Content is a super-important part of lead generation, but it costs time and money.
Not to mention inspiration once you’ve been making content for a few years.
Eyeballs. Engagement. Likes. Comments. Shares.
There is a never-ending pressure to feed this beast.
Recently, I’ve discovered an incredible (and incredibly underused) method of sharing content on LinkedIn that:
- Pushes engagement and views (due to increased dwell time) on your LinkedIn posts through the roof.
- Puts your best content center stage.
- Makes it super simple and fast to repurpose old content and get it in front of a new audience.
- Reformats your content so it is even easier for your contacts to download and share it with their networks.
What is this silver bullet I’m talking about?
It’s called LinkedIn Documents. A pretty boring name for what I believe is a brilliant tool for anyone who creates content as part of their lead generation strategy.
In this article, I explain exactly what LinkedIn Documents are, why you should use this feature and the best way to use it.
I’m certain that if you understand how to use LinkedIn Documents, you’ll see a big uplift in your visibility and engagement statistics. The more people engage with, consume and share your content, the stronger and bigger your reputation becomes – which will inevitably lead to more clients for you.
What is LinkedIn Documents?
It’s no secret that content marketing is all about attracting as many readers as possible and engaging them.
For LinkedIn – and indeed all social media – engagement is king.
One of the ways LinkedIn measures engagement is via dwell time.
What is dwell time?
LinkedIn dwell time refers to the time a user spends on content after clicking on an update (posts or articles) in the feed.
LinkedIn algorithm sees dwell time as a reliable indicator of the quality of a post. LinkedIn has built dwell time into its feed algorithm to increase the likelihood of users seeing posts they’ll engage with.
Why is dwell time so important?
LinkedIn’s algorithm has two primary goals: to prioritize relevant content and to promote engagement.
The algorithm is designed to push more of the content that people want to see into their newsfeeds to increase time spent on the platform.
Which means if the algorithm can see increased “dwell time” on your post, it will value that post more and expand its reach, increasing the number of people who will see it and engage with it.
To ensure this algorithm is favorable to your posts, you must publish content that holds the attention of readers for a long period of time.
The question is how do you get people to pay attention to what you post and get them to engage for as long as possible? That’s where LinkedIn Documents come in.
How can LinkedIn Documents help you increase dwell time on your posts?
First, LinkedIn Documents posts stand out from the crowd in the newsfeed. As a result, more people stop and look at your posts.
Second, these styles of posts have been proven to increase LinkedIn dwell time.
This is because your document presents as a slide show, so it’s easy for the reader to start consuming it within the newsfeed and keep clicking through the slides/pages of the document.
For anyone who uses content marketing for lead generation, this is solid gold!
Not only will more people know who you are, but your content will establish you as a thought leader and authority in your field.
How do you use LinkedIn Documents to create a PDF post?
If you’ve created content in the past, you can repurpose it using LinkedIn Documents. To create a LinkedIn document, you can use any old content, such as:
- Blog posts and articles
- PowerPoint presentations
- Google docs
- Infographics
You just need to make them visually appealing and easy to consume. You must save them in a PDF format because all LinkedIn Documents are posted as PDFs.
Today, I want to share with you some great LinkedIn Documents hacks you can use to repurpose old content and convert it into a PDF.
5 Ways to Use LinkedIn Documents and Increase Visibility
1. PowerPoint is your new best friend
You can use PowerPoint (or Keynote for Mac users) to create a really engaging, attractive, shareable document that your network will love to read and share.
For example, recently I repurposed a blog post I wrote called “Is Your LinkedIn Content Strategy Making You Look Desperate?” I turned it into a slideshow, then converted it to a PDF and uploaded it as a LinkedIn Document.
The post stood out in the newsfeed and got an instant response from my network. The response kept growing over the next few days.
You can see the infographic that inspired this post by clicking here. Below are a few of the screenshots demonstrating how I gave it a new lease on life.
You can also see the post directly on LinkedIn by clicking here.
Here is what I did to repurpose the original infographic:
- converted the main graphic into the first slide
- broke up the infographic into different tip sections
- gave each tip its own slide.
Make sure these posts have short, sharp, valuable and easy-to-read sentences.
Now, instead of being one graphic, it’s a fun-to-read, shareable document that increases the amount of dwell time on my post.
This took me just 15 minutes to do in PowerPoint!
The last step was to export the file as a PDF and – presto! – it was ready to be posted as a LinkedIn Document.
