If you do anything in the digital space – PR, content marketing, search engine optimization, social media – the one thing that matters most is experience. Every skill gained is improved by experience, clients expect incredible amounts of it no matter what their budget might be, and we are all challenged at finding the time.
Enter multitasking! Learning new skills by doing one task that impacts or accomplishes multiple – but done in a very strategic manner. Successful people are excellent at this. They decide exactly why they need specific experience, then create ways to gain that experience in a way that fuels their success while they learn. It’s never wasted time.
In our industry, writing is one of those skills that can make or break career advancement. Attaching this multitasking mentality to improving your writing is important.
Writing is essential to real success, and you don’t even realize how the lack of writing ability holds you back until you improve. It can take you from coordinator to senior level, from jack-of-all-trades to an in-demand content marketer, or from charging $20 per hour to charging $200 per hour.
The need for writing skills is a bit obvious, yet neglected by most people in all areas of marketing. They think their writing is fine – great, if never told otherwise – and don’t understand how experience transforms something okay into something AMAZING. Brilliant, even.
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Without the ability to write well, you can’t create a pitch that resonates with bloggers or journalists, you can’t write a guest blog post that is published or converts into referral traffic. You have trouble landing the off-page content placement opportunities you need to be successful, too. Sure, you can post on your own blog all day long, but success stops there, with your website never growing in reach or popularity. From a social media perspective, you can’t write posts that drive engagement without solid writing skills, you struggle with effective social advertising and conversation stutters. The list of what it impacts goes on and on.
The growing interest in storytelling requires skilled writing abilities, too, adding a layer of polish and sophistication to the copy you churn out.
You only get this by writing. A lot of writing. It’s one of those skills that can only grow by actually DOING IT. You can’t improve your writing skills by reading or studying – all the tips don’t help unless you actually apply them. It takes experience.
So how can you multitask? Write on your own time to build your personal brand. LinkedIn is perfect for this.
- It’s a wonderful platform to test what resonates and is most popular or interesting by watching your vanity metrics – likes, comments and shares.
- You are taking advantage of an instant built-in audience.
- It’s the world’s largest job networking social media platform – so your content remains connected to your resume.
- Even just one post per month builds your personal brand. It’s a great place to let your expertise shine, regardless of your employment status.
- You have total control over what you write.
- It doesn’t require having a separate blog (although I do recommend it).
- It’s a great platform to experiment on, then apply your learning to paid client work.
Here’s a snapshot of my recent posts on LinkedIn and how they’ve boosted reach.
Should I do original posts on LinkedIn, or syndicate my blog content?
Do I syndicate EVERY post?
For the SEO nerds among us, this is a topic of interest. If you don’t care about SEO, skip this part. LOL
I’ve tested original content posted only on LinkedIn, and importing existing blog posts into LinkedIn, watching to see if original content had a stronger impact on reach or search engine results. What was the result? There is no impact. Therefore, if you already blog, I recommend importing posts into LinkedIn with a closing line giving attribution (and linking) to your original post. You don’t even have to repurpose it – you can copy and paste it.
Feel free to test this yourself and let me know what you think.
I don’t do this with every post that I write; I share every new post as a link, but chose just one post each month to syndicate to LinkedIn. Why? Because SEO constantly changes, and I want to build high rankings for my website, not LinkedIn. If Google has to chose between multiple rankings for the same piece of content, it shows the one that seems most relevant and ranks the highest, and LinkedIn will always win that debate. In the current SEO environment, this would mean my post on LinkedIn ranks, but the original blog post does not. That’s fine occasionally, but bad for my website long-term.
I don’t want credit for my content to earn rankings for LinkedIn, I want to grow exposure to MY blog and bring traffic over, keeping high rankings for myself. Therefore, I’m very selective in what I syndicate.
If you don’t have a blog, consider writing a long-form post at least once a month on LinkedIn. For all of the reasons listed above, it’s fantastic. You are improving your writing skills with the benefit of building your personal brand.
How do I post a long-form blog post on LinkedIn?
When you log in to LinkedIn, look to the right of your “share an update” button. You should see “publish a post.” Use this button instead of writing a long update, because it enables blogging features for styling, format, images and more. Learn more here.
It also allows you to use embed code from YouTube, SlideShare, Vimeo, Ted, Livestream, or Getty images. This is very useful!
If you create YouTube videos but don’t blog, for example, you can embed your video with a brief description to grow reach of your videos while gaining all the benefits of posting on LinkedIn. If you are an independent videographer looking to grow their business, you can use this to grow awareness and reputation showcasing your client videos. Since it is an embed, it doesn’t disturb their YouTube channel or violate their intellectual property rights if they own the content. Win-win.
Anyway, time to go work on my book – it’s due this month! I hope you found this valuable. Later, peeps. =D