Why LinkedIn Pulse Must Be Treated With Respect

More and more people on LinkedIn are using LinkedIn Articles for sharing job posts, and for reposting news from sites like BBC, CNN etc. Sometimes instead of sharing URLs in the LinkedIn stream, people share them in LinkedIn Articles, usually comprising one sentence with one line and the URL.

I started to ask people about their results from these articles, why they doing it, if they are tracking the results, how many candidates they get compared with other sources etc. I received many responses, but two themes occurred the most: “I do it because others do it,” and “I do it because they told us to on the LinkedIn course”.

If you are still posting job adverts through LinkedIn Pulse, there are a few things you should know. — I know many of you don’t have the time to read (yes we are living in very busy times), so you can watch the video below instead if you prefer.

Great, it looks that you decided to choose the article instead of video. I hope you like it (and you can share it too) :)

These are the things you should know about LinkedIn Pulse before you post any more adverts.

Publishing Platform

Publishing Platform has guidelines and you can find them here

The important part for you is in red. As you can see, the publishing platform is not the right place to post jobs, advertisement etc.

Title

Now that you know the kind of posts to publish (and not publish) you also need to know how to get the best out of each one. This is where your post title comes in. LinkedIn allows you a maximum of 100 characters to use in your title. Ensure that you make the best use of this.

Your title should be compelling and should make whoever sees it to want to read your post. A catchy headline helps you to draw in readers. This is especially so because it is only the title that your connections will see on their notification icons and it may prompt them to click on it and read.

Choose your title wisely! Long titles in capitals letters could scare off readers, so they are not going to help you. Based on many studies, a posts where the headline poses a question, for example “Do you Know Why We Are Best?” also perform pretty poorly.

Images

Many authors when they are looking for a new picture, go directly to Google, do the search and use the image that they find and like. But you should know that most images are copyrighted. Sadly, many people use them without any permission from the author/owner or even without printing information about them. There are millions of images licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these images are completely free to be used for any legal purpose. You could use them anywhere — here, in your blogs etc., without the fear that you will be contacted by the copyright owner or their lawyer. So respect the author and always mention the source of the pictures that you are using. You can also buy photos through sites like dreamstime.com etc.

This is not a right example:

You should have at least one image in your post; some statistics show that if you have eight photos in your post it will get better number of views than others.

Topic vs “low quality” filter

Firstly, choose a topic that your followers can relate to. The more organic viewers, likes, shares and comments you get for your article, the higher the chance of people outside of your network seeing your post. You have 1000 connections and when you publish the new post you expect all of them to see your post, right? I am sorry, but that is an incorrect assumption. Even if you have 1000 people in the network, your article will probably be seen by only a few people in your network. Your colleagues may like one of your articles or share it and perhaps a few other contacts may see it, but certainly not all of them.

To ensure that members only receive high quality and relevant publishing notifications, we take two measures: First, all posts must pass our spam and low quality filter before publication. Second, only connections whom we deem strong will receive these notifications. We determine this by leveraging the connection strength score from the LinkedIn cloud service. The cloud service maintains connection relationships between members. (Source: LinkedIn Article)

So when you are creating “low quality” articles (job postings, single sentence posts etc.), your reach will be limited, and could be limited even if you are write something of better quality. If you are posting low quality job adverts every week, people are going to end up ignoring your posts and they could miss something that could be genuinely interesting and relevant to them.

Target audience

Do you know your target audience? If you are hoping to reach all “CAD designers” in your network with your job posting article, are they actually going to see it? On average, every user spends about 10 minutes per day on LinkedIn, but many specialists log in to LinkedIn only from time to time during the month. So even if you are posting some news, they won’t be online to see it. Is a job advert posted as a long article really the right attraction factor? You can learn more about your target audience here.

LinkedIn publisher

The LinkedIn Publisher is not to be taken lightly, because apart from the many positives it can bring your way if used appropriately, you can also come across as unprofessional and flippant if used inappropriately. And of the many ways the LinkedIn Pulse feature can be used inappropriately, none is as bad as using the feature in order to post jobs.

Posting jobs

On LinkedIn Publisher the content you create helps you to engage and build a relationship with people in your network. You are building not only your personal brand, but co-creating your company’s brand. Posting jobs as articles won’t create trust from your intended audience. Posting them using LinkedIn Pulse is a great way to lose your networks and connections faster than you can say “Publish.”

There is a reason why LinkedIn created a separate feature for the posting of jobs. When you use LinkedIn Publisher to post jobs, you are setting yourself and your posts up to be marked as spam by your connections. Remember, every time you publish a post, a red notification pops up on the little flag of your connections, telling them that a post has been made. So, when you continue to post jobs, a point will come when your connections will — apart from seeing you as a nuisance — begin to disregard anything posted by you, even when you post something useful, and they may even choose to unfollow you.

Illustrated below are a few examples of the success rates (number of views) of two recruiters with 800–900 people in their networks.

Example 1

Example 2

Single Sentence and Single Paragraph

If you would like to share an article that you read somewhere, the best place is to use the LinkedIn stream on your main page. Don’t use the LinkedIn Publisher for those news.

Use the Icons from navigation bar

The navigation displays various formatting options. You can easily choose the headers, add quotes, bold your text, make it inverse, underline it, cross out, adjust the alignment, add bullet points, etc., but the really important part is on the right side of the navigation. If you’re planning to add links, images, video, or other rich media assets to your post, you should start using those icons.

This small icon is the difference between https://www.google.com and https://www.google.com. And yes you can second one is clickable.

This icon is also going to help you to add videos to your post. So you are not going to share only the link, but the video is going to be a part of the article, as you can see in this one at the beginning.

You should avoid those things:

• Posting job adverts, it’s not really an effective way of attracting people (and it is also against LinkedIn rules). You don’t want to spend your time on ineffective ways. ;)
• Re-posting news from servers like CNN, BBC etc. Like:

• Reposting other people’s articles. If you do not mention the source, you are sharing something without permission, and you are not creating original content.
• Posting advertisements for products or trainings through LinkedIn Pulse is also not a good way of presenting yourself. It’s not only against the LinkedIn Pulse guidelines, but it also does not help your brand.
  Like:

• Posting only single sentences or short single paragraphs (if you would like to share article that you read somewhere else, the best place is to use the LinkedIn stream on your main page).
  Like:

So if you would like to share an interesting article, video etc. with your network, instead of hitting “Publish an article” hit “Share an update”, because this is the right place for them. ;)

What should you use LinkedIn Publisher for?

To post useful and relevant content! Ever heard the phrase: “Content is King”? This is so very true. Publishing relevant posts increases your visibility and profile search percentage amongst your connections. It also increases your chances of being found by potential employers or by professionals who are simply looking to make your acquaintance. Therefore, all you should be publishing on LinkedIn Pulse is content that your connections will find useful and relevant, because you never know who might be viewing your posts.

The more you create great, relevant, useful, and engaging content, the more visible you become to your connections — and the more visible you become, the more trusting your connections will be of your posts.

So, what are you waiting for?! Start creating and publishing great posts!

Don’t forget there is no substitute for quality content.

Originally published at LinkedIn