Neal reveals his "aha!" moment from his recent blog post on LinkedIn and offers advice on better understanding the unique demographic that is viewing your blog posts on LinkedIn.
Key Highlights
[00:40] Understanding the Audience for Your LinkedIn Blog Posts
[00:56] My LinkedIn Resources
[01:54] How I Consider LinkedIn
[02:11] My AHA Moment
[02:53] My Free Ebook
[03:47] What I Did to Introduce My New Ebook on LinkedIn
[05:48] The Power of Comments on LinkedIn
[07:35] LinkedIn Is A Unique Community
Notable Quotes
- There's a lot of people who say, Well, I have a blog, I don't want to create special content for LinkedIn, that's just a waste of time, I'll just, you know, republish my own content on LinkedIn. And you know, there's a lot of people that are doing that, in all honesty, and some of them have been really successful, I have not taken that approach. I love the approach. And if you're going to make content, make it work. And if you're going to publish the same content, at least, you need to rephrase it for the LinkedIn community.
- I'm not saying that I copy and pasted a particular blog post and publish it on LinkedIn for the first time.
- But it's really interesting to see the quality and the power of the comments I got, because they weren't coming from just blog readers who happen to find me on Pinterest or stumble upon these were coming from decision makers, former CEOs and CMOS on LinkedIn.
- So to me, I'm just giving a preview of what's coming in mainstream corporate America, but on LinkedIn to others that are not part of the social media world that I'm in. It was quote, unquote, a thought provoking piece.
- And it's sort of repeated what I thought are reiterated what I thought that is, if you're just gonna cut and paste what you blog, on your blog, or LinkedIn, it's not gonna be nearly as effective if you have the topic and the tone and the perspective that these decision makers are looking for on LinkedIn.
- B ut once you guest blog somewhere else, whether it be on LinkedIn publishing platform or on someone else's platform, you need to retool your content, your perspective, even your call to action for that unique community. But regardless, it just goes to show you that you blog for your community, if it's on your own blog, you none, you understand your community, your target user.
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Welcome to maximize your social, actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business. Neal Schaffer. Everyone, this is Neal Schaffer. And welcome to a another episode of maximize your social. Are you expecting me to waste a few minutes on an introduction that has no meaning and sounds repetitive? Why would I do that? Let's get right into the topic at hand, which is understanding the audience for your LinkedIn blog posts. I had sort of an aha moment this week and awakening. And it deals with the LinkedIn publishing platform. If you follow me on maximize social business or maximize your social, I've published a few posts, including a YouTube video on how to apply to publish and LinkedIn platform How to Apply for Early Access, how to actually create your first post, that's a YouTube video, I think it's about 10 minutes long, if I'm not mistaken. And then I even went into my own advice on what exactly should you use the LinkedIn publishing platform for my concept around publishing on platforms is, you have your own blog. In my case, I have two blogs, I have the collaborative blog maximize social business, which is my main blog, I also have a blog for my own business called maximize your social, I have the podcast, right, and this is unique content, I'm not reading off a script, lets you think I'm a really good actor. I can read off a script and sound like this. But the other avenue that I think that has come about is the LinkedIn publishing platform. Think about it. If you had the opportunity to guest blog on Forbes, would you do it? Absolutely. I consider LinkedIn to be very, very similar. Just as last post I published yesterday, has 1000 views. A lot of blog posts on a lot of blogs don't even get 1000 views unless you're published on one of the major blogs. So think of LinkedIn as a very, very special place. Now, there's a lot of people who say, Well, I have a blog, I don't want to create special content for LinkedIn, that's just a waste of time, I'll just, you know, republish my own content on LinkedIn. And you know, there's a lot of people that are doing that, in all honesty, and some of them have been really successful, I have not taken that approach. I love the approach. And if you're going to make content, make it work. And if you're going to publish the same content, at least, you need to rephrase it for the LinkedIn community. And this is really the aha moment that I have. I'm not saying that I copy and pasted a particular blog post and publish it on LinkedIn for the first time. But I did publish my eighth post, just over the last few days. And this post was on employee advocacy and LinkedIn. Now I just released a free ebook with the folks over people links on how to build an employee advocacy program. I'm assuming if you're listening to this podcast, you are one of the first people who downloaded it. And if you're not well, just check out one of my blog posts on employee advocacy that I've published recently. And you'll find the link to the landing page. But regardless, I wanted to introduce the fact that I had this new ebook to the LinkedIn community. And I also wanted to introduce the concepts that I had covered in these two blog posts that I had written on maximize social business, that LinkedIn is the perfect place for employee advocacy. And that employee advocacy in 2014, has become a major buzzword for a lot of different reasons. And I wanted to talk about the trends. So hey, this is LinkedIn. If you've ever posted a link about Google Plus on Google Plus, you know, it gets a lot of shares. If you post it on Twitter, on Twitter, it gets a lot of shares, Facebook, on Facebook, and so on, and so on. So it's no surprise that anything related to LinkedIn, I felt was going to do well on LinkedIn. But instead of just copying and pasting a post, I first of all merged together two different posts. And I also rewarded it for the LinkedIn community, right? It's the most professional, the most savvy community, this is the community that you want to be the least salesy in. But I did use a picture of the book for the photo that appears at the top of the post, and I did have a link at the bottom. Hey, if you're interested, you know, feel free to download that for the advice. But what happened here on LinkedIn is something that has not happened on my blogs on my podcast or anywhere, which is serious, professional conversation. Now, I