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This is Brian Liang from SmallBusinessIdeasBlog.com and I have a confession to make about traffic generation with LinkedIn Pulse …
I used to blow off social media.
SEO sends targeted traffic on an ongoing basis but with social media, you might get a little burst of traffic, and then it dies out.
So I always focused on SEO and put social media on the back burner.
Until now.
I’ve been learning and experimenting with social media more recently and have plans to scale up results from Twitter, Pinterest and possibly Google Plus.
But the social media network that I’m most excited about is one that most content marketers aren’t using at all.
I’m talking about LinkedIn Pulse.
What is LinkedIn Pulse I hear you say?
Well in February 2014, LinkedIn opened up its publishing platform to the public and rolled out access to everyone in English speaking countries early this year. It will eventually roll out access to all of its members.
Last year, I did a study on how top writers were getting featured on the Pulse, including data on average post length, topics choices, best time to write and some other tips. This post ended up being popular and got over 3,000 social shares.
After that, I started experimenting with my own account.
I managed to get about 1 out of 3 posts featured by an editor in a content channel
resulting in hundreds of followers and email list subscribers
for my blog.
Table Of Contents
- 1. Start with Shorter Articles
- 2. Create a Good Featured Image
- 3. Be Controversial or Disagree with a Popular Opinion
- 4. Follow Up on Previous Successes
- 5. Spend Time Creating an Interesting Headline
- 6. Tweet to LinkedIn’s Editorial Team
- 7. Align Your Post Topic with a Content Channel
- 8. Build Your Connections on LinkedIn
- 9. Promote Your Article Outside of LinkedIn
- 10. Link out to a squeeze page in the end
- Matthew’s LinkedIn Pulse Traffic Generation Case Study
- The Final Wrap
- What Are You Waiting For?
What You Will Learn
- How to get subscribers from LinkedIn Pulse with short articles
- My secret trick to increase visibility & clicks that almost no one’s using (yet)
- How to pick topics that have a better chance of going viral
- A little known trick to pitch LinkedIn’s editorial team directly
- Some underutilized traffic generation tactics to give yourself an unfair advantage
1. Start with Shorter Articles
I’ve seen some debate over whether posts should be long or short when publishing on LinkedIn. LinkedIn recommends writing shorter posts more often rather than long form content.
I did a study of top posts that made it into the Pulse during the summer of 2014 and I noticed that 76.3% of articles had less than 1000 words.
For blogging, long form content seems to be the most effective when it comes to getting traffic and social shares. But for LinkedIn, if you don’t already have a large audience, then spending time on writing a long post is risky.
LinkedIn’s audience consists of busy professionals that might not be looking to read a really long post.
However, your success with longer articles could vary depending on your audience, what you are writing about and who you’re connected to.
Recommendation: Unless you already have a large audience on LinkedIn, start with short articles like LinkedIn recommends and then consider testing longer articles once you get a good idea of what works.
2. Create a Good Featured Image
When I was studying posts that got featured on the Pulse, I noticed a few people that had successfully gamed the system and gotten their low quality posts featured on the Pulse.
One of these articles had a boring headline and the article consisted only of links to his books on Amazon.
However, he was able to get enough clicks to get featured on the Pulse by using an image of an attractive female:
I think he ended up with at least over 5,000 views on that spam article before it got removed.
I checked his account later on and it looked like LinkedIn removed ALL of his posts and took away his ability to publish, so I wouldn’t recommend this approach.
However, the important takeaway is that the featured image does matter and can get your article some serious viewership!
Most people that publish on LinkedIn just use a boring stock photo for their featured image. One of the ways I was able to stand out was to add a text overlay to my image.
Here’s an example of an image I used. I just added some text to a free stock image I found on Pixabay:
And if you’re not a graphic designer, then you might want to try out an easy to use tool like Buffer Pablo or Quozio to create these images.
Recommendation: Take the time to create or select a featured image that stands out. A good image can generate curiosity and send you more clicks to your article.
3. Be Controversial or Disagree with a Popular Opinion
Tom Webster wrote a popular blog post questioning the cost effectiveness of inbound marketing.
