gadhia: I liked it. I always look forward to my adjective. It’s like my adjective of the week.

Sean Jackson: The weekly adjective. Well Mica, I have to tell you something, because this past week I have been in our LinkedIn discussion group. You know, the super-secret one that we don’t tell anybody about unless they’ve listened to the show? I have been on there, and I have been in conversation with Bonnie.

Bonnie has been doing a lot of posting inside of the LinkedIn network — to the Pulse network there. It’s really been fascinating to talk to her through the discussion group — find out some things that she is discovering in this process — and it got me thinking, Mica. We have not done a show about how to publish into LinkedIn. How to put content into the LinkedIn Pulse network. So I got an idea.

Mica Gadhia: I love that. Let’s talk about that.

Sean Jackson: I think we’re going to do a series of three episodes about publishing inside of LinkedIn. What do you think?

Mica Gadhia: Genius. I love it. You’re so smart, Sean.

Sean Jackson: I try. Well, it’s the audience that’s doing it, right? Because in that discussion group we have they’re the ones driving this. You and I are just sitting on the sidelines saying, “What do they want to know?” We’re trying to figure this out.

Mica Gadhia: Got it.

Sean Jackson: I tell you what. I think, for this episode, we are going to concentrate on the mechanics of publishing. Just the basics of publishing. Then, in a second episode we’ll talk a little bit about analytics — how to draw more traffic to the post, etc. Then the third episode, I think I have someone lined up from LinkedIn to talk specifically about the Pulse network. What do you think?

Mica Gadhia: I love it.

Sean Jackson: I think it’ll be fun. Now, a lot of people want to know this most important question: “How do I get to that super-secret private group that they’re talking about?”

Mica Gadhia: Yeah, they’re waiting impatiently. Do you want me to tell them, or are you going to tell them?

Sean Jackson: I want you to tell them how to get to the super-secret discussion group, because this is going to be fundamental to the entire series that we’re doing on how to publish in LinkedIn. So you’re going to want to know how to get into that group. Mica, tell them how to get to the group.

Mica Gadhia: If you’re in the continental United States, you are going to pull out your awesome mobile device, and you are going to dial 41411. Then the keyword is going to be ‘mylink’ — ‘mylink’ with no space. Now, if you are outside of the continental United States, we want you to join just as much as inside of the continental United States, and with that you’re going to send us an email to MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM. Again, that’s MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM. And that’s how you’re going to join us.

Sean Jackson: That’s right. It’s that simple, folks. So please join us, because this entire episode plus the next two episodes are going to really focus on this group that we have and it is going to be your conduit to discuss and ask questions. Stay tuned, after the break we’re going to talk about LinkedIn publishing and the LinkedIn Pulse network — the basic mechanics. Then we’re going to give you a super-secret challenge at the end. So stay tuned everybody.

Mica Gadhia: Podcasting is a great way to build your online authority, but the key to success is to publish online, and the Rainmaker Platform makes that easy. Rainmaker is the complete online marketing solution that makes it easy and simple to execute your online marketing strategy. Whether you need a design landing page or a simple way to publish your own podcast, Rainmaker is the solution for you. Head on over to Rainmaker.FM/Platform right now and sign up for your free, 14-day trial, because this is the same tool we use to publish The Missing Link. And if Sean and I can use it, then so can you.

Sean Jackson: Welcome back from the break everyone. As promised, Mica and I are going to be talking about the LinkedIn Pulse network and how to publish to it. Are you ready Mica?

Mica Gadhia: I’m ready.

Sean Jackson: Before we start, do you, Mica, know the difference between publishing a post and the LinkedIn Pulse network?

The Basics of the Pulse Network

Mica Gadhia: Actually, I’m so glad you asked, because I don’t. How does a post and Pulse go together?

Sean Jackson: That’s an important part of this. When you hit the ‘publish a post’ button — not the ‘update’ button, not the ‘photo’ button, but ‘publish a post’ — that publishing feature sends a notice, once you publish it, out to your connections. Then it also adds it to the Pulse network, which is the content aggregation of all the people hitting that ‘publish a post’ button. Does that make sense?

Mica Gadhia: Got it, yeah.

