Who Sees Your Blog Posts on LinkedIn?

A client asked the other day, “Who actually sees what I post on the LinkedIn publishing platform?”

This was referring to the blog posts we can now publish directly on LinkedIn, as distinct from updates we might post with links to blog posts on our own sites. I posted here yesterday on the practical steps involved in posting on the LinkedIn publishing platform.

So back to the question of who sees what we post.

Here is my basic list:

• My first degree connections and others who have chosen to follow me but may not be connections.
• People with whom I share the link, which may include some in the previous group
• People who click on the link on my Profile page

Then there are the people who see the post when anyone shares it with their own network

Importantly, LinkedIn expert Brynne Tillman has mentioned that it also goes to the news feed of everyone who likes or comments on it. And beyond the immediate LinkedIn network, when someone shares the link on Twitter, Facebook or Google+, it can be seen there – and then shared still further.

The Pulse acceleration factor

More dramatically, there is the potential for a much wider reach, through your post being picked up by LinkedIn’s   news aggregator, Pulse (formerly LinkedIn Today) – theoretically (although not realistically) a potential readership of some 350 million!

What, if anything, can you do to get your post onto Pulse?

LinkedIn is not very helpful on how to get your post on Pulse.

The only official LinkedIn guidance I have seen on the topic is in this note on How long form posts on LinkedIn are distributed (via Andrew Hutchinson’s must-read post What I’ve Learned From My First 20 LinkedIn Publishing Platform Posts):

High-quality long-form posts, determined by our algorithm and other variables, may enable your long-form post to be distributed beyond your connections and followers, through channels such as LinkedIn Pulse and emails. However, we can’t guarantee that this will occur.

Some tips

Andrew’s article has some good advice to help get our posts picked up by Pulse.

Brynne Tillman has shared a good tip, that when you tweet your blog post, replace @LinkedIn with @LinkedInPulse, which will show up in Pulse’s Mentions tab and have the potential to get their attention.

John White, who as at December last year could boast of 27 articles picked up by Pulse, in his post How To Get Your Article Featured on LinkedIn’s Pulse observes with refreshing candour:

I have heard many people comment on this topic, and give their opinion as to what they think the secret is to getting featured. The fact of the matter is nobody knows for sure the exact formula behind the algorithms for Pulse, except for the mad scientists at LinkedIn.

Fortunately, he does share some tips from his own successful experience. In brief (but read the whole post, it’s worth it), they are:

• choose a topic your connections & followers can relate to
• produce excellent content
• use a catchy headline
• find topics that are “unique and original”

Are you Posting on LinkedIn, or Considering it, or Opposed?

So, thinking about the potential reach you can get with posts on LinkedIn, especially with posts that may get picked up by Pulse, what’s your own strategic approach to this LinkedIn feature? Are you already posting, and if so with what success? Or considering it, and if that’s so what would prevent or impede you from doing so?

And if you in the camp of those who decline to use the feature, or are even quite opposed to the idea, please feel free to share your perspective.

In the meantime, for my part it will continue to be a bit of a balancing act, with my priorities being to post here on this blog and on Market Leadership Journal, and then also on LinkedIn.

Des Walsh

Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.