We’re back with our latest edition of Wondering Wednesdays, in which I give my thoughts on LinkedIn’s new publishing platform. 

//www.youtube.com/embed/PBaQwH0ybEU

 

 

I’m still on the fence about whether or not it’s beneficial to invest any effort into the platform – it would make sense if we were still in the early days of social media and blogging, but not when so many people are already established bloggers.  But there may be some opportunities for engagement there that don’t exist through your blog. 

Benefit: Increased engagement with a different audience. 

Kevin O’Keefe started a thread last week on Facebook, saying that he’s found that posting excerpts from his blog posts on Facebook is generating more engagement than posting the link alone, or even on the post itself. And that may be a benefit of using LinkedIn’s publishing platform as well – rather than treating it as an either/or situation (either your blog OR LinkedIn’s platform), you use both. 

Benefit: Great place to start

Another benefit might be as a testing ground – if you’d like to start blogging and you haven’t yet, or your nervous about doing so, publishing a few things through LinkedIn and engaging with your existing connections might help you to see if there’s an audience for what you’re talking about, and the level of engagement with your subject area. It can serve as a stepping stone to blogging on a separate platform.

Downside: It’s MY content.

For me, the downside is a big one – whose content is it? If LinkedIn were to disappear tomorrow (side note: I don’t think they will, but what if something bigger and better comes along, and we all flock there and abandon it?), what would happen to your posts? If you have your own hosted blog, all of the content stays there as long as you want it to. And it’s easily searchable. 

But is that true for LinkedIn? Could you export your content from there if you really needed to, and keep it safe somewhere? 

The question is, does it make sense to invest your time in LinkedIn’s new platform, and I’m just not sure yet. It may be useful to use it in connection with your existing blogging practices, rather than instead of, or as a stepping stone to blogging, but I’m not yet sold on using it on its own. 

And yes, I know the main reason for doing it is because Google ranks LinkedIn so highly in search, but is that enough of a reason? 

What say you?