Could #LinkedIn "Long Format Content” Be A Game Changer for #Social Media?

Like all Social Media platforms, LinkedIn wants users to visit their platform daily, or at least weekly, as opposed to just a destination that you use for periodic updates to your resume. Given this challenge, LinkedIn is already a power to be reckoned with. LinkedIn has done many things to differentiate their offering among the competition. Let’s get the obvious reasons out of the way before we discuss this new feature "long format content", which I’ve named “magic pencil”.

1. Stock - LinkedIn (pulled July 9, 2014) has a stock price of $157.77. That’s a valuation that blows away any of the competition. For reference, stock for Twitter is at $37.95 and Facebook is at $63.97. LinkedIn is respectively about 2.5x to 4x the value, respectively for Twitter and Facebook. Clearly investors have confidence in the platform, along with other factors such as revenues, leadership, etc.
2. Leadership - It should also come as no surprise that Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, is one of the most - if not the most - driven, inspirational and ambitious leaders in the Social Media industry. Apparently many women find him to be very attractive, I have no comment or perspective on this topic. I was able to see him speak at the LinkedIn Talent Connect 2013 conference and his vision and loyalty among his employee base was unsurpassed. When you compare Jeff Weiner to, let’s say, Mark Zuckerburg (CEO of Facebook) it’s clear that LinkedIn’s leadership is exceptionally better in a multitide of ways.
3. Domestic/International Growth - In 2013, Linkedin growth was roughly two new accounts every second. While they have a long way to go, only recently surpassing 300 million users globally, they already hold the title as the largest “professional” social networking platform on the planet. Yes, I know, Facebook has over 1.4 billion users globally, but do we really believe those are all active and/or real accounts? Unlikely and with all the changes Facebook is making to their News Feed algorithm, I’m not a fan of the platform. So much, in fact, that I wrote an article about “Why it’s time to breakup with Facebook”. Personally, I believe it’s should be left up to the user as to what content I receive in my News Feed, not Facebook.

Could a little pencil really be a game changer for LinkedIn in our world of Social Media alternatives? Before we can answer that question, we need to look at what the pencil means from a basic user perspective. A status update on LinkedIn has a limit of 700 characters. For a listing of other character limitations via LinkedIn, click here. For those that write content, it’s a difficult task to explain your content in such a short amount of space. For instance, the blog post you are reading right now is over 6,000 characters. What is a blogger left to do? Simple. You are forced to linkout to a personal blog or webpage if your content exceeded 700 characters on LinkedIn. For bloggers, this is almost always the case. By the way, this holds true for many other Social Media platforms. Over the last few months, LinkedIn has slowly been releasing a new feature, called “long format content” (I prefer “magic pencil”, which I plan to lobby directly with LinkedIn), that allows users the ability to post a blog post within LinkedIn.com. Don’t have the pencil next to the paper clip when you login? Then, submit a formal request to be given access.

I’ve been blogging for many years, off and on, and I always wondered why Social Media platforms didn’t integrate with a true blog platform. Sure, Google acquired Blogger a while back, but they haven’t truly integrated with Google+...yet. Many marketers and communicators use Social Media as a way to build audiences that they pull back to their personal or professional blog - in addition to other proprietary destinations - enter ecommerce websites. While I still see the value of leveraging Social Media channels for audience building and in many cases driving that audience back to a conversion funnel of some sort, I always struggled with why we would send a reader to a 3rd party platform for more content? It never made sense to push the user to another destination to do exactly what they were just doing…reading content. Well, now that has changed. With long format content, LinkedIn has enabled users on the platform that are passionate about something to tell that story on the platform, and more importantly, keep them on the platform. I also enjoy that they have done good integration with Pulse and created other experiences to encourage users to post content and become part of the “Influencer Network”. Historically the “Influencer Network” have been isolated to 150 influential people on LinkedIn and recently that number was increased to 500. With the launch of “long format content”, anyone has a chance to join the exclusive ranks by writing content that people want to read and share. So, yes, you’re obligated to share my post so I can attain my dream of becoming an “Influener” with the likes of Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington ;-).

The most interesting of all the features related to long format content is users can now build an audience of “followers” and still keep their “connections” or profile separate. What do I mean? LinkedIn has given us the ability to build “followers” around the content we post and still maintain separation from “connections” to my profile. This is nice to have as many are more caution and careful about who they “connect” with on LinkedIn. There is much more sensitive information that a “connection” (to your profile) will have versus a “follower” (to your content). Make sense? This is a significant difference we all should be mindful of. If a user follows your content, they aren’t connected to your profile, unless they formally request to connect with you. Depending on your “Privacy and Settings” configurations this may require that you approve, validate their email, etc. I appreciate that you can separate your profile from your followers on LinkedIn. Many believe that making a connection with someone is essentially advocating that person, whereas, a follower to your content isn’t advocating anything other than the fact that they like what you write about.