Why you need to be writing on your website, not just LinkedIn

There’s a heck of a lot more to content than LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great place to share your content, but it’s not the place to be focusing all your content creation efforts.

You want to be building your business, not LinkedIn’s.

That means having a website where people can find you and get to know who you are, what you do, and why it’s of use to them. Your blog can be used in so many ways:

• Articles that explore issues that matter to your ideal clients
• Articles where you embed video and create show notes
• Articles where you embed your latest podcast episode and create show notes
• Case studies where you walk people through how you’ve helped others just like them
• Showcases where you use drawings/illustrations/photos and link them through to give people a visual guide to something
• Opinion pieces where you talk about the latest developments in your industry

Whatever form of content you enjoy producing, put it on your website first. Then share it everywhere. Send it out as an email. Share it on LinkedIn – not just once but multiple times. There are many ways of creating LinkedIn posts, so have fun and try different formats. If you’re on other social media platforms, share it there too.

I’ve just turned my blog posts into a physical magazine which I can hand out as a showcase of my writing style and the topics I care about. It’s a great way for people to get to know me and learn about issues I write about at the same time.

People are searching for someone like you. They are asking Google, or ChatGPT, or Perplexity, or Bing, or Ecosia about your services. If you’re not creating content on your website, you’re missing out on that opportunity to get found through search engines. The more content you have on your website tailored to your ideal client, the more chances you have of being found.

If you prefer video, speaking, or interviewing, then creating content puts you in front of people searching YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and so on for the topics you talk about.

Your website is your online home. You own it. It’s not subject to algorithm changes or somebody buying the platform. It’s yours. It’s where you bring people into your world. It enables you to create a community, or build an email list of people who are genuinely interested in you and the work you do. You can make it as simple as having an opt-in form on your website to collect email addresses, or give people anything from a PDF download to a pre-recorded masterclass. Subscribers might become clients, collaborators, or supporters. They are there for you.

LinkedIn wants you to create content on their platform because then there are more things for people to read and watch on LinkedIn so they stay longer. Wouldn’t it be better if they were reading or watching on your own platform and you didn’t need to worry about whether to put a link in comments or the body of a post because you can use internal and external links to your heart’s content.

And if you’re wondering where to start, take a look at your most popular LinkedIn posts and turn them into blog posts. Then change the direction so you start with your website and send your content out. If you don’t want the faff of uploading what you’ve written yourself, you can outsource that task.

Your website is where you build an ecosystem around your experience, expertise and ideas. It’s a silent salesperson for you. Don’t leave it sitting lost and alone while you build someone else’s business.