Sean Jackson: When you are publishing a post, you are actually doing two things. You’re notifying everyone in your network automatically, and you are putting this content into a master repository that LinkedIn calls LinkedIn Pulse that anyone on the web can get a hold of. Pretty cool, huh? That’s the difference. That’s the setup.

Mica Gadhia: Very cool.

Sean Jackson: I think so, too. Here’s why. It’s going to be a part of the content marketer’s arsenal. I like to think of LinkedIn Publisher or publishing in LinkedIn as the less sophisticated but more powerful method of getting content out there versus something like Medium.com, which a lot of content marketers have experimented with. With the publishing capability you will not only have this nice easy-to-use tool, but you also have this vast network of people who are going to be able to find it — both on search engines and inside of the LinkedIn network. Pretty cool, huh?

Mica Gadhia: That’s awesome. Okay. Does it feel scary?

Sean Jackson: It does, and let’s get through this. Yeah, it does feel a little scary doesn’t it? Because you’re like, “Oh, my god, that’s a lot of power that they’re going to give me.” Let’s go ahead and let’s do this together Mica, because I get scared about this stuff too.

Here’s what I want you to do, Mica. I want you to take a post from one of your sites — doesn’t matter which one it is. I want you to go and get one of those posts, and I want you to go into LinkedIn, and I want you to click the ‘publish a post’ button. You go ahead and do that.

Now, what I want you to do is — you’re going to be presented with an interface, and you’re going to see where you can put an image up top. You don’t even have to put an image in if you don’t want to, but just throw up an image if you have something. If not, ignore it. Copy in your headline, copy in your content from that post, and then just hit the ‘publish’ button. I’ll sit around and wait while you do it.

Mica Gadhia: Are we inviting our audience to do this, too?

Sean Jackson: Yeah, they can do it too, yeah. In fact, everyone should be doing this. Just take something that you’ve written and put it on LinkedIn Publisher by clicking. Just do it. You did it? You ready? Hit the ‘publish’ button. You ready? Hit it.

Mica Gadhia: Okay.

Sean Jackson: You did it? Good. Congratulations, Mica, and everyone else who followed along. That is the worst post you’ve ever done on LinkedIn, period. No post you ever do will be as bad as that one, okay? Congratulations. I give you permission to be terrible. Here’s why, folks — the reality is that it is a little scary. Right, Mica?

You need to get familiar with the interface. You need to be able to click that button. You need to be able to put something in there — whether you have an image or not. Whether you have a headline, a body content, something, anything. Just put it in there, hit the ‘publish’ button, and then just see what happens. Trust me, people, you’re not going to lose all of your connections suddenly because you published something random on LinkedIn. The beauty part of this whole process is, Mica, you can click the ‘delete,’ and it takes it away.

Mica Gadhia: I see that, yeah. I am so eyeing that ‘delete’ button.

Sean Jackson: I think you should take time to experiment and play with pushing it out there. The nice thing is that you can put things into draft mode. That’s really quite handy, so you don’t actually have to publish it live. But I do suggest that you just take time — taking some existing content that you think is relevant and putting it out there, publishing it — and just see what happens.

For this next segment, it’s going to be important for you to get comfortable with the publishing capability. If you put your worst post out there and you’re done with that process, now it’s time to really get serious about it, Mica. Here’s what we’re going to do.

Mica Gadhia: Okay.

Sean Jackson: Any good content marketer knows that before they publish anything they are going to have to spend some time researching. In this case, I think for our audience what I would like them to start doing is thinking and planning for the post they’re going to put out. Here’s how I would do it. The very first thing that I would do is go into Pulse. If you go under ‘interest,’ it should say ‘Pulse’ up in the menu up there. Go ahead and click on that. Now you’re going to see next to the word ‘Pulse’ these three little bars, right, Mica?

Mica Gadhia: I do. I see those three bars.

Sean Jackson: Those three little bars are going to be the way that you can navigate the menu of Pulse. There’s different categories, different things they recommend. I want you to go ahead and find one that interests you. That is in your space where you think your peers are publishing. I want you to go find that particular interest group. It’s called a topic. I want you to find that topic.

