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DME14: LinkedIn builds a news brand – and want news publishers to link in

“Whereas people spend time on other social networks, they invest time on LinkedIn, and for you as news publishers, working with LinkedIn means access to a more interested and engaged audience than you get through Facebook,” Isabelle Roughol, Editor at LinkedIn in France, told the Digital Media Europe audience in London.

by WAN-IFRA Staff executivenews@wan-ifra.org | April 9, 2014

LinkedIn is building its content strategy on its mission to provide information that makes professionals more efficient and productive. The company does this through a number of content products, including:

  • Pulse, a platform (acquired last year) for aggregating, discovering and distributing content from third-party publishers based on member profiles.
  • Influencers, opinion pieces written by a group of about 500 top thought leaders, who can be followed by members.
  • Slideshare, where members can share presentations, including within a specific conference, with the added bonus that the discussion remains within the context of the presentation.
  • “Writing on LinkedIn”, a new publishing platform, which will be accessible to all members in a few months, where you can display your expertise, which is shown to all your connections, and can grow virally.

Roughol gave a few examples of publishers who are using the opportunities offered by LinkedIn particularly well:

  • Qz.com, an 18-month-old journalism start-up, owned by The Atlantic, run by a team of digital natives. “Their content is fascinating, they are particularly good at doing foreign news in an engaging way and their headlines are spotless. They work a lot with us, not least through the Inshare button. They’re saying that the traffic they get from us is more engaged and come back more often.”
  • US tech site Mashable is another good example, according to Roughol. “They have a company page which they are very good at updating and sending content to, and they’ve achieved 180,000 followers for it, which really isn’t bad. They tell us they have conversations with readers on LinkedIn they may not have on their own site, we’re a complementary channel for them.”
  • Finally, a monetisation story: “We see partnerships between brands and news publishers work well in conjunction with LinkedIn. In the UK, EE (a telecommunications company) have a deal with The Telegraph and the Economist. They’ve set up a mini site with content that can be accessed through LinkedIn – funnelled by EE – reaching the right people.”

Follow the conference on Twitter at #DME14

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