A Simple Traffic-Building Strategy if You’re Blogging and Using LinkedIn

So you’ve decided to blog, or you’re already blogging but suck at being consistent about it. There’s a good chance that your resistance is due to the fact you have no idea who is getting your articles.

Let’s fix that!

In this article, I’ll share with you a simple strategy for getting your blogs out there and thus motivating you to be more active. You’ll clearly have a way to get your articles in front of eyeballs and drive traffic to your business.

The strategy is simple. Whenever you write a blog article, simply go to one or more of your LinkedIn groups and share it as a discussion.

The steps are straightforward:

1. Write your blog
2. Post it to your site
3. Post your article to your LinkedIn group(s)
4. People see your article and click on your site (more on this in tip two below)
5. Traffic will come from those who see your discussion

Here are a few tips for doing this respectfully.

Tip 1 – Include a good summary paragraph at the beginning of the article.

When you do write your blog, I recommend you add a short summary at the beginning. Something like, “In this article, you will learn …”

Here’s an example of a recent article I wrote, and the summary paragraph is circled:

This summary appears within in the first few paragraphs of the article. This lets my readers know what to expect in the article so they can decide if they wish to read further.

Tip 2 – Share just the first few paragraphs of your article (up to the summary paragraph) in your LinkedIn group(s).

There are three common ways of sharing your article as a discussion:

(1) Posting your entire article (all of the text) right into the LinkedIn discussion. This method doesn’t get people to your site. However, it’s handy for the group members as your article is right there to be read.

(2) Posting just the link to your article as the discussion. This method can be annoying as people can unexpectedly end up away from LinkedIn. This method also makes it hard to carry on a discussion as the content of the article is not within the discussion.

(3) Posting a short summary with a link to the full. This method will give viewers of the discussion an idea of what the article is about before they read it and before they engage in the discussion.

I suggest the third method as it respects people’s attention before inviting them to engage in the discussion.

Here’s a screenshot of how my blog article looks after posting it to LinkedIn. Notice that it ends at the summary.

Tip 3 – Only post relevant articles to your groups.

You should not post articles that aren’t directly related to the group’s interests. This is just like getting unwanted SPAM emails. This will hurt your image.

Also, many groups have their own “rules of behavior.” Some groups don’t want people posting blog links. You should check with your group’s “posting guidelines” they’ve set forth. Ask the group’s administrator if you can’t find these policies.

Tip 4 – Follow up on discussions.

Be sure to follow up with responses to your article both at LinkedIn and at your blog. By default, your blog (if you’re using it) and LinkedIn settings will send you responses by email automatically – so you can simply just clear your email regularly to ensure you respond.

A one-day response is just fine during normal business hours. Faster is nicer, but not expected as we all have our own endless pile of work to do. ;D

In summary …

Make your blog articles do more work for you by sharing them with your LinkedIn groups. Do so with respect, and you’ll start to see your traffic go up!

Let me ask you …

Can you easily start something like this? Do you have fears about doing it? If so, what are they? Are there any groups you should consider joining to help you reach ideal clients?

I’d love to hear what you think.