The article mentions the fact that Hubspot, perhaps the most well known advocate of inbound marketing, is still losing $34 million a year due to its high marketing costs:
I wrote this article to counter this viewpoint by explaining Hubspot’s aggressive growth strategy and citing some examples of companies that were doing inbound marketing profitably.
My article got featured in the Marketing and Advertising Channel and accumulated a couple thousand views.
Another really good example… Gregory Ciotti totally crushed it when he went against mainstream beliefs and told people to ignore their customers.
Recommendation: Consider taking a controversial stance on an issue or disagreeing with a popular opinion.
4. Follow Up on Previous Successes
One thing I noticed when studying top articles on the Pulse was that some writers would write a follow up article if they had a successful LinkedIn article.
I’ve seen enough follow up articles do well to recommend taking this approach.
A guy named Chris Chan wrote an article about why he quit Facebook that generated over 600,000 views:
Why I quit Facebook and we are sharing much more than you think (published on July 9, 2014 – over 600,000 views) – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140709173931-11228988-why-i-quit-facebook-and-we-are-sharing-much-more-than-you-think
He followed up with this article a week later which ended up getting featured again and generating over 500,000 views:
An Open Letter To Mark Zuckerberg (published on July 16, 2014 – over 500,000 views) – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140716103758-11228988-an-open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg
I tried the same approach when one of my articles “Is College a Waste of Money” ended up getting featured and accumulating over 6,000 views:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140807125225-29113533-is-college-a-waste-of-money
My follow up article was entitled “Should Entrepreneurs Invest in a College Education?” and it also got featured in a content channel:
If you scroll to the bottom of an article, you can see what channel it was featured on:
Recommendation: If you had a previously successful article on LinkedIn, consider writing a follow up article that expands on that topic.
5. Spend Time Creating an Interesting Headline
Having a click-worthy headline is one of the most important parts of succeeding on LinkedIn, if your goal is to get more exposure and new traffic to your article.
Hundreds of articles get published on LinkedIn each day, so your headline needs to stand out.
Additionally, you are able to get a good number of clicks on your article, a LinkedIn editor might notice and feature it on a content channel which can send it even more traffic.
An important tip about headlines is to not make them sound too overhyped.
Headlines that seem to work well in the digital marketing niche don’t seem to work well with LinkedIn’s audience.
Recommendation: Study headlines that people are using on LinkedIn and take time to write an amazing headline that people will click on.
6. Tweet to LinkedIn’s Editorial Team
Hundreds of articles are published on LinkedIn each day, so it’s possible that your article might not get seen by LinkedIn’s editors.
LinkedIn does want to feature high-quality articles on the Pulse, so if you’ve written something good and it hasn’t been featured within the first few hours…
You can tweet your post to LinkedIn’s editorial team.
Basically, you’ll want to tweet it to “Tip @LinkedInPulse” with some text hinting at what the article is about.
I published one article that didn’t get featured for a couple of hours and decided to tweet it to LinkedIn’s editorial team.
It worked! Within a few minutes, it was featured on one of LinkedIn’s Career channels.
Recommendation: If your quality article hasn’t been featured within the first few hours, consider tweeting it to the LinkedIn editorial team. If it’s good, they might feature it on a content channel.
7. Align Your Post Topic with a Content Channel
Getting your article featured on a content channel can send you lots of traffic and new followers. Some of these channels have over a million followers that could potentially see your article.
The most popular topics on the Pulse are careers, business and self improvement.
But you can still get a lot of exposure for other topics if LinkedIn has created a content channel for that topic.
Recommendation: Be sure to visit the content channels that are most relevant to what you write about and see what type of articles are getting featured. Study those articles and then plan your own articles accordingly.
8. Build Your Connections on LinkedIn
Anyone you connect with on LinkedIn is automatically following you. That means that they will get a notification if you publish something new and could potentially view your post.
Therefore, building your connections on LinkedIn could be another way to increase your reach if you decide to publish regularly.
Asides from networking with people in person, you can also connect with people by being active in relevant LinkedIn groups.
Before I started publishing on LinkedIn, I had less than 100 connections.
I started spending more time networking and building new connections and now have over 500.
Several of the people who read, shared and commented on my posts were among the new people that I connected with. So building connections helps.
Recommendation: Spend time networking and building your connections on LinkedIn.
