All of a sudden, the “Job” link on my LinkedIn comments box has been replaced by “Contribute Expertise”. What does it mean and why would I want to contribute my expertise on other people’s topics. For that matter, how is it different to just commenting on someone’s post?
Congratulations on making it to the point on LinkedIn where it believes you have expertise in your field of, well, expertise. 😁 Turns out that a lot of this is powered by AI: Specific article prompts are produced by the LinkedIn AI system as part of its “LinkedIn Collaborative Articles” feature, then people with that area of expertise are invited to contribute.
What criteria does it use? According to LinkedIn, it’s evaluating your skill tags, profile strength (do you have all fields and areas completed?), engagement (do you use LinkedIn on a regular basis?), and whether you have creator mode enabled. LinkedIn also uses an internal reputation score to remove people who otherwise match but don’t actually engage much with the popular social media site. In other words, if you’re seeing “Contribute Expertise” you’re doing something right on LinkedIn!
Shortcuts: Basic Prompts | How to Contribute Expertise | Writing Your Contribution | Why Bother
I’ve been an active user for many years – you can find me on LinkedIn if you’re curious – and have been consistently invited to contribute my expertise to various marketing and SEO topics. I rarely participate, but I still see it showing up. Let’s have a closer look…
THE BASIC POST PROMPT
By default, LinkedIn shows me the following at the top of my feed, inviting me to contribute:
Check your own main feed on LinkedIn: do you see “Contribute expertise” or “Job” in that middle spot?
When I click on the input box, of course, it’s the same as it has been for many years:
Nothing here suggests I’m an “expert” according to LinkedIn, but that’s because I’ve already gone down the wrong path if I seek to contribute. Instead, here’s what happens if I click on “Contribute expertise”.
HOW TO CONTRIBUTE EXPERTISE ON LINKEDIN
A click at the top of the home page and it explains that this is all about collaborative articles:
As LinkedIn explains, “You’ve been there, done that – we want to hear how. We’ve invited a selected group of experts like yourself to share your insights, advice and experiences.” How select a group? No hard data to answer this question, but some estimates place it as < 5% of LinkedIn users.
Notice that this view shows how many people have responded to a prompt. Since I would do this to gain some visibility on LinkedIn, my preference is to target those with fewer contributions. Avoiding having your original content stolen on social media has 588 contributions, so I’m going to skip that. The question of creating search-engine friendly copy that still reads naturally sounds interesting, so that’s what I’ll pursue. A click on the corresponding “Contribute” button moves me to the full prompt:
Good responses, and notice it’s easy to follow people who contribute to these collaborative articles. Another benefit of participation.
CONTRIBUTING MY EXPERTISE ON COPYWRITING
I’m not a copywriter, per se, but do have a lot of experience with the subject over the years of my career. I’ll respond by clicking on “Add your perspective”.
Easy enough, just another input box. It’s worth noting that this does not have a “Rewrite with AI” option as regular posts do. I am glad: People who use AI to write on their behalf (rather than refining their ideas and prose) are just adding to the noise, not the insight.
I’ll type in my advice on the subject:
Easy, right? Again, notice that there’s a character limit of 750 characters, or about 130 words. Not too long!
To submit it, I click on “Add“.
Total number of answers has increased and my post not only gains a “Follow” link when people who don’t follow me see it (as we saw earlier) but a Like and Reply option. It’s nice visibility.
Immediately below my post is an invitation to contribute to other collaborative articles:
That’s good for now, however, so I’m just going to move on to my next task on LinkedIn.
WHAT’S THE BENEFIT OF COLLABORATIVE ARTICLES?
You might be wondering what the benefit of this is versus commenting on someone’s post on LinkedIn. As far as I can tell, it’s because these collaborative articles get much higher visibility than any individual’s post. LinkedIn has over a billion registered users, of which about 310 million are active on the site. Your post won’t get a tiny fraction of that visibility, nor will your response to an individual post. But a collaborative article might well be seen by thousands or even tens of thousands of active users.
Not a bad crowd to attract!
Oh, and your collaborations show up on your Profile too, as can be seen:
I would say give it a try if you have the opportunity to contribute your expertise on LinkedIn. Worst case, it’s a few minutes of wasted time, but it might just significantly increase your visibility!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about LinkedIn since the launch of the popular professional networking site. Please do check out my extensive LinkedIn help area for lots more tutorials while you’re here!