It’s Monday — that means it’s time to open up the mailbox and answer YOUR questions!
Howdy! It’s Monday again, and that means I’m diggin’ in the ol’ mailbox!
It’s time to answer YOUR questions!
For those of you who are newer, or who just have a short memory (like me!), here are the rough theme days that we follow here at Breakthrough Marketing Secrets…
— Mailbox Monday: I answer YOUR questions…
— Copy Tuesday: Everything copywriting — the skill AND the biz…
— Web Wednesday: Direct marketing principles, applied to the internet…
— Strategy Thursday: High-level direct response thinking…
— Grab Bag Friday: Whatever I darn well please!
If you want to have YOUR question answered in an upcoming Mailbox Monday issue… Well, shoot it to me in an email at [email protected].
And if you have a topic request or an interesting news item or article you think deserves to be featured on one of the other theme days, go ahead and send that along as well! If I agree, I’ll include it — with a shout out to you, too!
Okay, on to today’s question…
Hi Roy,
Had been drinking the kool-aid about the need to blog for marketing purposes etc. However, before starting that, I decided to use LinkedIn Pulse.
Since posting an initial article, I’ve decided that — for several reasons (audience and so on) — LinkedIn is probably the better choice. Only difference is the material for LinkedIn has to have more impact than a regular blog posting.
Anyway, where are you on this choice — blogging vs. regular postings on LinkedIn Pulse?
Thanks,
Dale
I’ll answer this directly, but there’s a bigger internet marketing lesson in here, too…
You see, so many people on the internet are very quick to give up control.
And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogger, whatever…
When you’re putting your content on THEIR websites, the visitors… traffic… customers… are THEIRS.
It’s only when you bring the customer to YOUR website that you really end up gaining control.
So you can guess my BIG answer to this — maybe — but I’ll go a little deeper on each option.
The pros and cons of blogging…
First off, I’m going to assume we’re talking about a blog on YOUR OWN SITE.
LinkedIn Pulse, in itself, is basically a blog. Along with putting up a blog on WordPress.com, Blogger, Tumblr, or a whole host of other sites. They’re all the same.
Those are sites where you can put your content, but aside from the content you submit you don’t really have much control.
What I’m calling “blogging” is a website that you bought the domain name, you bought the hosting, and you (or your tech person, or your web host) installed software like WordPress and you’re in the driver’s seat.
Here are some pros of this approach:
— You’re paying for the website to be there, so you have almost total control over it.
— You’re able to collect email addresses of visitors and build a follower email list at your discretion, and NOT within the policies of some risk-averse major corporation.
— You control the focus level at your website, and your visitors are not distracted by ads and other site elements that are out of your control.
Here are some cons:
— You don’t have a built-in user base and traffic source with your own website.
— You have to work harder to get credibility with the search engines on your own site.
— You have to actually run and be responsible for a website.
Of all the pros and cons I’ve laid out here, I’m going to say that building an email list is the most important.
Once you have a permission-based email list of people who are interested in following your work, it doesn’t matter as much where you publish. But it’s typically easiest to control the process of building that email list when it’s your own website.
But maybe I’m coming to my conclusions too fast…
The pros and cons of LinkedIn Pulse and other content platforms…
LinkedIn Pulse has its own advantages. The biggest being that LinkedIn is an established platform for presenting your professional persona. It’s a very business-focused platform, and a good way to connect with potential clients.
That said, prior to the official public launch, all content on LinkedIn was curated from high-end influencers. But now, it’s an all-in free-for-all. Pretty much anyone with a profile, as I understand it, can post. Which is likely already eroding the value of the tag “Published on LinkedIn” beyond it holding much weight.
Still let’s look at the pros and cons…
Here are some pros of this approach:
— LinkedIn has a huge built-in user base and traffic source who are tied to you based on your professional persona.
— LinkedIn has incredible clout with the search engines, making it more likely your Pulse posts will show up in normal SEO results.
— All you have to think about is content, NOT everything having to do with running a website.
And here are the cons:
— You have very little control over anything except the core content.
— You’re subject to LinkedIn’s whims in collecting your interested readers’ email addresses, which pretty much means you can’t do it.
— And LinkedIn wants readers to use ALL their features, which means while users are reading LinkedIn is doing a lot to distract them from you.
You may notice, I basically flipped the pros and cons. Because, well, that’s appropriate here.
But my conclusion isn’t necessarily blogging over LinkedIn…
Why do either/or when you can do both/and?
I haven’t done a ton on LinkedIn. In fact, I have all of one post up. It’s been seen 313 times — not bad for doing NO work to promote it.
So maybe I’m not the perfect example — there are many who’ve had much bigger successes than I have.
Yet I do have a lesson that I applied there, that I recommend you apply as well.
I used the LinkedIn article to drive traffic to my Breakthrough Marketing Secrets site.
I took one of my most popular articles from my site, and simply copied and pasted it there.
I added this block of text at the top…
“This was originally published at Breakthrough Marketing Secrets, a daily blog post and email featuring the proven marketing strategies of the world’s best results-driven direct marketers. Read more at http://www.BreakthroughMarketingSecrets.com/blog.”
And for good measure, I copied it to the bottom as well.
That way, if someone is interested in what I’ve written, they have an option beyond liking the post, commenting, or sending me a LinkedIn connection request.
They can go OFF LinkedIn, to my site. Where they can browse through a bunch more relevant content.
And ultimately, subscribe!
The result? I’m able to tap into all the pros of LinkedIn, PLUS all the pros of having a website I control.
