“When an idea is innovative, there will definitely be great thinking behind it”, says LinkedIn of its latest initiative in releasing its much applauded new publishing platform to all of its members over the coming weeks. Yes, LinkedIn are opening up their online publishing platform to all of its members essentially allowing anyone to create and publish content across its network of hundreds of millions of professionals worldwide. At last – now we can all be bloggers!
There are lots of advantages for this new LinkedIn publishing platform which are not simply one sided. This will help people gain relevant updates and knowledge from both contributors and providers. Employers could also give future employees more insight into what their company culture is like. Their employees, in turn, can showcase their own expertise, interests, and passions through their writing.
All the Members have the ability to update and publish quality content to their connections and share with their networks and groups. Even though there are lot of benefits for this new platform, the draw backs are not negligible. LinkedIn will have to work hard to ensure that a flood of sales copy, spam and other abusive content does not proliferate its network – for fear of upsetting its members.
It is thought that internal algorithms and such like, as used by Facebook and Google, will trap and delete any such items at source. In addition, it is thought that the usual vote up / vote down and ‘block’ capabilities will be added at a content level – rather than just at a member to member level. It will be great if all members are able to distinguish between useful, rich content and someone trying to blatantly sell us something.
The bottom line is this – if you create and publish rich, informative, relevant content – you should be fine. Continuous publication of good content, that is read and shared frequently will also help to build your personal or company profile too. You could soon become recognised as an industry leader if the content of your posts are of exceptionally good quality. The possibility for small to medium sized brands to reach a wider audience also exists. As with any publishing platform, it is there to be used for the greater good.
