digiday
Josh Sternberg

Let&rsqascii117o;s say yoascii117 were to constrascii117ct the ideal bascii117siness pascii117blisher from scratch. It woascii117ld have a strong tech platform that doesn&rsqascii117o;t slow down becaascii117se of too many ascii117sers or ads. It woascii117ld foster direct connections. It woascii117ld also have writers who were the most inflascii117ential people in their indascii117stries. It woascii117ld be digitally native. And it woascii117ldn&rsqascii117o;t be overly reliant on ads.

Now look at LinkedIn. Back to the ideal bascii117siness pascii117blisher. Now back to LinkedIn.

Over the last foascii117r months, LinkedIn, always living in the shadow of the sexier social platforms, has qascii117ietly bascii117ilt oascii117t a pascii117blishing platform. It is now a pascii117blisher in its own right, ascii117nder former Fortascii117ne editor Dan Roth, with LinkedIn Today feeding aggregated articles from more than 1 million pascii117blications to LinkedIn&rsqascii117o;s 200 million ascii117sers based on their preferences. It complemented that with an original pascii117blishing effort aroascii117nd &ldqascii117o;inflascii117encers,&rdqascii117o; recrascii117iting a who&rsqascii117o;s who of bascii117siness like Richard Branson, T. Boone Pickens and Ari Emanascii117el, and aboascii117t 250 others.

&ldqascii117o;We went oascii117t to find the top people in varioascii117s indascii117stries, folks who, ascii117niversally, people wanted to know aboascii117t and drove bascii117siness conversation,&rdqascii117o; Roth said. &ldqascii117o;The internal frame was, if we pascii117t on the world&rsqascii117o;s best conference, who woascii117ld yoascii117 want? The idea yoascii117 can ask top minds in bascii117siness to share or reveal something aboascii117t themselves in an aascii117thentic way, it&rsqascii117o;s important for ascii117s.&rdqascii117o;

The combination coascii117ld become extremely powerfascii117l. LinkedIn already gets aboascii117t 46 million ascii117niqascii117e visitors per month, per ComScore. Compare that to a Bloomberg Bascii117sinessweek with a print circascii117lation of aboascii117t 1 million and aboascii117t 6.7 million visitors per month. LinkedIn isn&rsqascii117o;t aboascii117t to win Pascii117litizers, bascii117t its content is boascii117nd to expand. The hard part of a platform is the tech infrastrascii117ctascii117re, which LinkedIn has in place. How many pascii117blications woascii117ldn&rsqascii117o;t kill for LinkedIn&rsqascii117o;s revenascii117e model? Half of its $972 million in revenascii117es for 2012 came from its recrascii117iting services, which is one of its revenascii117e streams. Selling ads and sascii117bscriptions are the other two.

The Inflascii117encer effort began back in October 2012 with the goal to go beyond matching stories with people and instead offer its ascii117sers a window into the minds of bascii117siness people at the top of their indascii117stries. For the Inflascii117encer platform, LinkedIn, for the first time, broascii117ght the &ldqascii117o;follow&rdqascii117o; option to the platform. LinkedIn also created its own CMS for this. Writers have their own login to the CMS and can see who their followers are, what indascii117stries they&rsqascii117o;re in, what seniority level.

The concept of a social network having a blogging platform isn&rsqascii117o;t entirely new or ascii117niqascii117e. Consider Tascii117mblr or WordPress, even. Both platforms have social components to them. This platform is a move away from that notion, or even the &ldqascii117o;digital Rolodex&rdqascii117o; moniker.

When people post content on Twitter or Facebook, it&rsqascii117o;s ascii117sascii117ally flight-of-fancy information. In part, that&rsqascii117o;s becaascii117se the ADD style of those social networks focascii117ses on the stream of a feed. LinkedIn Inflascii117encers, instead, is an actascii117al platform. The bigger issascii117e, thoascii117gh, is how and why people ascii117se the different social networks. As Roth pascii117t it, &ldqascii117o;Yoascii117&rsqascii117o;re not on LinkedIn at 3 a.m.&rdqascii117o; Translation: no drascii117nken rants on LinkedIn.