Keyword Basics and How They Work with Pulse

Sean Jackson: Now what I want you to do, is I want you to get into that topic and start reviewing those posts inside of that topic. What you’ll notice initially is that most of the posts are in order of date, so things that were published today are going to be at the top. Things that were published later will be towards the bottom. When you are looking at these, I want you to take a look at several different things.
The first thing I want you to do, is I want you to look at the keywords that people are using in that topic of interest. Now keyword, Mica, is a word or words that people would use to find this particular article that describe what this particular article or post is. Does that make sense?

Mica Gadhia: Yep.

Sean Jackson: As you’re looking at these, find those words. You’ll see them usually in the headline — most often in the body of it — and I want you to review that post. Here are the four things I want you to take a look at.

Number one, I want you to see if they have an image or not. More than likely, they’re going to have an image. Number two, I want you to look at their headlines, and specifically look for keywords in that headline. Number three, I want you to look at the body content. Are they using those keywords? Are there calls to action? What do they want you to do by reading this? Then, the fourth thing that I want you to do, is I want you to look at the tags. Those are the words that appear at the bottom of the post.

Take a look at all of that. And then when you’re looking at this, start to look at the number underneath the headline that talks about the engagement metrics — how many likes, shares, etc. You’re going to start to see an association as you examine that page and you start to look at the images and the headlines, the body content, the tags. You’re going to start to see what those engagement metrics look like.

Start recording this as part of your research, because if people are talking about things in your space and the topic that you’re interested in, you may start to see some similarities. Between the words that they’re using. The types of images they’re using. The type of responses they’re getting. The type of tags they’re getting. Does that make sense, Mica?

Mica Gadhia: Yes, it does.

4 Steps to Publishing Your Best Posts

Sean Jackson: As you’re doing this — this is part of the homework assignment because now you are actually going to do a better post than you first did. Now that you’ve done some research, what I want you to do, is I really want you to start concentrating on just publishing. And to do it in an effective manner.

The first step that I want you to do, is I want you to think about what you’re going to write about. Now, you can repurpose an old post, Mica. That’s a good thing to do, by the way. In fact, that’s my number one suggestion. Take an old post you have seen on your site or online that has done very well, that you’re fairly happy with, you think is representative work.

I want you to take that post, Mica. Now I want you to look at it, and the first thing I want you to do is I want you to think of a good strong image that goes with it. If you have one already, that’s great. The image format for LinkedIn is 700 x 400. If you don’t have an image — Mica, can we help them?

Important Information on Using Images

Mica Gadhia: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I have a few programs that they can get, and they can actually have — they have social media sharing information in there for how to make an image very easy to do. We’re going to give some information inside of our super-secret Missing Link LinkedIn group, and you’ll have those resources in there.

Sean Jackson: We’ll also put it in the show notes for this episode, so you can put an image together.

Once you have your image planned out, now I want you to start thinking about that headline. Hopefully, the headline that you’re bringing over is pretty rock solid, but if it is not — if you want to improve that headline — Mica, can we help them with that?

Mica Gadhia: Yeah, that’s already in the promotion section, and it’s called “How to Write Magnetic Headlines.” It’s a free ebook that you can access right now. I’ll tell you — I think I’ve said this before, but we still — most of the Copyblogger employees still reference that ebook about once a month.

Sean Jackson: Yes, they do. Now, the third thing that I want you to do, is now that you’ve got your image (700 x 400), and you’ve got your headline planned out, I want you to start looking at that body content. There are a couple of things you’re going to want to make sure that inside of the body that you have.

Number one, you want to make sure you have those keywords that properly identify what this piece is about and that you think people would search for if they’re looking for this type of information. The second thing I want you to make sure you have is a good, solid call to action. Here’s why. A lot of posts that you’ve probably written already are published on a site, so the content sits within the design of the overall site, right?

That is nice, except when the content doesn’t have the site to help support it. Sometimes your content will need a call to action. Something to drive them back to your website or to sign up on a list, or to do some sort of action. Make sure, as you’re looking at this content, that you not only have your keyword usage but you also have a clear call to action, so that the content can sit independent of the site and yet still drive people to act.

Mica Gadhia: Right. So that is fully reviewing what’s already in that article and taking out anything that isn’t towards a LinkedIn audience. Is that right?

