Pros and Cons of Long-Form Blogs: LinkedIn vs Your Company

Lawrence Tang | @larrytangy LinkedIn is a professional networking site for people or companies to market themselves and connect with others in business. This social media site has a feature called "long-form post or blog," which enables you to set your professional identity by expressing your opinions and sharing your experiences when you publish one. There are pros and cons for companies using these blogs on LinkedIn and/or on their websites.

Among the benefits for publishing long-form blogs on LinkedIn, anybody can look up and read your posts. These posts would be available to be read outside of the network. A long-form blog can display your expertise on a certain topic and can be used also for people to connect with you. You can just write out long-form thoughts as a blog to engage your audience. An analytic feature is implemented to help you keep track on the performance of your posts.

On the other hand, competing content is out there, so news feeds may be overloaded with information. You would have to use a bidding system called Sponsored Updates if you want to promote your posts. A major con is that a posted long-form blog on LinkedIn is pretty much in the hands of LinkedIn itself.

If you are stuck wondering about whether to do long-form blogging on your site or on LinkedIn, don't think too hard. You should do it on both websites. By doing so, you would gain more presence inside and outside of your network, you would be in control, and you would be viewed as an expert in front of others. A disadvantage would be time, but that doesn't really count.

Blogging on your site has its own perks. You can be viewed as a professional in your industry. There would be no need for people to go to another site since they would be already on your own. Most importantly, owning a site means you own all of its content and can do anything you want with it. But there is a negative side. Unless you're already well-connected, it is more difficult for people to be exposed to the content on your site. It is not guaranteed that your content will be seen by your LinkedIn network unless it is set up to be posted automatically on your profile.

The long-form blog is a unique type of blogging feature from LinkedIn. It has potential to be used by many bloggers and business professionals. It can reach outside of your network and possibly attract a larger audience, even though LinkedIn does have control of your content. Blogging on your site gives you more freedom and flexibility, but it is less easy to capture people's attention. Posting blogs on either site has its pros and cons, but it is highly recommended that companies blog on both LinkedIn and their sites to be seen in more and larger networks of people.