Should I post content on LinkedIn or on my blog?, Tim Hughes

I often get asked about posting and where I should post content.

Let's go back to basics.

Where should we post content?

Simplistically, content is there to create commercial interaction .... to sell something. But there are other influencing factors.

To get to sell something, a person needs to have a desire to buy what you sell. Content can therefore help, top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and at the bottom of the funnel. That sounds like lots of meaningless marketing articles so what is that in practice?

1. We need to demonstrate to our network and audience that we are the people to buy from. To do this, we need to show we are an "expert". All the way through my selling life, we have always walked into meetings and explained, why the client should listen to us over and above our competition.

This is not a sales pitch, this is giving us credibility.

You social profile is your shop window to the world, content by showing our expertise, gives us credibility.

By writing this blog, I'm not giving you a sales pitch, I'm demonstrating my knowledge and expertise and I hope you will walk away and think that I know what I'm talking about.

2. Content allows you to differentiate yourself from your competition. Who would you prefer to buy from? Somebody who you have go to know on social; you know them, like them and trust them, because they show their expertise and offer help and advice that you can use in your business? Again, like this article.

Or some faceless person on social, who is clearly just another salesperson, who shares brochures?

Of course, the authentic, "expert" sharing help and advice for your business is now what people called "on brand", rather than the boring sharing for brochures that nobody reads.

3. Content, provides you with the ability to be found. By writing and using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, for example, using keywords, or long tail search headlines. You will be indexed by Google and found on search sites as well as being found on social.

Note, the search capabilities on google and social are different and we teach this in our social selling and influence course.

In this article I use data (not opinion) on why more people now search on social, than people who search on Google, article here. People do still search on Google, but as a business you need to plan for both.

4. Content can be repurposed. I put out a blog only last week that was a cut and paste from an article I wrote in 2018.

5. Content builds a long term library demonstrating you are an expert. Don't forget that the more content you post, the more likely you will be found and the more likely you will be the answer to somebodies business issues. I'm not talking about posting and hoping, as mentioned above, content is about commercial interaction.

Blog vs LinkedIn article Vs LinkedIn post

There are advantages and disadvantages of each, we can help you as part of our social selling and influence course, here is a quick summary.

1. Blog on a website - Google loves to see a website growing and the best way of demonstrating this is by having a blog and regularly contributing. As long as you write in a search engine optimized (SEO) way, Google should index this article.

The negative is that users on social media, don't like being taken from the social network they are currently and having to travel to your blog. Not many people today will click on links we have seen too many instances of hacking and viruses. You will also see that most social networks see themselves as "walled gardens" and the algorithms don't promote posts that drive the user to leave that social network.

Gated content

We still see today, marketers driving people to blogs to collect emails, the reason for this is that it's seen that the email collected are the only measure of success. This is not the case and I will come to this.

There is a major problem with this, people don't like giving their email addresses. Why? because, we all know we get a call from a salesperson trying to sell us something. If I recall, Salesforce reckon they will call you in 10 minutes for giving your email. Maybe they have stopped this, but it's creepy and anti-customer experience.

We've actually done research and found that, if you gate content you will lose 50% of the engagement and each piece of data you ask for you keep losing another 50%. For example, if you drive 100 people to gated content, only 50 will register. If you ask for name, title and business name. That 50 will turn into 6. This does not seem like a very efficient way to build relationships with prospects, is there another way?

Where as, if you posted the article on social media, you have the details of everybody that has liked and commented that social post. At that point you have the ability to have conversations that could lead to commercial interaction with these people. Now of course, if you post content on the company linkedin page, you cannot have a conversation as it will seem creepy, which is why you must empower your team(s) to be on social.

Our social selling and influence course, will teach, explain and coach sales people as well as any other employees to be able to create connections, have conversations and gain commercial interactions from posts on social.

Ways to get around this

Some people write excerpt of the post, others just place the "introduction" on LinkedIn then take the readers who want to read the entire article to their blog site.

This is often used as a way to get around the Google duplicate content rules. The problem with this is that it's seen as manipulative and you will get a high bounce rate. That is people, won't follow the link.

2. Linkedin Posts - Posts are great for engagement on LinkedIn, the algorithm will promote them in your networks timeline, great for a dopamine hit. The negative is that Google does not index them and they have a 6 month shelf life on LinkedIn.

3. Linkedin articles - Linkedin articles get less engagement that post, so less dopamine. But they are indexed by Google. They will enable you to build up your expertise and create an online library that people can find.

It's worth noting that people don't know your article is any good until they have read it.

Duplicate content

You must understand that Google isn't stupid, it is well aware that people will post the same content in multiple places to try and increase the content reach, this is duplicate content. Google is very strict about this and will ban blogs if it decides that there is duplicate content. Just be aware, it does not tell you that they have banned you.

Here is an article from Google on duplicate content, here.

Here is an article from Moz about duplicate content, here.

Should I post on "rented" sites?

One of the questions we often get asked is about LinkedIn and the fact the real estate is "rented", a blog you own. I have a friend that went all in on GooglePlus, only for Google to close the social network.

What about the backup? If someday, LinkedIn changes policies and everything disappears?

If you are following the rules and writing about business, there should not be a problem. If you are writing about politics, religion, addictions, then yes, I would suggest you post on your own site.

I have in the past, posted on LinkedIn and then 6 weeks later posted on Medium, taking into account Google duplicate content rules, but I stopped as there are only so many minutes in a day.

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

I don't believe you Tim!

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

Here at DLA Ignite we don't do "hints and tips sessions" we don't want you to waste your money. Our social selling and influence methodology will provide your sales team with the stable platform for growth. It is also the only social selling program based on 70:20:10 change management principles which gives your business the mindset change and habit change they need in this digital world.

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project