Even better? Create a customized landing page that says, “Hey there LinkedIn user, I’m glad to have you! Now I’d like to send you to a bunch more content I think you’ll find interesting, but first, can you give me your email address and I’ll send you [relevant bonus that might have something to do with LinkedIn].” Instead of sending folks directly to the additional content, send them to a customized funnel based on the conversation going on in their head right now.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
Hey Roy. Thanks for over-delivering on answer.
You’re welcome Dale!
Great advice, Roy. Thanks for this. I have a young associate [Tommie Rose] who is copying some of my old posts from WingsToSuccess for his LinkedIn posts, with my permission. And with the attributions at the top and the bottom of the post. The other thing I have seen where you have a really interesting subject is to put half the post on LinkedIn – and then force the reader to go to your website to get the final half! Possibly a bit annoying for the reader….but it works….
That's actually a great little tactic. Put just enough to hook 'em and start to deliver value on LinkedIn, and promise a lot more after the click. Great one!
Best wishes,
Roy
I’m working through this dilemma right now. I’m a solopreneur building a business and I don’t have tons of time.
Oe question I have after reading your response is, assuming you want to manage your own blog, why are you not reposting all of your blog posts onto LinkedIn to take advantage of their network and drive more traffic to your site? Thanks!
Time. I automate posting links from LinkedIn, but Pulse did not do auto posting when I set up.
Add another layer of self-promotion and use embedded images hosted on your own website. It will say “via yoursite.com” under each picture.
Oh that\’s slick!
What was the result? Did you grow your blog audience or gain LinkedIn followers? Did anyone actually go to your site and did you gain any emails for your distribution list?
But your strategy depends on what you want to achieve, right? Are you pursuing awareness and followers on LinkedIn or website traffic and email permissions. Two very different goals and therefore different platforms
Yes, that's absolutely true. Regular readers of my site will note though that I define a communication medium I own and control (email) as a higher priority than a medium I don't (LinkedIn followers). While social is a great place to make an initial connection with someone, it has little financial value until the traffic is directed toward a medium outside of social — one that you have more control over.
In other words, if you just want the gold star of being liked and followed on social media, go ahead and do that. If you want to build a useful marketing asset, make sure you're bringing people to your website and onto your email list.
Roy
How long would you generally suggest to wait between posting it on your own blog and then posting it to Linkedin? Our target leads are very active on LinkedIn, so we’d really like to utilize sharing our posts on there while ideally converting them to subscribe via our website. Been having a tough time trying to figure out the best practices. Thanks for the advice!
Is there a reason to wait? If it's going to be a major part of your strategy, I'd probably post immediately after posting to your own site.
Hope this helps.
Roy
Hi Roy, I am a solo entrepreneur and I’ve just starting blogging on LinkedIn Pulse. I don’t have a blog yet on my website. What do you think about using LinkedIn Pulse as my blogging platform and then just linking to that on my website, instead of moving the content to my website? I’m using a lot of graphics and am not a web developer, so I’m trying to keep the process as simple as possible. Thanks!
Joe, if you use WordPress as a content management system on your website, it's as easy including graphics as it would be with LinkedIn pulse. I also like the Divi theme, because of its flexibility and ability to really define visuals (it's far more capable than what I use it for). In general, I strongly prefer what you own to what you're borrowing. That said LinkedIn has traffic you don't, so if you can use it to push people to your site via Pulse posts, that can be valuable too. Best wishes, Roy
I’d be careful duplicating content. Google’s algorithms penalize duplicate content.
https://www.quicksprout.com/2014/11/03/should-you-repost-your-blog-content-on-other-websites/
I would rather give a small info on the topic and say for more details check site x
Roy, I’m a newer marketer working with a client who is on LinkedIn. I was very concerned about this as well as I read that Google would penalize duplicated content. Do you or any other experience marketers you know have first-hand knowledge with this?
To everyone who is concerned about duplicate content penalties, my understanding is that this is NOT a significant reason to avoid this strategy.
1. Google doesn\’t actually have a duplicate content penalty: https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-prob…
Despite what\’s been argued for a long time among SEO peeps, Google is ALWAYS looking out for users. If you\’re creating a crap site by scraping content, you will get penalized, but that\’s because you were creating a bad customer experience to arbitrage search traffic for profits.
Simply posting your content to another site may lead to one or the other sites showing up on the first page of Google, and the other getting buried. If you post to your site first and let it get indexed, that probably means your site is more likely to show above the \”duplicate\” content. If you post to both at the same time, you\’re more likely to give LinkedIn the search rankings. Again, this isn\’t a penalty — it\’s just Google trying to deliver the best customer experience AND usually that involves sending people to the original source of the content.
(You can also help this along by using a canonical link — and no, I\’m not going to tell you how because Google will give you good answers — inside your own site, for the original content. It\’s not perfect, but it does give Google a hint that your site has the original, which they usually pay attention to.)
In short, this strategy could — but really isn\’t all that likely to — slightly decrease your organic traffic to your site, especially if you post one after the other. BUT…
2. Thinking ONLY about SEO is a short-term, limited strategy. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/duplicate-con…
YES, SEO can be important. But what role does disseminating content across your LinkedIn audience (and having them share it as well) play in getting qualified traffic?
If the answer is more than \”none\” my original statement stands. Articles on LinkedIn are given preference over shares. They get a lot of traffic, from LinkedIn (Google is NOT the sole source of traffic!). And they usually get qualified traffic, with some social proof of shared network built in.
This isn\’t about getting more Google traffic. It\’s about getting more LinkedIn traffic. If that\’s valuable to you, this strategy is still as sound as it ever was, and it\’s not likely to have a significant impact on your SEO as long as you\’re not trying to manipulate Google SERPs.
All the differentiation is right and properly listed.That said LinkedIn has traffic you don’t, so if you can use it to push people to your site via Pulse posts, that can be valuable too. Best wishes.