Jul 12, 2014 / Traffic & Growth

Perennial Favorites: Should You Connect Your Blog to Your LinkedIn Account?

Many of you have already connected your blogs to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Should you do the same with your LinkedIn profile? Here are some points to consider.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate our personal and professional lives — in real life and online. In this post from last year, Ben points out some of the potential benefits — and drawbacks — of linking your blog to your LinkedIn profile.

Many WordPress.com bloggers are already enjoying the benefits of connecting their sites to their social networks via Publicize. Sharing your posts on Facebook and Twitter might be a no-brainer — clearly, all your friends and followers want to read your latest piece of staggering wit. But what about professional social network LinkedIn?

Here are some points to consider before you decide to push your blog’s content to your professional profile, too.

Making the link

LinkedIn is the biggest and most vibrant business-oriented social network. It has hundreds of millions of members, who use it for job searches and for social interaction with actual and potential colleagues. It’s also increasingly becoming a forum for the exchange of ideas between professionals, companies, and leading thinkers.

Setting up your blog posts to appear in your LinkedIn profile will be a breeze, whether or not you’ve already used Publicize. To connect your LinkedIn account to your WordPress.com blog, head to your dashboard. Then, go to Settings → Sharing , and click on the “Connect” button next to the LinkedIn logo:

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You’ll be taken to your LinkedIn account, where you’ll have to log in and approve the connection. In case your blog has multiple contributors, you’ll have a chance, during the setup process, to determine whether the content others produce will also be released to your LinkedIn feed.

Once the connection between the two platforms is established, each time you publish a post on WordPress.com it’ll also appear on your LinkedIn newsfeed, just as it would on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter.

Looking to make the most of your blog’s connection to LinkedIn? Here are some quick tips:

  1. Add InShare buttons to your posts so that readers can share them directly to their own LinkedIn accounts.
  2. Browse and join LinkedIn Groups to find like-minded professionals and scout for ideas for new posts.
  3. Connect your LinkedIn account to SlideShare, another venue for your more visual content.

Blog your way to the corner suite

For some WordPress.com users, the advantages of this connection are obvious. If your site here is your primary professional home, or if you often write about work-related topics on your blog, having a presence on LinkedIn can give you a double boost.

First, you become a more visible, high-profile commentator on the state of your profession, be it teaching, plumbing, investing, or artisanal cheese-making. This might lead to unknown benefits for your job (or job search), and open the door to interesting new opportunities and acquaintances. You make yourself known in a community of like-minded professionals, and take part in another public discussion, one that might be different in tone and focus from those you normally engage in through your blog.

Not less important, publishing on LinkedIn can broaden your blog’s readership and increase its overall popularity. It’s a form of syndication: readers who might never have heard of your blog if it had stayed only on WordPress.com now have the chance to consume and comment on your content. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Over-sharing as a professional hazard

Well, if your blog focuses on your alcohol-drenched travels through South America, chronicles your love life, or is full of vocal (negative) opinions on notable members of your profession, posting to LinkedIn might warrant a second thought. In fact, any personal post, even the most mundane one about your uncle’s 70th birthday party, might feel out of place on a platform dedicated to (mostly) professional interactions.

If you don’t want to think twice about anything you write, connecting your blog to LinkedIn might be something to reconsider.

There is, of course, nothing inherently offensive about any of these topics, just as there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with dressing up whichever way you please. In a work-related environment, though, some people are used to certain codes of behavior, be it the things one talks about or the print on one’s shirt. Appearing disrespectful of these codes might alienate some readers with whom you’d still like to enjoy a professional relationship, if not a personal one.

As a rule of thumb, if you don’t want to think twice about anything you write, and even more so if you tend to approach sensitive or controversial topics regularly, connecting your blog to LinkedIn might be something to reconsider.

Finding a blog-work balance

Even with these caveats, it’s important to stress that blogging on WordPress.com and maintaining a lively presence on LinkedIn are not mutually exclusive. If you wish to enjoy the benefits of linking these two platforms without worrying of separate worlds colliding, there are still ways to do that.

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First, on any Publicize-connected account you have, you can decide which of your posts will get posted, and which won’t.

Say you’d like your LinkedIn connections to read your insightful review of your new smartphone, but not your equally sharp critique of Fifty Shades of Grey. Easy! In your post’s Publish module, on the Publicize line, click on “Edit.” Then, depending on your preference, leave the LinkedIn box checked for publication, or uncheck it to leave it out of your feed there.