One important tip: Make sure the first slide captures people’s attention so they stop and engage with it in the newsfeed.
You can either create/repurpose a graphic like I did, or you can create a new one using a headline that captures attention.
2. Convert an entire blog post into a PDF
Have you ever wanted to repurpose a blog post of yours from your website and turn it into a PDF that you could send to people?
Then you’ll love this.
Print Friendly is a free powerful and simple tool that lets you turn any website article into a stripped-down, clean, good-looking PDF that you can download and share.
Simply go to Printfriendly.com, enter the web address of the article you wish to convert, and the PDF is yours.
It even gives you the power to delete certain images and hyperlinks if you don’t want them in your PDF.
Look at my progress shots below to see how easily I converted a blog post into a PDF.
BEFORE CONVERSION:
AFTER CONVERSION:
I shared my blog post “Transform Your LinkedIn Profile into a Client Attracting Landing Page” as a PDF in a LinkedIn Documents post. You can see it directly on LinkedIn right here.
3. Reuse eye-catching PDF resources
If you have any nicely designed resources you think your network will love, you should definitely share them as LinkedIn Documents and give them a new audience and lease on life.
See below how I repurposed my “The Perfect LinkedIn Headline Template” article as a LinkedIn Documents post.
This template was designed by my graphic artist as a PDF, so it took me just a couple of seconds to add a few sentences to it and share it as a document on LinkedIn.
It got a great reaction, becoming an extremely popular and shareable new post.
Not bad for a few minutes of work.
You can see this post here on LinkedIn.
4. Convert Word and Google Docs to PDFs
What about Word documents or Google Docs? I’m glad you asked.
You can absolutely use Word Docs and Google Docs as LinkedIn Documents.
Like with everything else, make sure you convert the file to a PDF before sharing.
Below is an example of a Google Doc I converted and posted in a matter of minutes.
People love checklists, so consider creating some and using them as LinkedIn Documents posts.
You can see the “Increase Social Selling Index (SSI) Score Checklist” article I posted on LinkedIn here.
5. Repurpose infographics and turn them into PDFs
Infographics are super popular on social media and are a smart and safe bet to get strong engagement.
Below, you’ll see an infographic I posted.
I’ll admit now how non-technical I am. I am sure there are tools to convert a JPEG to a PDF, but I found a less techie way to do it. I dropped the graphic into a Word doc, then converted the
Word doc into a PDF. It was ready to post as a LinkedIn Document.
This infographic received about five times more views than my average post. You can see it here on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Documents have the potential to be your engagement superhero!
There aren’t many tools available on any platform that can help you:
- Get your audience’s attention fast and easy
- Deliver shareable, valuable content to your readers
- Increase the time they engage with that content
- Lift the popularity of that content as the algorithm takes note of the high number of eyeballs on it.
LinkedIn has lots of great features, but this is certainly one of the most powerful and easy to use.
The Magic Bullet to Turning LinkedIn Documents into Clients
Okay, so I have saved the best for last. If you put the effort into creating document posts on LinkedIn, you may as well turn some of that increased visibility into new business.
Here’s how I do it…
I include a Call to Action (CTA) on most documents I share. Some are subtle, while others are most overt. By adding calls to action to my LinkedIn Documents, I turn them into mini sales funnels.
Let me summarize how and where I use calls to action in my LinkedIn Documents posts.
At the end of the post “7 Ways Your LinkedIn Posts Can Make You Look Desperate,” I included a simple call to action: “Want more LinkedIn tips – go to Top Dog Social Media.” The purpose of this CTA was to drive more traffic to my website.
For the “Perfect LinkedIn Profile Template” post, my CTA was to register for my free masterclass The Ultimate LinkedIn Lead Generation System.
For the “Increase Social Selling Index (SSI) Score Checklist” post, I provided a resource page, where I listed additional content segmented for Sales Leaders, Sales Professionals and B2B Business Owners or Professional Service Providers.
The post featuring a PDF of the “Transform Your LinkedIn Profile into a Client Attracting Landing Page” article has a call to action for my LinkedIn Profile Transformation Service.
Finally, for the infographic post, my goal was to drive more traffic to my website. So, the call to action was basic – the URL to my website.
How do you use LinkedIn Documents posts?
Do you have plans to use LinkedIn Documents? What types of content do you plan to use? If you have used them, I would love to hear your results.
Please share your thoughts on LinkedIn Documents in the comments below.