wrote a blog post a long time ago. And Joel Don, I know you're listening to my podcast. I know you're nodding and smiling as I speak, and I'm sorry to call you out there. But it was on my blog for content not for comments. I don't blog as an engagement tool. I blog as a resource to give you my best ideas as I do with the podcast. Hey, I have 71 podcast. This is number 72. I only have six five star ratings on iTunes. Not a hint, but I'm not asking you every time and pleading for you and tweeting at you and sending you a private Facebook man Message begging for a five star iTunes. If it happens, it happens. And once in a while, I'll ask for it at the end of the podcast, which I did last time. But regardless of the fact, LinkedIn really surprised me, because of the feedback I got through the comments, which I was not expecting, because I blogged for the content. And the comments, if you think about it are very appropriate for the LinkedIn community. I was talking about how Hey, LinkedIn is most appropriate community for employee advocacy. And it's becoming a major thing in 2014. If you want to get started, read the ebook, get started the right way. But because LinkedIn is sort of the CEOs and business owners and decision makers in the world, it was really interesting to see the feedback I got I'm going to read you some of the comments and you can go to my LinkedIn profile linkedin.com/in/neal Schaffer, and read these for yourself. But it's really interesting to see the quality and the power of the comments I got, because they weren't coming from just blog readers who happen to find me on Pinterest or stumble upon these were coming from decision makers, former CEOs and CMOS on LinkedIn. And they provided me invaluable advice. You know what content I need to create. I mean, it was it was just excellent feedback that I can only get on LinkedIn by publishing on the LinkedIn platform. Here's one gentleman Bennett, Bayer global cmo and VP of strategy, Huawei, Huawei is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the world right now. Whilst I applaud employee advocacy, we reside in litigious times, avoiding disclosure of company plans, strategy and proprietary information, not to mention forward looking statements, make me an advocate of the social presentation of the organization be orchestrated, and controlled by trained professionals, just too much downside risk, really, really good feedback. And I responded that, hey, this blog post was not about mitigating risk with an employee advocacy program, it was about how to get started doing it the right way. But it's interesting that the next person can Benson, the CEO, business performance partners who comment Hey, Ben, it's right, there needs to be controlled limits to risk exposures and the like, but still a thought provoking piece. Funny thing is, for me, it was not a thought provoking piece for me in play advocacy. I'm not saying it's mainstream, but there's already a number of fortune 500 companies that are either doing it or starting to do it. So to me, I'm just giving a preview of what's coming in mainstream corporate America, but on LinkedIn to others that are not part of the social media world that I'm in. It was quote, unquote, a thought provoking piece. And, you know, Ken re commented on that. And, you know, I once again got other comments that were about not only the risks, but the challenges, what have you. But through this, I realized that LinkedIn really is a unique community. And it's sort of repeated what I thought are reiterated what I thought that is, if you're just gonna cut and paste what you blog, on your blog, or LinkedIn, it's not gonna be nearly as effective if you have the topic and the tone and the perspective that these decision makers are looking for on LinkedIn. Right. And they're looking at a completely different level than we are used to and a completely different perspective. So that was sort of my aha moment I committed in my comments to get back to them and create some content around the risks of employee advocacy, and how you can limit those risks as far as the challenges go, and getting management buy in and corporate culture, what have you that's sort of covered in ebook. But regardless, it just goes to show you that you blog for your community, if it's on your own blog, you none, you understand your community, your target user. But once you guest blog somewhere else, whether it be on LinkedIn publishing platform or on someone else's platform, you need to retool your content, your perspective, even your call to action for that unique community. And it goes the same with tweeting and pinning and everything else we do in social media. So that was my aha moment. I look forward to hearing back from you. What is your experience with the LinkedIn publishing platform? Have you had similar feedback? similar types of comments? Have you gotten great comments, even though you may not have gotten any comments when you publish on your blog post? Are you doing the exact same thing on LinkedIn as you do on your blog posts and getting great results? I want to hear from you. Okay. And if you let me know how you're doing, I'm also going to introduce you on this podcast as I did for Joel, and not to put any pressure on you, Joel. But if you do have anything, I'd like to hear about it. But that's it for today. It's another beautiful sunny day in Southern California, which is probably why I'm always just positive and in good spirits when I do these podcasts. When you listen to this, it's obviously the beginning of a new week. I try to record these on Fridays. If you listen to my last podcast on social media productivity, I actually like to do all my weekly tasks on Fridays, where had the least email the least phone calls? The least interruptions, you know, doing podcasts on Fridays gives me the ability to re listen to it over the weekend. Do I really want to publish this? Or am I embarrassed by what I'm saying? Am I going overboard on what I'm saying? And then publishing them early in the next week, ideally on a Tuesday If all the stars and planets in the Solar System align correctly, so that's it for today. Maybe you should assign Friday's for your creative work for your blog posts, your images, and all the other work that require a lot of energy so that you can focus. So that's it for today, everybody. Hey, wherever you're on the world, make it a great social day. And we'll speak to you soon. And like I said, I enjoy your feedback. Please bring it on. Send it out to me. Maximize social business, maximize your social Neal Schaffer, you know where to find me. That's it for today. Everybody. Make it a great day. Bye bye.
Unknown:Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com make it a social day.