9. Promote Your Article Outside of LinkedIn
Most people don’t bother to promote their articles outside of LinkedIn, but doing so can definitely help, especially if you have a decent sized following outside of LinkedIn.
When studying top articles on the Pulse, I noticed that all featured articles were from the same day or the day before.
Notice how the articles are also arranged by views, with the most viewed articles on top:
If your article is already getting some traction, you can push it even higher by driving more traffic to it, which in turn can get it seen by even more people.
I’ve promoted some of my articles by sharing them on LinkedIn groups and emailing my list. You should also integrate some of these social media marketing tips.
Recommendation: After you publish your article on LinkedIn, be sure to promote it immediately. You can get more views to it by sharing it on social media and email your list about your post.
10. Link out to a squeeze page in the end
If you start reading posts on LinkedIn, you’ll notice that most of them don’t link out to a squeeze page.
In fact, about half of articles that I saw on LinkedIn don’t link out at all. And the ones that do usually only link to a home page or Twitter account.
Here’s a screenshot of my standard squeeze page that offers 50+ Free Resources to Help People Start or Grow a Business:
If you really want to max out your conversions, then consider using a “content upgrade”. In other words, create an opt-in bonus that is related to what you are writing about.
For example, I send traffic to this squeeze page instead where I offer my 16 page LinkedIn Publishing study if I’m writing about LinkedIn marketing:
This is a squeeze page design that has been thoroughly split tested by Lead Pages to maximize email opt-ins, so as you can imagine, it’s easier to get subscribers from it than from someone reading a post on my blog.
I ran this experiment for a 4 month period and got me close to 1,000 LinkedIn followers and 570 visits to my landing page:
Close to 40% of them converted into subscribers:
Not too bad for a bunch of short posts, many of which took me less than an hour to write. On average, my LinkedIn articles were only around 700 words.
Just to put things into context, a long form blog post like this one can take me well over 20 hours to write (sometimes longer), including:
- Editing
- Gathering multiple screenshots and images
- Pitching the guest post to the blogger
- Writing a compelling headline and intro
Recommendation: Be sure to send traffic to a landing page to maximize email opt-ins. Consider using a content upgrade for even better results.
Wrapping It Up
I love that you can now tap into LinkedIn’s massive user base and get serious traffic and even subscribers with short form blog posts that people will actually read.
If you want to try this out yourself, a few extra tips:
- Take some time to read and study the articles that are currently doing well on LinkedIn. The headlines and articles are very different than what you see in the online marketing niche so you’ll have to adapt your writing accordingly.
- Start with short articles first until you get the hang of it. But spend just a little extra time making sure you create quality beyond what the typical LinkedIn publisher creates.
- Link out to a landing page where you can capture email addresses. To experienced marketers, this may seem obvious, but most publishers on LinkedIn aren’t doing this.
Read through this article again and also be sure to check out the study I published on my blog. And let me know if you achieve an awesome result.
I always love a great case study!
I took a break from publishing on LinkedIn because I was ranking one of my e-commerce Pinterest accounts for competitive terms and in the process of moving.
But I’m gearing up for phase 2 of this LinkedIn experiment where I hope to achieve even better results.
Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn or even introduce yourself and connect with me if you want to follow along.
I’m going to hand over the rest of the writing to Matthew now….
Matthew’s LinkedIn Pulse Traffic Generation Case Study
Hey guys – Matthew Woodward here!
I decided to take Brian’s advice and implement everything you have just read to publish my own LinkedIn Pulse post and measure the results.
It seems simple enough and the entire process only took me around 30 minutes – this is what I did.
Recycled Popular Content
I looked through Google Analytics to see which posts were the most popular that I could repurpose into a 1,000 word post basted on Brian’s advice.
It was also important that I had a relevant lead magnet ready to go so I could get people to optin at the end of the post if it did go viral.
I settled on these 2 posts-
- https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/competitor-backlink-analysis/
- https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/free-backlinks/
In the end I decided to go with option 1 to get my feet wet and made a quick rewrite to make it unique and boil it down to the 1,000 word level with a pretty little image I made in Canva.
I’ll repeat this process again but with option 2 later this month.
Creating A Landing Page
Creating the Landing Page and Lead Magnet took less than 60 seconds.
