I love controversial blog posts – so here you go. I have 23 good reasons you should stop using the Blog feature in LinkedIn and also what you should be doing instead.

My “controversial blog post” policy is: don’t just complain, give solutions! So, feel free to read through the article and a comment is much appreciated. I spoke up, so now it’s your turn. I want to hear from you.

Let’s start by saying: unless you’re Richard Branson, Gary Vaynerchuck or Tony Robbins, we small business owners should not use LinkedIn as a blog platform. Here are 23 reasons why.

1. Only your LinkedIn Connections (might) See your Blog

Unless your LinkedIn blog gets extremely popular among your own 1st-degree connections, receives many comments, gets likes, shares and ends up being featured on the Pulse, you’ve wasted your time.

According to LinkedIn publishing policy:

High-quality long-form posts, determined by our algorithm and other variables, may be distributed beyond your connections and followers, through channels such as LinkedIn Pulse and emails. However, we can’t guarantee that this will occur.

So, once again, unless you’re a very well connected influencer, the chances to go viral are very little. And, in the same way Facebook posts get seen by 6% of your Likes, I’m pretty sure LinkedIn blogs get seen by only 5-10% of your connections on the live stream (have an official statistic for me? Post it in the comments).

2. You’re Working for LinkedIn (and you don’t get paid)

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a digital marketing strategy to increase organic traffic to your website. And right now, with Google demanding updated content, consistent blogging and user interaction, Content Marketing is the best possible traffic generation strategy.

As we’ve seen in my book, writing relevant articles on a consistent basis is what worked for me and other entrepreneurs in order to increase website traffic.

Your audience is eager to listen to your expertise, and has a lot of issues or questions that you can solve. Problem is – if you solve those problems via a LinkedIn blog, you’re basically doing LinkedIn a favor (actually, many favors):

• they get free content
• they get regular contents
• they get more pages indexed on Google
• they attract more organic traffic
• they increase the time spent per visit
• they increase user interaction
• they decrease bounce rate (people exiting LinkedIn after the first page)
• they increase their premium product sales
• they increase the chances users come back to LinkedIn

You’re probably starting to understand what my issue is. You could spend the same amount of time and turn the above into:

• your website gets new content
• your website gets regular contents
• your website gets more pages indexed on Google
• your website attracts more organic traffic
• you increase the time spent per visit on your website
• you increase user interaction on your website
• you decrease bounce rate on your website
• you increase sales
• you increase the chances users come back to your website

Sounds better? I bet it does.

3. You can’t Capture Leads

There are 2 ways you can capture leads via a blog. You can offer something in exchange for their email address (lead magnet, newsletter sign up) – or you can “pixelate” your readers and do retargeting advertising (I’ve spoken about this at one of my last Digital Marketing events).

I’m afraid to say, with LinkedIn you don’t “own” the traffic and you can’t do anything with it (LinkedIn can!).

We’ve seen the number 1 goal of Content Marketing is capturing leads that belong to your target audience. If you don’t do this, there is no point in blogging. If you can’t do this because you can;t place code on a LinkedIn blog, it’s even worse!

4. You can’t do SEO

Little things such as blog title and meta description can make a big difference between an impression (someone who saw the search result on Google Search) and a click (someone who saw the search result AND clicked through).

Side note, if you’re not spending enough time on your own website titles and meta descriptions as you think they are not vital, they don’t help you with ranking and they don’t contribute to your sales, check what Matt Press from Splash Copywriters has to say in his blog post: “Meta description masterclass: a data-driven guide to the little search snippets that win you big business“.

Back to LinkedIn, and exactly because you have no ownership of the LinkedIn blog, you can’t set its SEO title and meta description. You can’t also do a lot of other things that still matters in the SEO world: image tags, headings, page URL and so on.

Whether you’re SEO-savvy or not, LinkedIn does not allow you to optimize the blog post. Pity, isn’t it?