Sean Jackson: Yeah, I think it’s definitely adjusting it for the LinkedIn audience. But I also think it’s adjusting it to make sure that the call to action — sometimes people put call to actions in the site design, and maybe what you really need is that call to action inside of the content, especially if you’re publishing on LinkedIn. Okay?

Mica Gadhia: Right.

Sean Jackson: Now the last thing I want you to do is — if you did your homework right, you were looking at how other people were writing — there’s a very important thing at the bottom of all content in LinkedIn Pulse called tags. What I have found, is that a lot of the way that LinkedIn indexes content is based on those tags.

If you are going to be publishing on LinkedIn, I would pay a lot of importance to how and what those tags are going to be. For example, LinkedIn will provide auto suggestions. If you start typing tags in they’re going to suggest some. You don’t have to use them, but it’s a good point to start with. Put in a lot of tags. Put in tags that are relevant to the content that you’re writing about.

We’ve got our 700 x 400 strong image — and in fact, in Copyblogger’s case, we’ve been using a lot of royalty-free images where we’ve been augmenting it with text to give it a little bit stronger emphasis. We’ve got our headlines using the Magnetic Headline that we have in the show notes for you as a guide. Making sure that your content has both keywords and a strong call to action, and it is appropriate for the audience in LinkedIn.

Knowing that this content exists independent of your website. And then, finally, the tags. That you are putting in the right tags. That you have the tags that are descriptive of what you’re discussing in this piece. Of who you want to reach for this piece. That, hopefully, mostly are suggested by LinkedIn, but they don’t have to be. You can put in whatever you think is appropriate.

Now that you’ve done that, Mica. Now is the time to actually hit ‘publish.’ You’re going to need some content out there so that the second episode where we’re talking about analytics and amplification — you’re going to need some content out there. Okay?

Mica Gadhia: Right.

Sean Jackson: Mica, before the show started, came up with a brilliant idea for our listeners. This is how I’d like to end this segment, because I think this is a brilliant idea. Mica, I’m turning it over to you. I want you to tell them about the Mica challenge.

Bonus: Take Our LinkedIn Post Challenge!

Mica Gadhia: This is The Missing Link Group Challenge. If you’re listening to this podcast, this is totally your challenge for the next week because we’re going to come back with analysis next week. Your challenge for this week is to post three posts from your page and LinkedIn. Yep, that’s it.

Sean Jackson: Yes.

Mica Gadhia: That’s all.

Sean Jackson: Take the challenge. It’s very simple. Mica made it easy for you. And this is why I love it, because it’s going to force you to get into the network. It’s going to force you to start publishing content. And I’m going to make it even sweeter for our audience, Mica. I want our audience to go to our super-secret LinkedIn group, and I want them to post in links to the content that they publish during this one-week challenge.

What we’re going to do, Mica, is for everyone who does that, we’re going to go and review their post and give them some feedback. To take a look at it. To give a second opinion. If nothing else, folks, this is an easy way for you to get some views to your content.

Mica Gadhia: Exactly. I know.

Sean Jackson: At the end of the day, I really want people to take the time to publish out there. Put this information in the LinkedIn group, and Mica and I will take the time to review your posts. To give you some feedback as you are contributing into this LinkedIn discussion group that we have. Mica, I think this is going to be fun.

Mica Gadhia: I love it. Can I remind them how to get into our group real quick?

Sean Jackson: Please do that.

Mica Gadhia: Excellent. If you’re in the continental United States, it’s mobile 41411 with ‘mylink’ — ‘mylink’ as your keyword. Then, if you are outside the continental United States, again, email us at MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM.

Sean Jackson: That’s it, folks. It’s that simple. It’s that easy. And I cannot even tell you how much fun it’s going to be for you to do this. Okay guys, next week what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about analytics and amplification — how to get more people over there.

This is what I think, if people will do the challenge, we can then start to take a look at those stats in context of something meaningful to our audience. Everyone, take the challenge. And, Mica, next week will be part two of our series on publishing to LinkedIn Pulse.

Mica Gadhia: Oh, it’s going to be good.

Sean Jackson: It will be. See you then, folks.

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