Connecting With: How Boston University Uses LinkedIn Articles To Highlight The Hard Work of Its Employees

By McKayla Richardson, Communications Coordinator

Over the last few years, LinkedIn has come out with many new bells and whistles, allowing itself to become the professional social networking site. One of the many features they’ve released over the years has been LinkedIn articles, which the platform defines as “long-form, in-depth content that may be distributed to your LinkedIn connections and beyond.” So, why create a LinkedIn article instead of a post? Here are the benefits:

1. LinkedIn articles have a longer in-feed lifespan.
2. Articles can be discovered by a broader audience beyond your immediate network.
3. They are indexed by search engines like Google, which means they can appear in search results and attract readers who are actively searching for relevant information.
4. Allows for a space to easily publish targeted long-form content with rich media, links & pull quotes.

After doing some research into what other higher-ed institutions were using the articles feature for, we realized that it was extremely underutilized. With that in mind, our team began to brainstorm ideas of how we could integrate these articles into our content schedule, along with what the subject would be. After looking more closely into what other brands were putting out in the way of articles and newsletters, we were inspired by Marketing Brew’s Coworking series, a Q&A-style newsletter that highlighted the work of different marketing professionals, giving them an opportunity to share their career journeys.

Photo courtesy of Marketing Brew’s Coworking Series. Headshot courtesy of Rachel Sterling.

We were inspired by this model, realizing that there hadn’t been a space to highlight the work of the faculty and staff at BU before. So, with the help of the Human Resources department, our team launched an employee spotlight series that is featured on BU’s LinkedIn page. The goal of the series is to highlight BU’s incredible faculty and staff to inform both current and prospective employees about the unique experience of working at Boston University in a Q&A format, like the Marketing Brew newsletter.

Photo Headshot courtesy of Jason Campbell-Foster.

HR shared their employee recommendations with our team to help the article series get off the ground. After the initial outreach with the employee, all we require is a headshot and to answer the following questions:

1. How did you end up at Boston University?
2. How would you describe your role to someone who doesn’t work in {insert your
   Title}?
3. What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? Or your proudest career accomplishment?
4. What do you like most about working at Boston University?
5. What advice can you give to BU students looking to pursue a career in {insert your title}?
6. What is one thing that people don’t know about you?
7. What is something you wish you could tell your younger self?

These questions allow faculty and staff to share a bit about themselves both in the workplace and outside of it. Since its launch, we’ve featured 16 faculty and staff members, as well as our entire Social Media Intern Team (of 7). In total, the “Connecting With” articles have received 158,472 views, 126,144 impressions, and 1118 engagements. In addition to the statistics, HR has been incorporating the series into their monthly newsletters that are sent to faculty and staff.

Check out our latest spotlight here.

Headshot courtesy of Abby Styles.

While LinkedIn continues to promote the use of articles, it has also introduced a newsletter feature that invites all people who follow a page to subscribe to the pages’ newsletter. Since turning our “Connecting With” Series into a newsletter, we’ve gained 69,607 subscribers. Newsletters are like LinkedIn articles on steroids. Each article of your newsletter will send a notification and email to your subscribers — a great way for you to stay top of mind with them. The newsletter feature can really enhance community engagement on your LinkedIn page and help your articles be found through search engines. If you’re looking to grab your audience’s attention with long-form content, a newsletter is surely the way to go.

Stay tuned for more in the “Connecting With” series.

Have questions about our “Connecting With” series? Sound off in the comments!