What do Microsoft, Netflix, and the Boston Consulting Group all have in common?

In addition to multibillion dollar valuations, they all use LinkedIn’s new Articles for Pages feature, which enables them to publish LinkedIn articles through their company pages. As LinkedIn outlined in September, this is a step forward for their articles function, which used to only permit users to publish articles on personal pages. Now, rather than relying on people to follow a link to an external site, companies can present the same valuable content while letting readers stay on the platform.

It’s the position of LUDWIG+ that companies should waste no time utilizing this feature. Thought leadership articles offer myriad benefits to begin with, and posting them through social media platforms adds several unique features to compound the effects.

In this article, we explore what we love about the Articles for Pages feature, and why you should take advantage sooner rather than later.

Benefits of Thought Leadership Articles

As outlined in the 2019 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study, the majority of decision-makers agree that thought leadership helps evidence an organization’s credibility and earn greater respect. Because of these benefits, most C-suite executives are willing to pay a premium for high-quality thought leadership content.

Here are a few reasons to believe in thought leadership:

• Thought leadership provides valuable content to readers in need. An article that provides a unique insight or answers a specific question has tremendous value — even if it doesn’t turn a reader into a customer. If a customer gets exactly what they’re looking for from an article you wrote, they’ll think of you as an industry leader, and become a mini-spokesperson in the event that they or someone they know needs your services.

• Thought leadership drives traffic — and conversions. Publishing high-quality articles brings people to your website (which LinkedIn’s Articles for Pages function facilitates via dedicated CTA features). If your website is fresh and well-designed, more traffic naturally means more conversions.

• Thought leadership enables compounding results. Data from HubSpot suggests that compounding articles — articles which perform well, and remain on people’s newsfeeds longer — are 10x as effective as regular posts. That’s because they keep generating traffic long after publication, compounding the return on your upfront time and money investments.

Unique Benefits of Articles for Pages

In addition to all the regular upsides of thought leadership, Articles for Pages offers a unique set of benefits that companies can’t get elsewhere.

Much of this revolves around keeping readers on LinkedIn. Social media users are accustomed to engaging with posts on the platform, but they’re less likely to like or comment on posts hosted on company websites. By hosting articles on LinkedIn, companies stand to improve article engagement, facilitating conversations in the comments section.

Articles for Pages also offers unique functionalities like pull quotes, rich media, and links that company websites might not offer, or that might be more complex to use. Utilizing these features helps turn a block of text into a dynamic, visual page — a more engaging reading experience for your audience.

Finally, Articles for Pages provides detailed information about who’s reading your articles and when. Advanced analytics make it that much easier to test whether your content is appealing to the right people, and make tweaks when necessary.

Become a Thought Leader

Businesses looking to raise their credibility while facilitating engagement should immediately incorporate Articles for Pages into their thought leadership mix. It helps companies reap the many benefits of thought leadership articles while keeping audiences on the engagement-ready social media platform.

LUDWIG+ is a thought leadership specialist. We help [dozens] of companies package their insights in digestible article form, cementing their places as industry leaders. Through an inside-out understanding of your brand, we’ll help you make the most of this new feature.

Thinking big? Let’s chat.