As I already have lead magnets and landing page templates built I just logged into LeadPages, hit copy, renamed them and published them.
This meant there were 3 very different landing pages in play getting split tested automatically by LeadPages.
Publishing The Article
I went ahead and submitted the article to LinkedIn Pulse.
A few things to note here-
- The editor sucks
- The interface is generally confusing – I always felt lost
- There isn’t any global post management interface
Promoting The Article
Brian stressed how important it was to promote the article once it is live. If you can rack up enough views on the article you can push it to the most popular of the day pretty easily.
From there you can then get it to be featured within a specific channel (content category) and that’s where the magic really happens.
Some of my subscribers may remember getting an email a few weeks back asking them to take part in an experiment by reading an article.
Well this is the experiment you were taking part in – I was trying to push it to be featured in the channel for this case study.
Thank you to everyone that took part in that!
I also tweeted it out to the LinkedIn Pulse team (that fell on deaf ears) and promoted it via my social channels.
Unfortunately I was not able to get the article featured in the channel but I’ll share some insight into that later.
The Final Results!
With everything said and done – let’s take a look at how the article actually performed.
Here is a screenshot from LinkedIn Analytics of the article-
As you can see the article had-
- 2,969 views
- 79 likes
- 41 comments
- 12 shares
But what did that do for subscribers?
How about that for a conversion rate!
Out of 436 people that clicked through to the lead magnet…
A staggering 332 of them subscribed.
Those numbers are hard to ignore! Especially for a repurposed piece of content.
The Final Wrap
Well I’ve got to say that LinkedIn Pulse is certainly a platform that has my attention. In this experiment I cut a few corners to get my feet wet and see how things perform.
If you were to do weekly or bi-weekly contributions this could become a powerful traffic source for the foreseeable future.
Not only that but you know that people coming from LinkedIn are all professionals in one way or another which makes for some very high quality traffic AND we know they love lead magnets.
How I Could Improve
I made a couple of mistakes throughout this process with LinkedIn Pulse-
– Wrong Link
At the start of the article I link to the homepage of the blog. For one reason or another I linked to the HTTPS version of the blog – which just hits a dead end.
So that means I lost a lot of the traffic I would have received directly to the blog. I have edited and fixed this now but that’s what you get for not double checking :)
– Wrong Type Of Content
Although the article I repurposed was very popular with you guys – I think it was a little bit too technical for the average LinkedIn user.
Instead I should repurpose actionable content but then make it relevant to the average small business owner rather than the average SEO.
Also there isn’t actually a dedicated SEO channel to publish content to on LinkedIn – that should have been my first clue.
– Pending Friend Requests
Honestly I never really used LinkedIn that much and when I published the article I had over 500 pending friend requests.
What I should have done is accepted all of those requests first and then published the article on LinkedIn Pulse.
That would have then shown up in all of those peoples news feeds helping to increase distribution.
Want to learn about the negative effects of social media? Check out our social media addiction statistics.
What Are You Waiting For?
So there you have it – a complete strategy to drive high quality traffic and subscribers to your landing pages with Linked Pulse.
It took me around 30 minutes work to generate 332 new email subscribers which is a great investment of resource.
So now you know how to publish on Linkedin Pulse, go and try it for yourself and let us know how you get on!
If you publish a post on LinkedIn Pulse then leave the comment with a URL so I can give it a thumbs up :)
73 Responses
Hi there to every one, it’s really a nice for me to pay a visit this web site, it consists of priceless Information.
Hope you come back again soon
always awesome Mattew…keep updating..
Thanks Nikki!
nice tutorial Mr Matthew, I will start using LinkedIn right a way
Let us know how you get on David
Great article Matthew, very useful.
Thanks Asad!
Great read, Brian. I’m curious, do you have any insight about the pros/cons of dual publishing content both on LinkedIn’s publishing platform and your own company’s blog? Always would love to drive eyes to our blog/site, but obviously the potential reach on LI is significantly greater at the moment. Are there dangers to putting an article in both places?
Just make sure it gets indexed by Google on your own site first
I have learned some great tips for LinkedIn here, today. Thank you guys for sharing your knowledge on these topics…niche post
No worrys Harga :)
every good post again man, last i red one of you tier link building which drastically improve my ranking and today this linkedin post is break though article i never felt linkedin will any help in driving traffic.
