A farm team for Influencers? LinkedIn’s open publishing platform

That’s how ReadWrite’s Owen Thomas (@owenthomas) describes LinkedIn’s expansion of its personal publishing platform from a hand selected group of business professionals described as “Influencers.”

Thomas’ description is a far cry from re/code’s Mike Iassac’s (@mikeissac) proclamation this morning that with LinkedIn’s publishing tools everyone is now a professional blogger.

LinkedIn’s Ryan Roslansky (@ryos) shared this morning that LinkedIn is expanding the ability to publish beyond the 600 character limit of a LinkedIn status update.

LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled

Until now, publishing on LinkedIn has been limited to Influencers. But just because you may be able to publish on LinkedIn does not mean your content gets the broad exposure that contributions from Influencers does.

Right now, LinkedIn is limiting publishing to 25,000 members. That will expand in time to everyone. LinkedIn will also only display your posts to your contacts, not the broad public distribution that Influencers receive.

LinkedIn cannot truly open its publishing platform to the point where it serves as blog for professionals. As The New York Times technology reporter, Vindu Goel (@vindugoel) explains, as much as the publishing platform is a plus for LinkedIn users, “[I]’s also easy to imagine profiles getting bogged down with badly written white papers and other screeds best left unshared.”

I like the concept of LinkedIn expanding publishing, but for lawyers looking to build relationships and a reputation as a “go to” lawyer in a niche area of the law, an open platform, a blog, that reaches people beyond one’s LinkedIn connections is critical — for any number of reasons.

Certainly, as I’ve blogged before, share your blog posts like you do other content in LinkedIn. The engagement you’ll receive in comments and likes is apt to be greater than the comments you’ll receive on your blog itself.

But as much as some may be touting LinkedIn’s publishing system as making everyone a blogger, it looks more like LinkedIn is looking to find diamonds in the rough — or rockstar commentators. That takes LinkedIn from solely a networking platform to a media network.

From Thomas:

The goal of this new program, says [LinkedIn] executive editor Dan Roth, is to let members show off their skills and knowledge in a concrete form. Or as he put it, “You’re building your professional permanent record.”

“If this thing works the way we believe it will, there should be some amazing voices that come out of it,” Roth told us.

He cited the example of Nate Silver, the sports and politics analyst who recently jumped from the New York Times to ESPN. “The Nate Silver of LinkedIn, someone who’s writing amazing content for her particular field, and just starts getting more and more attention, we take that person and she becomes an Influencer and gets enormous distribution,” Roth said.

LinkedIn’s expansion of publishing beyond its influencer network is a plus for lawyers looking to network more on LinkedIn.

I worry though that many lawyers and law firms will look at it as just another place to push content at people, no matter the quality or value of the content. If that’s the case your content will get caught up in something that feels like a river of spam to your connections.

If you’re offering authentic insight and commentary in areas of the law you’re passionate about, recognize that there are far more people interested in what you have to say than you already know. Your connections on LinkedIn are an isolated audience who are apt not to cite nor share what you have to say, as opposed to the case with a blog.

Sure, use LinkedIn’s publishing platform when it becomes available to you. Just understand its limitations.