LinkedIn Expands Business Blogging Platform

If you are your own brand, then you need your own brand content strategy these days. LinkedIn has opened up its internal publishing platform to all users, so that anyone with an account can share their original writing within their networks.

This is an expansion of the LinkedIn Influencer program that began in 2012, where invited business celebrities the likes of Bill Gates and Guy Kawasaki help us learn to be more like them. Content from this roster of hand-picked influencers appears as suggestions in users’ newsfeeds, based on an algorithmic understanding of each user’s interests. If they like what they read, members can opt to follow experts.

Now, everyone on the network can aspire to be as inspiring as Bill Gates. But newsfeeds won’t necessarily get flooded with potentially lower-quality, self-serving articles. When a general member of LinkedIn publishes on the new platform, that article will initially be seen only by his or her individual network. It also becomes part of that person’s profile on the site.

There’s the possibility of going viral among the 277 million worldwide users of the network, however. If others hit the Like or Share buttons, a link to the article will appear in their own newsfeeds, exposing it to everyone in that network.

In addition, LinkedIn may opt to distribute posts beyond the writer’s network as part of Best of LinkedIn – and even beyond LinkedIn itself to partner sites. The ability to publish on the platform was made available to 250,000 members on February 19; the company plans to roll it out globally in phases.