Have you heard about LinkedIn Collaborative Articles? If you’ve heard about Google Helpful Content Update, you may know that a component of this process was supposed to prevent your search results from being nothing but artificial intelligence (AI) curated content. However, Collaborative Articles seem to be one way that the social media site has found to work around that risk. What is it, and how can it impact your business? It has some potentially good things, such as a great way to build community and credibility. Will it help SEO, though?
What Are LinkedIn Collaborative Articles?
Let’s start here. LinkedIn released Collaborative Articles on March 3, 2023. Unlike user-generated content, this method uses AI. It’s not just AI but also the LinkedIn editorial staff supporting the AI tools to help in the creation of the new article. These articles help professionals on the platform share their knowledge with others.
How Does It Work?
In short, the AI tools start the conversation. Then, members with expert knowledge can contribute to boxes which are then combined to create one cohesive piece. Most of the piece is created by AI, though the company strongly states that its internal editorial team is at the helm of the process. Nevertheless, these are AI-written articles.
In order for anyone to contribute to the article, all they have to do is click a button that says “Add Your Perspective.” Then, they can type in their insight and share their content within the article.
Where do these experts come from? According to the social media platform, LinkedIn Collaborative Articles are written by experts in the field. The social media platform seems to target people on the site based on the skills they list within their profile.
Not invited? That’s okay
For those that want to contribute to the article but did not get an invite to share, all it takes is engaging with the content in some way, such as reacting to the AI-written articles. Ultimately, you should receive an invitation later to contribute to the article (or to a new article).
Why Does This Matter?
Why even pay attention to LinkedIn Collaborative Articles? Why does artificial intelligence matter in the grand scheme of things right now? There are a few key reasons why you may wish to dive in and utilize this type of content marketing. Every need is a bit different, but many will find several benefits to using these tools.
For example, it is a great networking opportunity, which is critical in today’s ecommerce industry for building relationships and engaging with potential customers. In addition to this, it allows you to incorporate more of your company’s brand into those articles, and that helps to build up your brand authority.
Another way this can work well for content marketing benefits is in how it allows you to continue to maintain relevance over time. When people click on the insightful content that you leave or your reaction, the site continues to position your work in front of others. That also helps you to get more invitations to other AI-written articles to contribute to. Over time, contributors are able to build up their presence on the site earning a Community Top Voice, a valuable Skills addition to your LinkedIn profile. That happens when you contribute valuable insights that people continue to interact with on these articles. As a company spokesperson or employee, you can use these tools to bolster your business (though company pages cannot contribute directly).
Best Practices
How do you take this information and make it valuable to your content marketing efforts? There’s quite a bit to know about this, including simple that there are a lot of unknowns, including how it will play with the Google Healthful Content update. Until there’s more time for AI-written articles to push through, it will take some time to really understand how much of an impact it can have on your marketing efforts. Still, there are some things you can do to get the best results.
For starters, you have to read and engage with content in order to be able to contribute more. That means spending more time on the site working to build up your presence. As a business, you’ll want to encourage your expert in the topic to contribute (and be sure to avoid linking to yourself too often). More so, what you contribute matters. You can’t just agree to the previous poster’s comment but actually contribute something of value to the conversation.
There’s no doubt that LinkedIn Collaborative Articles are revolutionary in their use of AI and their new approach to content marketing and development. However, there are a lot of similarities between what LinkedIn is doing here with sites like Reddit or Quora, where people interact with each other, not with bots, to contribute to valuable conversations. The biggest difference is that this is all playing out on LinkedIn, which is considered a valuable professional networking tool. Because it is available on this platform, it’s possible to use LinkedIn to build a professional image in a more efficient way.
About Helpful Content Update
We mentioned some insight about Google Helpful Content update last year. As a refresher, this update to Google’s search algorithm focused on ensuring that sites:
- Offered substantial descriptions
- Created clear attributions of sources within the content
- Offered extensive original research and analysis
In short, Google’s update aimed to ensure that people were creating websites meant for people – not search engine ranking.
The Future of AI-Authored Content
There’s no doubt that the success of LinkedIn Collaborative articles could change the way AI-written articles are created and impact content marketing itself. Yet, there’s a need to maintain SEO best practices, and it will be necessary to continue to focus on providing high-quality content that Google sees as valuable. Remember that, ultimately, any content written for your website must focus on supporting the needs of your customers or readers, not just the search engines.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to develop a strong SEO strategy and use AI content in a way that supports your efforts. We encourage you to check out Hawke Media SEO services to find out how we are using cutting edge best practices to boost success in impressive ways.