5. You can’t use Google Analytics

Another major reason I would never blog on LinkedIn. Digital Marketing is not “marketing” without statistics and website analytics. I find it difficult to assess whether a blog post is successful or not, whether it capture leads or not, whether is converts leads into prospects and prospects into buyers… without Google Analytics.

Yes, you get the number of views and shares – but you and I know that is not valuable to evaluate Content Marketing.

Besides, buying traffic via PPC or Facebook advertising (as long as LinkedIn allows this, can you let me know in the comments if you ever tried this?) and expect NOT to track statistics is not recommended.

The secret sauce of successful marketing is “know your numbers”, but blogging on LinkedIn has just made this impossible.

So, we’re at 5 reasons and I’ve probably already convinced you LinkedIn blogging is not a good idea 🙂 But let’s move forward and accelerate, we have another 18 reasons before we can discuss my solution.

6. You’ve got a Duplication Issue

I’ve seen many people copying/pasting their LinkedIn post onto their website blog (or viceversa). Heck, this is the number #1 mistake in front of Google!

You can’t duplicate content. Full stop. Google can penalize your website because of that… so when you publish your content on LinkedIn you’re basically giving LinkedIn the “rights” to own that piece of content and nobody can theoretically duplicate it.

7. You can’t Moderate Comments

We’ve seen before you have no ownership of your content, of your traffic – and also you have no control over comments.

You can’t approve them, reject them, mark them as spam, know their email address for following up, and directly connect to them. Plus, unless you get featured on the Pulse, comments will be mainly from your existing connections… what’s the point?

8. You can’t Improve Graphic Design

Simple reason – if you have no control over the content, you also have no control over the design.

What if you wanted to turn the blog into a full-width template? Or add a border to the right sidebar? Or maybe change the background?

9. Your Logo is not there

In my book, we’ve seen the number 1 goal of your blog is to drive traffic to your website. The biggest mistake I’ve seen is to have 2 separate websites: one for the business, one for the blog.

The recommended strategy is, instead, to place the blog on your website, and make it look and feel exactly like your sales pages and lead capture forms. Consistency allows readers to navigate with one click to the homepage or sales page without changing “experience” (and website).

In the LinkedIn blog case, not only they have to “find” your website, but also there is no logo and brand feel. Readers are on Linkedin, and the most likely thing they’ll do after reading your LinkedIn blog is navigating to another blog from another entrepreneur (which brings us you to reason #10)…

10. You’re not the Only Blogger on LinkedIn

Why posting your blog on LinkedIn when there are another 332 Million members on the same blog? I find it difficult to believe they will only read your blogs 🙂

On your own blog, there is only 1 author, only one voice, only one expert: You. Here’s why you’d rather invest time on your own Content Marketing as opposed to get your blog published on a very busy platform.

11. You can’t Integrate Automation Software

Mailchimp, Aweber, Infusionsoft, Opt-ins, WordPress plugins, redirects, custom social sharing just to name a few.

Simply you cannot control your marketing tools, which can mean the difference between “just readers” and leads.

12. You don’t get More Connections

Spin-off of a previous paragraph, when the LinkedIn post get published, only your first degree connections see this.

In the case they like it and share it on Linkedin, you will receive more readers. BUT you can’t connect with LinkedIn users who don’t know you (it’s their policy)… hence you’re definitely not able to grow your audience. We’ll expand on this at #13.

13. You can’t Grow your Audience

The beauty of blogging on your website is to being able to attract leads who belong to your target market.

Unfortunately, with a LinkedIn blog, you simply can’t attract leads on a daily basis. You’re not building an asset to your company – you’re just giving LinkedIn some valuable content for free.

No assets – no blog posts on your website – mean you can’t grow your own audience (but you grow LinkedIn’s).

14. You’re not Richard Branson

Richard Branson and Gary Vaynerchuck are two of my most favourite marketers. They’re everywhere, their videos and blog posts are on every website, their brands are amazing – and of course they use LinkedIn successfully.

Now – we’re not millionaires/billionaires and don’t have a team of 1000 people working for us. If I had to invest my marketing budget today, I would invest in Content Marketing – and I would make sure articles and contents are published on my own website. Not on LinkedIn.

