People go to Youtube to watch videos, they go to Facebook to see updates from friends and family. They go to Twitter to see updates from celebrities, reporters or thought leaders. Why do they go to Linkedin?
Is it to read status updates from other professionals in their network?
To find articles that people over at Linkedin have recommended to you?
Not a chance.
People go to Linkedin to view profiles and find people. Now some people will click on the occasional link, I’ve been known to do this from time to time, but Linkedin just isn’t the network I look to for content. Why? The biggest reason is that Linkedin is not fun. People aren’t sending around fun information mixed with good articles, they are just sending random business stuff.
Why is it random? Because your network of business associates is a mixed bag. Some of them share about computers while others share about geology. It is a seemingly random conglomeration of content. Linkedin badly wants to change this, they are obviously pushing to make Linkedin as important to the content discussion as Twitter- but it isn’t working.
So is it worth it to post your news and articles to Linkedin? Yes, it is worth it. It only takes moment, and it may be read by your network. But if you share it only on Linkedin, you aren’t sharing to an engaged audience of readers. You are sharing with a bunch of business people you may have met once, that probably rarely check the homepage of Linkedin. If you wanted to share on a site that nobody ever checked, you could have just shared the post on Google+. But I digress.
The best way to share on Linkedin is not through the “status update” function, but through the message function. If you really want people to read your article, send it to them direct using the message function. Linkedin will even let you put together a quick list of your connections so you can send it to them all at once.
You can still share in the “status update” box, just don’t expect to see a lot of action from it. It’s nothing against Linkedin, but it just isn’t the place people go to find blog posts, articles or news.