Will soon get back for something more.mate…
That is great to hear Karan, I’m glad you are having success!
Great guys can generate traffic from any source. :D This post is amazing and well researched. Thanks a lot man
No problem Sumit :)
Hello Matthew,
Simply a nice post. You have shared great techniques to increase traffic.
Keep writing such articles.
Thanks Basheer :)
Matthew, you never disappoint me! I just love your content and i really learn a great deal.
Thanks.
No problem Alex :)
Hi Matt,
This tutorial is really detailed and helpful. Anyone can easily understand how to utilize the power of linkedin with the steps and tips you have shared here..
No problem Gaurav :)
Thanks Mathew for the great tips. Will definitely Implement those.Really your post consists of much informative stuff
Thanks Rahul :)
Glad to see you post this. I read a similar article a few months ago and posted some of my own articles on Pulse. One that I posted called “Great Business Relationships” took off quite quickly. I wish I had done more to promote it but wasn’t sure how. Your article really does help with that so I’m going to write some more. I agree, the editing tool is pretty clunky!
That’s good to hear Bill, once I have more free time I intend to submit bi-weekly to Pulse :)
Great Traffic generation tactic for anyone to boost there traffic..
Great Keep updating this kind of posts..
Thanks for posting..
No problem Ashik :)
Great article with very useful tips to get tons of traffic……. :)
I hope you do some damage with it :)
Thanks SO much for this article! I’ve been doing Linkedin posts for awhile and was looking everywhere for some guidance. I tend to post articles on my blog as well as LI and there doesn’t seem to be a problem.
I’ve also found that shorter articles work and I’m always surprised at what will click with the LinkedIn audience. And I’m not sure that article popularity translates to list-building (although it may work better if my lead magnet were more perfectly tied to the article topic).
I’ll follow these strategies and see what happens. Again, thanks for this.
Please feel free to come back and share any other tips you have with us :)
Hi,
Basic question – where do you go on LinkedIn to actually make a post? I’ve gone to the Pulse area but can’t see where you find the editor / posting tool.
Thanks,
Dale.
Usually in the top right
Thanks for sharing..! Actually, I read some article about link marketing and I saw those blogger recommend to write for link…
Thanks for sharing, it was really awesome tips about writing article on link..
No problem :)
Four months of work for 225 subscribers does not feel very exciting…
Why not?
It wasn’t that much work. Most of the articles took under an hour to write so if I published once a week, I could queue up articles for the month with just one writing session.
Compared that to creating a high quality blog post which can take 20-30 hours to create (plus you’d have to spend a lot of time promoting it), I’d say it’s worth it.
This is a great a great content Mathew, and a bid thump up Brain.
For over two years now i have created a Linkedin account which is as good as dead. Have been abusing trying to pull through with Facebook and twitter traffic.
But with this content, i see reasons why Linkedin should be given a serious try.
Matthew and Brain, great work once again.
No problem sir :)
Hi Matt, I’ve sent you an email. Please check it out
Haven’t seen anything?
I loved reading this article and didn’t get bored at all. I am satisfied with all the points you have mentioned above and I am going to use all of these.
Infact using catchy images is one of the best known ways to improve your web traffic.
Thanks for sharing, Keep writing
It is indeed :) Just like my shiney new sidebar :)
matt itis helpful to us. thanks
What exactly were the problems when you linked to the https link? Can you explain? I thought having a https site was the way forward, am i miss understanding something?
If you try to hits this blog via https all hell breaks loose
Great content, yeah I’ve been curious about Linkedn advertising, especially there new platform, this is certainly great info, and certainly going to check out Linkedn soon.
Do you have a video course on Social media marketing?
Thanks much Brain,
Ralpheal
Well this had nothing to do with paying for linkedin advertising :)
Hi Ralpheal. Not yet, but thanks for asking.
I heard that LinkedIn ads are super expensive and might ROI if you are selling high priced products or services. But publishing on LinkedIn is free.
Hey Brian and Matthew!
What a great, and very valuable post here!
I think a lot of bloggers do underestimate some social networks – like LinkedIn in this case. Another one people are underestimating a lot right now, is Instagram.