If you had 1 hour today for writing, where would you publish your blog?

If you were Richard Branson and were a worldwide influencer, where would you tell your team of writers to publish his ghost-written article?

15. You can’t Give Passwords to your Editors

Should you have a team of writers, or freelancers, it’s very common to give them access to your website as Editors (for all of you who use WordPress as a website platform).

Each editor can freely login, create blog posts, schedule them (yay! just got an idea for reason #16), revise them, edit them, recover an old revision, and so on.

You just can’t give your LinkedIn password to everybody – that would make it quite difficult and unsecure.

16. You can’t Schedule a LinkedIn Post

A great feature I constantly use on my own website blog, scheduling is vital for going live exactly when your audience is online.

I found the best day for posting is Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. At the same time, I tend to schedule writing time on a regular basis, and I can’t afford NOT to schedule posts – it’s such a time saver!

17. You can’t Advertise

Not sure is anyone is still using Google AdSense, but what is sure is – you cannot place it in the “sidebar” of your LinkedIn blog template.

And I’m not even sure they allow you to put affiliate links and banners. Has anyone tried this successfully? Let me know in the comments.

18. Authority, Authority, Authority

We said earlier you’re not a worldwide influencer and it’s difficult to find a way within 223 million users. A direct consequence of this: running a blog on your company website helps position you as a thought leader.

You’re the company spokesperson, the founder, the CEO, the “voice”. People trust you, love what you write, leave comments and establish a connection with You, on your own website.

On a LinkedIn blog post, this is quite difficult. People are giving authority to “LinkedIn”, and then (maybe) you.

19. You May Also Like…

On LinkedIn, when you complete reading a blog post, you have thousands of recommended articles based on the same topic.

Chances are, those articles won’t be your articles. On your own blog, you can keep your readers interested by directing them to another piece you’ve written, an other resource, a lead magnet, an opt-in form, a contact form.

You can decide where they go next – and not leave this to LinkedIn.

20. No Backlinks?

One of the main SEO strategies is to get as many relevant third-party links to your website. The more “backlinks” the better rank you can achieve, as Google knows your website has a good reputation.

If this “great website” links to yours, Google knows your website is “great” too.

With LinkedIn, not only you’re missing out on backlinks, on making your website reputation better, on ranking higher, but also on identifying your brand when third party websites link to the blog.

It’s better explained here. As a blog writer, a content marketer, a business owner, what link would you prefer to see on a third party website:

• https://ecommerceandbeyond.com/23-reasons-you-must-stop-blogging-on-linkedin
• OR: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/please-stop-blogging-linkedin-do-instead-rodolfo-melogli

21. Your Blog Could be Deleted at Any Time

With LinkedIn being the publisher, it’s evident they can decide if your blog gets published, requires editing, or needs to be removed.

You’re not entirely free to say what you think. Well, on your own blog you own the platform and the “voice”. You can say whatever you want. Even that LinkedIn blogging is not good for you 🙂

22. You can’t Sell your Website

No blog posts, no traffic, no assets, no revenue. Spending time to blog on LinkedIn reduce your chances to sell your website. There is not much to discuss here!

23. You can’t do Anything you Want

Similar to #21, you simply have no ownership and can’t use all the cool Content Marketing strategies that make Content Marketing a viable lead generation technique.

But… as promised – I have a solution for you. And after 23 reasons NOT to use LinkedIn / Medium / Quora / Tumblr / Blogger blog platforms, here is 1 reason you should.

1 Reason you Should Use LinkedIn Blogs (do this instead!)

In the same way your social media should be engineered to drive traffic to your website (Likes and Followers have no dollar value), LinkedIn / Medium / Quora / Tumblr / WordPress.com blogs are a great way to drive traffic to your own… blog.

Without duplicating content, you can use a LinkedIn blog as a teaser towards your own article, hosted and written on your own website.

Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? Let me hear what you think right now, leave a comment below