How To Get Your Article Featured On The Home Page Of LinkedIn

To date, LinkedIn has allowed a small, editorially selected group of “Influencers” like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Barack Obama to publish their thoughts and advice to its network as long-form blog posts. Now, that changes, as LinkedIn prepares to open up access to its publishing platform to all 300+ million users on its network. The company says the rollout is staged, with initial access arriving for some 25,000 English language users of LinkedIn, with a worldwide reach planned for a couple of months from today, give or take.

Our founder Alex Pirouz was first made aware of this feature when his friend posted a status update on Facebook mentioning how his recent article on LinkedIn managed to achieve over 6000 views and 550+ shares in little over 10 hours. This got him very excited, so he decided to conduct a bit of investigation to see how it all worked.

One week after submitting his application as he logged into his account, he was notified that his application had been approved and that he could now start publishing his own content. So he decided to test it out by publishing one of his articles: 5 Things All Great Leaders Have In Common.

At the time he had no real idea what to expect given this was his first time publishing on LinkedIn. He could only base his decision on the results his friend had achieved and some other authors he came across within his research.

What happened next totally blew him away! Within a matter of minutes… He started receiving hundreds of invitation requests and messages on LinkedIn from members who had come across his article; sharing with him how much they loved reading it.

At first, he thought it was a prank or maybe someone had hacked into his account so when he got back to the office he logged back into his account and there it was, his article featured on the home page of LinkedIn. Within a matter of hours, the article had gone viral achieving over 70K views, 11K+ shares and close to 500 comments.

Over the years, he has written hundreds of business articles but none of them had achieved the exposure and interaction he achieved through the article. In addition to the exposure, he also managed to secure a few speaking engagements as well as coaching clients for his business advisory firm. This really opened up his eyes to the power and possibilities of LinkedIn’s publishing arm and its unique ability to put his message and brand in front of millions of people quick.

But even though the article continued to increase in likes, shares, and comments; there was always that voice in the back of his mind that said: “this is too good to be true”. So he decided to publish a few more articles over the coming weeks.

Whilst none of them achieved the level of exposure his first article received, on average each article has now reached 10k+ views, 1000+ and 100+ comments. Now we know you’re probably reading this article thinking so what? How can we benefit from publishing content through LinkedIn? Well here are 4 ways:

1. Targeted audience

The new platform promises to match the blog’s topic with users who share an interest in that particular vertical. This gives an opportunity to create a two-way dialogue where everyone is sharing their expertise and leading to deeper relationships.

2. More Exposure

Every post you write and publish is distributed to the news feed of your current connections. This is a great way for you to showcase your thought leadership on your chosen topic and add value to those within your network.

3. Content marketing

Sharing quality content is crucial whether it’s a matter of increasing influence or SEO purposes. The cliché stating “content is king,” still holds true and there’s no better place to store that content than the world’s largest professional network.

4. Create a Following

If your contacts like the article and decide to share that on LinkedIn or Twitter this will not only create greater exposure but those who aren’t connected with you; may like your work that much that they end up “FOLLOWING” you to receive more post.

In turn, this will create a following of people who will regularly receive your content within their news feed expanding your reach to share your expertise with far more people. Alex now have over 9,400 on LinkedIn. As you continue building your following, you then need to think about ways on how to promote your service offering within your articles so that you can engage your followers to take that extra step with you and your company.

Here are 4 easy and simple steps you can take to get started:

First and foremost, you need to find out whether or not you’ve been approved to start publishing on LinkedIn. The easiest way to check is to go to your home page and look to see if you have a small pencil icon to the right of your share box.

Clicking on the pencil will open up a compose screen where you can edit things like font and size, or add links and titles. If you don’t see this; it simply means that your account has not yet been approved. Follow the link we provided to you earlier on in this post and fill out your application for early approval.

Once you are approved, you will then want to get started straight away. Don’t put it off for next week because we all know that strategy rarely works out given you will probably forget all about it.

Next, you will want to think about your headline and copy. Make sure your headline is compelling and keep your copy between 500-700 words. If LinkedIn likes your article, it will feature your story in one of the business categories which already has a great following or best case scenario your article may get featured on the home page of LinkedIn.

Once you are happy with the look and feel of the article hit “Publish”.