I’m actually experimenting with Instagram at the moment, and it is a great traffic source online too!
I have learned some great tips for LinkedIn here, today. Thank you guys for sharing your knowledge on these topics.
Keep up the great work guys!
Have a great rest of the week!
Cheers! :D
How could an internet marketing blog make use of instagram?
Oh man, you haven’t met marketers getting 20+ leads a day from Instagram, have you? lol
Instagram is growing rapidly and is one of the easiest social networks to build up a following in.
You can get a lot of leads every single day from it – and then just build a good relationship with that list by sharing a lot of value from your internet marketing blog.
There are thousands (if not millions) of people on Instagram who are looking to build a successful business online.
Right now Instagram has about 300 million active users and counting!
Check out the Instagram statistics.
Another good strategy would be to invite people to also follow you on facebook. That will help you build up a big facebook following – and then you can promote your blog on your facebook profile. That’s what I’m doing right now.
You would think an internet marketing blog can’t really benefit from Instagram traffic – because it’s all pictures and short videos there, right right …..but let me tell you that is wrong thinking! ;)
A lot of people just underestimate IG – but that comes from judging the social network because it’s all pictures and short videos you share there. As with every social network, you need to do your research before you decide whether you want to work a social network to help you generate traffic or not.
Just imagine sharing pictures and short videos of the Blogging Lifestyle, Matthew. Only the people interested in building a successful blog online and live the way you are living, because of your blog, will follow you and click on your bio link.
You get what I mean mate!! ;)
Anyways … have a fantastic weekend!
Hi Freddy,
It sounds like you have a lot of experience with the platform yourself – and it also sounds like an interesting experiment, I will give it some thought :) Feel free to email me if you want to contribute further at https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/contact-me/ and I’m sure we can work something out :)
Thanks Freddy! I’m thinking of experimenting with Pinterest myself.
I see some entities post a brief paragraph and then link the a full article. But, I don’t see how that is done from the Post area and I also noticed that it doesn’t seem to contain the views of the article only likes and shares. Here is a link to one of those: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7670930726700490487
And then here is yours, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-legally-steal-your-competitors-traffic-search-engine-woodward
Do you know how to create the first kind?
Good question – I have no idea!
I also didn’t see a way to preview the post. Is that correct? Or is the editor that it is uses already wysiwyg? I was just playing around with it yesterday.
Yup, the editor sucks :)
I noticed that appears to be a link to an external article on another site. Perhaps LinkedIn is adding those in from partner publishers.
Hey Matt. Everytime I see an email from you I follow it without any delays. I dont know how I missed the one about experiment. I loved the read because it came with a method that I have never heard of before.
I will definitely take action!
Thanks Nabeel :)
Hey Matt,
one of the best case studies I’ve read over the past weeks, thanks a lot.
I will definitely try this out because until now I only have a dead Linkedin account I never use and the only network I focus on is Twitter.
We’ll see how it works ;-)
Please feedback with your results :)
I just shared this with all the communities and facebook groups and masterminds I belong to. EXCELLENT POST!!!
All the best!
Matthew
That is much appreciated thank you :)
Truly remarkable content, and I’m not kissing ass. There is a lot of garbage floating around the IM space regarding Linkedin prospecting, you’ll see on the Warrior Forum or when you get bombarded by people who’s email list you subscribe to. LinkedIn is the perfect platform for getting lots of interested eyeballs to your content, for anyone just starting out in local marketing or veterans, this tactic should be used almost on the daily. Can you imagine what getting 1000 new subscribes a week would do for your business? And these aren’t spam profiles or non-sense fake Twitter followers. Very timely article, thanks guys!
No problem glad you enjoyed it!
Ok Cool then how much would you guys charge say for about 500 Links . I will provide you the link details and Anchor texts . You can inbox me if you wish .
I would say that your not the type of client we are looking for sorry
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-legally-steal-your-competitors-traffic-search-engine-woodward
Matt, you say you outsource most of the Link Building work . Can you suggest any good ones Please ?
You can hire anyone with some basic SEO knowledge to do that, either freelance through something like elance or odesk or hire someone full time.
Then there are these guys of course ;) https://www.searchlogistics.com/