Here’s How You Get Extra Reads For Free!
Every time! You’re leaving money and valuable connections on the table, and you can only blame yourself…
Humour me and open YouTube. Type “money song”, hit enter, then start scrolling. When you get to the end of the list, come back here, I’m in no hurry, I’ll wait. I bet, after three or four scrolls, you’ll catch my drift. There is a near-infinite list of songs about money, because besides love, musicians also love — pun intended — money. Look, it’s part of our civilisation. Maybe in 2000 years we’ll have a different system in place, but right now and in the foreseeable future, money is what gets us from A to B. It’s no surprise then that many bloggers keep a watchful eye on their earnings. Surprisingly though, there is one trick most writers — at least on Medium — don’t seem to take avail of, leaving not only money, but valuable connections on the table. That trick is LinkedIn.
Why share your content on LinkedIn?
I’ll be the first to admit that this will not work for all niches. If your niche is large breasts, poetry, satire or some other thing that doesn’t match the social media platform’s more professional angle, you can stop reading now, you’re probably not going to get much value out of LinkedIn. Everyone else, keep reading.
Every time I like an author, I check if they have either a Twitter or LinkedIn account, the latter being the one I am truly interested in. Guess what? It’s unbelievably rare for authors to have a LinkedIn presence advertised on their Medium profiles. The reasons can be multiple.
- Fear of being discovered by their employer. I’d like to think we live in a progressive world work-wise, but not all employers like the idea of their employees having a public presence.
- Fear of being discovered by their colleagues. You see, at work we all wear to some extent a hat or another. As a blogger, we take that hat off, and some bloggers worry what their peers might think of them wearing that other hat, the blogger hat. Not everyone can separate the co-worker from the blogger, and in fairness, some bloggers don’t know how to separate the two either.
- Fear of going viral in an online space like LinkedIn. There is an undeniable comfort in just pushing the publish button and hoping it only gets popular on Medium. In some ways, it’s a safe place. Once it goes viral on LinkedIn, it can have an effect on your career, because going viral is not always for the right reasons, so there is definitely a risk involved.
- Anonymity. Add to that some plausible deniability, and you have yourself a perfect combo not to connect a blogger identity with a real LinkedIn identity.
My dad used to have this saying, “if you’re scared of water, don’t eat fish”. While that’s debatable, there is some truth in it. Blogging comes with some risks ranging from obscurity to virality. When publishing an article, especially one that brings professional value to the readers, the intent is to get it in front of your potential audience, or else you’d keep it all locally on your computer, and never hit the publish button.
LinkedIn has by far the highest quality audience you can target, and I say that from experience.
Over the 20 or so years of blogging I have under my belt, I have shared content everywhere from forums, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5 and many others. By far, the most reactive audience was always on LinkedIn. Roughly 90% of my articles get reads via LinkedIn within the hour. Heck, more and more often, I actually find other LinkedIn users sharing my article and mentioning me by name because they have seen I have a LinkedIn presence. They’re doing the work for me! 🤩
With LinkedIn, you also have the added benefit of creating professional connections that could genuinely move your career forward or pivot into a direction you haven’t considered before. Somehow, in 2023, when all other social media platforms have become cesspools, LinkedIn managed to stay relatively clean and civilised.
It costs nothing to maintain a good LinkedIn profile. I am on the free tier and I never felt I needed to become a premium subscriber, so building an audience, while creating potentially useful connections, some of who will also generate more reads for you and therefore money, is a win-win-win strategy.
You may have reasons not to do it, but do take the time and analyse what those are. Maybe they’re silly reasons, and you just need to be braver and post your articles. You don’t necessarily have to post them all. I don’t post them all, either. But many, I do, because one way or another I find a way to connect it to professional life, yes, even LEGO. LinkedIn isn’t just about work stuff. In moderation, people love seeing more personal updates, as it helps them identify with each other, connect better and understand that beyond our professional lives, we are all humans.
Start sharing your articles on LinkedIn, you probably have no real reason not to. 😉
And while you’re at it, feel free to follow, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility! For my less regular readers, I also write about random bits and writing.