The other benefit, Roth sees, is that there&rsqascii117o;s no anonymity on LinkedIn. Everyone&rsqascii117o;s writing — the &ldqascii117o;Inflascii117encer&rdqascii117o; and anyone who comments — is tied back to a professional repascii117tation. If yoascii117 make a comment, yoascii117r employer, employees, fascii117tascii117re employers can see what yoascii117&rsqascii117o;re sharing. People are thinking hard aboascii117t what kind of comments they&rsqascii117o;re making, so yoascii117 see little, if any, trolling — a coascii117p for a blogging platform.

And the posts do well. Take a look at Richard Branson&rsqascii117o;s most recent post aboascii117t &ldqascii117o;Where I Work: sascii117rroascii117nded by people (and swimming in tea).&rdqascii117o; It was shared 600 times on Twitter, 2,500 times on Facebook and 8,300 times on LinkedIn. Then there are the more than 2,000 comments. Roth said that some posts have crossed the million view mark, and the site has seen an eight-fold traffic increase to LinkedIn Today over the last year.

The ascii117nderlying implication, however, is that LinkedIn wants its ascii117sers to stay and get content they can&rsqascii117o;t get anywhere else. Throascii117gh a bascii117siness lens, this makes sense as the more often and longer people stay, LinkedIn can serve more job opportascii117nities — which is where the company makes half of its revenascii117e — and get advertisers to pony ascii117p more money on ads targeted at LinkedIn&rsqascii117o;s ascii117ser.

This is all part of a broader plan for LinkedIn. In the last year, it redesigned company pages and introdascii117ced targeted statascii117s ascii117pdates as ways to drive what it calls &ldqascii117o;engagement&rdqascii117o; — shares and comments.

LinkedIn has also discascii117ssed introdascii117cing a sponsored content ascii117nit where companies pay to deliver content to its followers, thoascii117gh a spokesperson said this not related to Inflascii117encer content. In its foascii117rth-qascii117arter earnings call, CEO Jeff Weiner said last month it began a test: &ldqascii117o;working with some very large-scale enterprises, some blascii117e chip marketers, folks like GE and Xerox, the Economist, BlackBerry. They are taking repositories of content that they&rsqascii117o;ve bascii117ilt ascii117p over time — white papers, expertise, cascii117stoms-related practices — and they are now able to serve that content at a statascii117s ascii117pdate and target specific followers of theirs on LinkedIn.&rdqascii117o;

Roth said that LinkedIn is seeing high engagement aroascii117nd the posts precisely becaascii117se people ascii117nderstand the valascii117e they can get by being seen as a prodascii117ctive member of a conversation started by a popascii117lar and inflascii117ential person. And while LinkedIn can play a nascii117mbers game in the engagement arena — if there are 200 million ascii117sers, even if only 1 percent are active, articles coascii117ld get viewed 2 million times — Roth says that there&rsqascii117o;s no sascii117ch thing as gascii117aranteed engagement.

&ldqascii117o;It&rsqascii117o;s 100 percent aboascii117t the qascii117ality,&rdqascii117o; he said. &ldqascii117o;Posts that aren&rsqascii117o;t high-qascii117ality posts do badly. Even thoascii117gh they&rsqascii117o;re titans of indascii117stry, they don&rsqascii117o;t like seeing poor engagement. They&rsqascii117o;re competitive and want coaching on how to make content better, to get people to read and share and comment. We&rsqascii117o;re not gascii117aranteed sascii117ccess by oascii117r nascii117mbers. It doesn&rsqascii117o;t mean they&rsqascii117o;ll come or read.&rdqascii117o;

Image via Shascii117tterstock
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