I am a hardcore LinkedIn user. Of late, I notice almost everybody is publishing their articles on LinkedIn Pulse day-in day-out. Since LinkedIn opened up their publishing side to everyone, it seems that the whole world is grabbing this opportunity to write their piece of mind out loud to the world. Yours truly included.
Within my connections alone, I get easily at least 9 to 12 notifications every single day that somebody had published out their stuffs at LinkedIn Pulse. Perhaps they get influenced by what they read out there saying that by writing and publish their piece here in LinkedIn, they’re able to boost up their branding and influences to the target market. They hope to be the next influencer and establish millions of followers of their own one day. I can see right from LinkedIn’s perspective, this development is a very positive move as they’re able to establish a huge number of contents in order to firm up their position as a global leader in professional networking platform. Thousands of contents are being produced on the daily basis from all continents through out the entire world. What seems to be a good sign to LinkedIn may not be the same for the marketers and brand builders like you and me. For these group of people, this scenario is not so positive at all. It brings uncertainty, as it attracts too much noise. The noise is getting crazier by day.
Can LinkedIn Pulse get too crowded with article writers and overloaded with information? I would say yes. Who shall survive then? Those creative ones. These are the rare species that will survive and shall stand out against the Average Joes.
I also notice that many people do see the value of LinkedIn Pulse and elevate their brand to the next level. Yet not many of them really know how to take advantage of LinkedIn Pulse and the best way to publish their contents to enforce their brands’ influence out there. This lack-of-knowledge will produce noises. It comes from those people who create hard-selling type of articles, those who are publishing their daily diaries talking about personal life without any professional objectives and people who merely like to just do a copy-paste work from other articles hoping to make a cut attempting to grab the limelight.
To establish yourself as a good influencer in your own way, you need to avoid writing these type of articles at all costs. You are way better than those average Joes so here are a few tips for you to beat those noises and stay way ahead of them.
Be A Great Storyteller. To come up with a great article, it has to be like a story. A story that makes a lot of sense and easy to understand. A story that comes with with a proper storyline and flow, easy to relate and a killer ending too. Normally great story always come from the heart, where the readers can feel its sincerity and pure-ness as it has the capability to touch or play with readers’ emotions and get them to think with their hearts. When they love your article, they will sincerely share it out to their networks of professional friends. Now you know the best way to write a great article. You will notice that after a string of great articles being produced and compliments coming from your connections and followers, you’ll realised that you’re going to be a great storyteller in the making.
Write Something-To-Bring-Home Type Of Story. A human brain doesn’t work too well when it comes to reading a dull, theoretical and educational related articles. People just hate text books okay. Those are bored stuffs. Instead, do something different. Your articles will attract a lot of readers and audiences if the writing mode is more towards sharing your experience, success stories or those challenges that set you back before. The readers want to know how do you deal with those and turn the situation over. They want to learn from those experience. They can smell whether your stories are real and authentic or originated by a copy-paste work. I can tell you now that stories that carry meaningful messages to the audience will fly. They’ll work wonders towards your advantage. All your readers are going to love your stuff for that.
Tell To Sell. I hate being pushed to do something. I believe that I’m not alone in this world who feel this way. For the past few months, there were many times I got myself attracted to read certain articles here at LinkedIn Pulse. The titles were great and I somehow got attracted to click and read it further. Once my eyes hit the content side, the hot steam was no longer there. Why? The writers were trying their best effort to sell me their stuffs at the very first sentence. From the training programs and education software right to the mutual funds and wrist watches. They talked about how great their products are and why everyone should buy them up. If we don’t buy now, we’re doomed. This is how an average Joe write their articles. For non average Joe like you, it has to be done differently. You need to build trust from your writing, focus on that as the main objective. Let say you’re a mutual fund salesperson for example. What you need to do is to write about your experience and knowledge on how mutual fund is able to help people. Talk about the success stories or people that you’ve help and how they did it. Highlight the key points of advice, share their pictures or videos and how the same method could apply to the readers. This way, your reader will find it very useful and they might get attracted to know more about you, your financial knowledge and your consulting capability. In the future when the trust grows further, they might give you a call for some advice or perhaps beyond than just advice. By then, they’re ready to be your clients.
Sell It At The Footer Message, Not At The Content. If you really can’t hold yourself to sell your stuffs, just do it at the footer of the article. Some people do that. You may want to do it professionally instead of (again) hard selling it. Choose the right words and curate the right sentences for it. Avoid overdoing it. Not only people will hate the stuffs you wrote there, they will go away so far from you and never come back.
Grab One Follower At A Time, And Grow The Number. One of the easiest way to beat the noise is to create your very own community or followers. People will start and continue to follow you if you produce great and inspiring articles for their consumption. With a community, your articles will definitely be received and read by them each time you published them up here in LinkedIn.
Use Your Creativity To Write Articles That LinkedIn Love. If the lucky star is on your side that day, LinkedIn’s team of editors might come across your articles written in Pulse. If that happens, they will quietly put your articles at the Trending sections and you shall receive an influx of unknown visitors and followers from all over the world. That day alone, your article will be viewed by thousands of people and will be Liked by hundreds of people, and you’ll be a celebrity of the day. How can you achieve this break you might asked yourself. Here is a bit of an advice from the person who had experience the moment for a few times. All you have to do is to ensure that the title of your articles are pretty close or at the same tone with the Trending topics available at LinkedIn Pulse and the content is creatively curated and not just a typical stuff. These must be done in the first paragraph itself. From my personal experience so far, my articles had been featured at the trending sections thrice. The latest one was just a few months ago where it was featured at the Social Media Trending topics. My advice to you is this, just focus on producing your articles the best way you possibly can. Miracles may happen from there on.
Continue To Regularly Publish Your Articles. You have no choice but to keep your momentum strong and consistent. If you already have a few hundreds or thousands of followers and they are expecting your articles to be out every 2-3 days week-in week-out, then you better stick to the routine. Your audience is as important as your customers, simply because they are your future customers. They are your fans. They became your followers because you did a great job convincing them before that you and your brand are trustworthy ones to them. Thus you deserved to be followed. So it would be very unwise of you to break their trust as there shall be no second chance anymore after that.
Create A LinkedIn Company Page And Share The Same Article There. By having another channel within LinkedIn to share your piece, you’re able to gather another set of new professional followers. At your Company Page, you’re able to recycle and share the same articles to your followers as many times as you want. This strategy will remind the new set of followers who just happen to follow your Company Page to read your previously published articles. Not only you, you can also encourage your colleagues and employees to start utilising Company Page within LinkedIn to boost the online presence of your organisation out there.
LinkedIn Pulse is getting noisy by hour, thus you have two choices in hand. It’s either you beat the noise fast or the noise will beat you up real good.