It’s important to note that even if you don’t publish a specific post to LinkedIn, as long as you publish anything there, you never know which content on your site your connections might choose to visit.

For even greater separation between platforms, you might consider having multiple sites: for example, a work-friendly blog, and an I-don’t-care one. LinkedIn connections are made per blog, not per WordPress.com account — and since you can have as many blogs as you wish, you can compartmentalize your audience in whichever way you see fit.

How do you mix blogging and work? Have you connected your blog to your LinkedIn profile? If so, what advice do you have to share? If not, what were your concerns? Feel free to share your insight with us!

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  2. I’ve ditched Publicize now and use tags and IFTTT instead. If I want a link to appear on twitter I tag the post tw and use fb if I want it to appear on Facebook. The default this way is off so that I have to consciously decide to push a post to a given social network. My plan is to eventually stop doing so.

    I regard LinkedIn to be an evil cynical virus, so I wouldn’t want to post any links to my content there anyway. However, provided there are LinkedIn triggers on IFTTT (I think there are) this could be another method that gives you control over just how much you end up posting to LinkedIn.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I am fairly new to blogging but have two different blogs. One is about my fitness and dating journey and my new one is about my passion around inclusion. I have chosen to post the newer blog to my LinkedIn profile. And so far I think it’s a good decision. It’s still very new for me so I don’t have enough knowledge yet to determine if I should or should not. Thanks for the post.

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  6. Defiantly something I had not considered. While my blog is mostly professional sometimes I have posted personal things. Thank you for giving me this insight!

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  8. My Linkedin account is for my day job. My blog is in an entirely different universe. Nobody at world knows about my blog or my writing or anything I do outside of my professional life. As a manager I know that mixing personal and professional life can be risky. I need to keep my private life, including my blogging world private.

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  9. I definitely think blogs should be separate from Linkedin UNLESS you are trying to get a writing job and are showcasing (appropriate) writing pieces. However it’s hard not to make a blog personal, and in generally your personal life and career should be separate.

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  10. I regularly post my WP site to a few Blogging groups on Linked-In and get great responses, plus many new followers that route. With regard to my “personal/professional contacts” – – I write a humor blog and my Linked-In profession is listed as “Freelance Writer” so the two go hand in hand. Plus it’s a win/win when my contacts see that I can be versatile and funny. I’ve gained several jobs now for writing biz newsletters, website copy and brochures, all asking me to “funny it up.” The only time this sorta backfired was a mortuary that hired me to write a pamphlet on Comforting Bereaved Loved Ones because they thought I was going to make 6 ft. under jokes. Really?? Would I ever do that?? Too cliched. I would make “a tisket, a tasket, a green & yellow casket” jokes. 😉

    Great post!

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  12. If your blog is related to your work, absolutely post it on LinkedIn. I get at least half of my views from that source and it really helps. I work in the legal field and blogs are a huge source of info and news in the industry. It definitely helps to get my company’s name out there. However, if this were just a personal blog about my travels or something like that, I don’t think I would shrae it.

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  13. I have not even thought about linking my LinkedIn with my blog, and it is crazy to think I haven’t yet! I have my own Facebook page; CleanTreats and this obviously focuses around healthy recipes and clean treats! But it is not just clean treats I love to create,m and so came the creation of my blog where I can share my passion for fitness, health, daily living, workouts and all my other recipes, good and bad! Considering I am a financial planner by occupation the content of my blog does not seem entirely linked to my profession so I think I will choose to keep it separate,.. but is a very interesting consideration for future posts that may suit to build my audience.

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  14. It works well connecting them up, just be careful what you allow to go through to Linkedin. I focus on gardening articles and the one about composting pet manure was maybe TMI for a business social media platform.

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  15. This was very interesting – I’ve included my blog on LinkedIn, not because it relates to my current career (in customer marketing) – although I suppose it does at least showcase my writing, but because my long term goal is to get into food writing so it’s a great way to get out there a bit!

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  19. An issue that affects a few people is that “they” blog under a pseudonym but have a LinkedIn account under “their” real name. Not a big deal, but a deal.

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  20. My blog is linked to LinkedIn. For some posts I de-select LinkedIn. Depends on the content and time of day I want to post.
    My boss does not like the idea of seeing my posts in the middle of the day when I should be working. I explained to him how scheduling software works, but he said it still looked bad.
    Now I schedule posts before work or leave off LinkedIn.

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  21. I’m at that juncture—about to connect one blog w/ LinkedIn. I am extremely thankful for finding this post and the accompanying comments. Thank you all very much. The idea, needless to say, will return to the “Think Tank.”

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