Why You Should Use LinkedIn Now It Is A Professional Content Channel

LinkedIn is actively encouraging members to add and share original content. You can now create long form posts directly on LinkedIn simply by clicking the ‘create a post’ pencil icon which appears alongside your update box. LinkedIn is rolling out this facility to all 300m members so don’t panic If you don’t have the pencil icon just yet.

The potential reach of the platform is significant and top posts can be shared tens of thousands of times, often more than posts on popular sites such as Forbes. I have created a few posts to test the water, and whilst my posts haven’t been shared as widely as the ones LinkedIn promotes each day, I have found that the posts get shared widely.

Benefits of Consuming Content on LinkedIn

The report found that the high content users in their survey actually spent up to 8 hours a week consuming content. The survey found that 78% consume content in order to keep up with industry news, while 73% do so to discover new ideas within the industry. The detailed findings are below.

What Content Works on LinkedIn

The survey found that the most popular content types for earning clicks and shares were:

1. New research
2. Breaking industry news
3. Case studies

The survey also found that career advice was most likely to earn a click from the respondents. In our BuzzSumo research we have found that career advice articles tend to dominate the most shared articles on LinkedIn. For example, the top 5 most shared LinkedIn articles over the last 12 months were as follows:

We also found there is a direct relationship between content length and the degree of sharing on LinkedIn. Our BuzzSumo analysis below shows clearly the longer the posts the more they are shared.

It would appear that if you write about topics that interest LinkedIn members then long form content works well.

LinkedIn is very much a business network and as such most activity takes place during the working week. The best days to publish on Linkedin appear to be Monday and Tuesday according to our BuzzSumo analysis below. Content published early in the week gets a higher level of shares which decline over the week and are very low on the weekend.