LinkedIn Goes All in with Content
There was a time not long ago in which the only reason you visited LinkedIn was to change your job title, or try to find out where your old college roommate works. However, LinkedIn has made sizable changes over the last couple of years, morphing themselves from a boring old business social network to a hip content marketing machine. Here are three features that have changed the content landscape on LinkedIn:
Big Name Influencers
LinkedIn knew that if it wanted to jump into the content arena, it needed to associate itself with some big-named personalities. And, that’s just what they did. With the likes of Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group; Deepak Chopra MD, Founder of Chopra Foundation and Pete Cashmore, Founder and CEO at Mashable, gracing LinkedIn with content, people have a darn good reason to keep coming back. Follow these individual influencers and their newest content will show up directly in your LinkedIn news feed.
Channels
If getting insight and advice from one individual isn’t your thing, Channels might be more your style. You can follow Channels to get articles from both influencers and top news sources. Channels bring subject matter experts such as, Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO and Co-Founder of Vayner Media; Charlene Li, Founder of Altimeter Group and David Edelman, Gobal Co-Lead of McKinsey Digital, together under one roof to talk about a single subject. The aforementioned experts all reside under the Marketing Strategies channel and lend their perspective on the ever-changing world of marketing.
Pulse
So you’ve followed some influencers, and you’ve carefully chosen channels that’ll benefit your professional life, but how do you keep all this information in order? Enter Pulse. It’s like having your own content concierge. It goes through all the content you follow and bubbles up the best of the best. This way, you don’t have to spend time searching and can start soaking in good content.
So now that you’re up-to-date on LinkedIn’s content approach, what do you think of it? Are you using Channels, Influencers or Pulse? Are they beneficial? Is it making you visit LinkedIn more often? Let us know in the comments!
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This new content driven LinkedIn site is much preferred! Love it. Will have to start using it more now that I know it has more depth in the interactive experience sector.
Thanks for sharing!
Brendon
I couldn’t agree with you more Jomer. I’m just wondering if there is too much content. I mean it is growing by leaps and bounds every day and this is why I think LinkedIn’s strategy is so brilliant. Get big names to stand behind the content and make them come to your site to get it.
Hi Sukhjit. Great question. I can’t seem to find the actual marketing spend in their financials but their operating expense has risen from $246 million in Q3 2012 to $388 million in Q3 2013. That’s a whopping 58% and I have to believe there is a big portion of that going to some of the big names like Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Arianna Huffington, Tony Robbins, etc. that are “writing” content for LinkedIn. I will keep digging to see if I can come up with and actual number.
Been noticing how strong their content has been and how it’s become a great source for me to find good info. Do you know how much budget or resource they’ve pushed into their efforts?
I would have to agree with you on the engagement comment Rick. I think a lot of people are still unaware that LinkedIn is a vibrant social network with great content. Hopefully this will continue to change as more people discover it. Thanks for reading.
Thanks Michael. LinkedIn (like Google+) has really done a nice job of trying to put the content first. I will be the first to admit that I like all the funny videos and photos but at the end of the day I am really in search of high quality content for myself and to share with our audience. I hope they both continue this approach.
I noticed these new features on linked-in few months ago and I can say that linked-in has transformed from professional type of social network to a more interactive and content-driven social network. I think content marketing is the next big thing in the semantic web.
Hi Derek, I personally think this is the best news update I have for linkedin pushing through with its content strategy. It seems that LinkedIn goes in line with google having more priority in content quality on site and this would really be beneficial for big or small businesses to reach a more professional network thru Linkedin and of course reach out to potential customers as a marketing approach. Great read. Cheers
Hi Derek, I am digging the new LinkedIn content strategy. I am on LinkedIn most days connecting and reconnecting with professional contacts, so getting relevant, high quality content delivered is a value add. I do notice that engagement on LinkedIn (clicks, likes, shares), according to marketing analytics, is currently much less than for profiles on Google+, Twitter and Facebook. By going all in on content, LinkedIn is investing big in engagement. Hopefully it pays off, both for them and us users. Thanks for sharing.
Good info, Derek! Just wanted to point out for your readers though that LinkedIn Today (the name) has been replaced with the Pulse app, in an effort to expand upon available content for LI mobile users, a quickly-growing segment. So don’t look for LinkedIn Today on the site, as you won’t find it, although the Pulse features (channels, influencers, etc.) are very similar.