After last week’s blog, “5 Ways Advisors Can Leverage LinkedIn’s Recent Changes,” we received a lot of feedback about one particular subject and decided to dive a little deeper.
Striving to be more than a search engine for resumes, LinkedIn has just released LinkedIn Publisher, a blogging tool that you can utilize to grow your financial services business.
What does this mean for your financial services firm?
Utilizing LinkedIn as a blogging platform can help you push out relevant content to a ready-made audience… your business connections. There are thousands of financial services professionals that simply don’t have the platform to be heard. Also, it is well known that business blogs often have trouble attracting hits and reaching a targeted audience. This is because attracting a quality, consistent readership to a business blog takes time, money and lots of patience. So, by publishing your blog posts on LinkedIn, you are speeding up the process of a qualified readership and with greater distribution. You may be thinking, “Really, one more platform that I need to produce content for? I don’t have time for that.” Don’t worry; the content you publish to LinkedIn can be the same content that is on your blog or try using repurposed past blogs.
Publishing your content on LinkedIn will not only expand your reach, but it will dramatically increase your ability to control exactly who sees your posts. Identifying the right outlets to reach a target audience is challenging. With LinkedIn, your content will reach your network and has the potential to be shared and reach other distribution channels –LinkedIn group members, LinkedIn Pulse readers, etc –all of which are incredibly valuable. And better yet, you can see the demographics of your followers (readers) through the platform’s built-in analytics.
Another benefit of this new blogging feature is the ability to differentiate yourself from every other financial advisor on LinkedIn and define your voice. Not everyone is going to take advantage of this feature, so use this as your opportunity to shine! Take the time to provide valuable content, and start conversations with potential clients and with other thought leaders in the financial services industry. Think about your LinkedIn blog posts as a jumping off point to position yourself as an expert in your local market.
Here’s how you can get started:
- Starting on the home page of your LinkedIn account, go to Share an Update.
- In the box, click the pencil icon*.
- Once the writing tool opens, upload your post – or write it directly there. You’ll have the ability to add images by clicking the camera icon and uploading an image directly into your post.
- Proofread and check formatting.
- Click Publish to share with your connections.
*The blogging feature is being rolled out in stages. If you do not see the pencil icon, don’t worry! It will be available to you soon.
*REMEMBER: Because this is a new feature, make sure to talk to your Broker/Dealer before posting on LinkedIn. Depending on your affiliation, you may need to get pre-approval of your posts (as you do for a normal blog post on your website) and also may need to archive the articles and comments.
Using the new blogging feature on LinkedIn is a fantastic opportunity for financial services professionals. Not only will it help position you as a thought leader in your field, it will help grow your business and connect with the leaders in your industry.
Amy McIlwain
@amymcilwain
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Great article Amy and very helpful. Is there a way someone can request the pencil feature from LinkedIn? Or must we wait for the full roll out. Also, can you further explain their process for rolling this feature out in stages? Thanks much!
Hi there, thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately, LinkedIn has not announced too many details about how they plan to roll this out. It seems that you will just have to wait, as the feature can not currently be requested.
I apologize that I don’t have a better answer for you.
This is a very informative and helpful blog post. Glad to read this post. Amy, you’re doing great, keep it up. LinkedIn Publisher will definitely help the financial professionals.