LinkedIn’s mission is “to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” The platform lives up to this by being the place where professionals interact to connect and grow their network.

Most professionals use LinkedIn to share useful information to build their influence with connections and to grow that audience. When interacting with influencers, having some authority helps earn a seat at the table. LinkedIn Collaborative Articles is a new tool that makes that possible.

LinkedIn describes its collaborative articles as “knowledge topics published by LinkedIn with insights and perspectives contributed by our community.” This recently released product provides opportunities for sharing your expertise to add value to a skill-based article, thereby enhancing your influence and impact on the skills graph for that particular skill.

Your LinkedIn Skills Graph is a map of abilities for which you have demonstrated expertise. It’s a dynamic chart of the relationships between your skills and other LinkedIn members who share them and the organizations that employ or hire people with those skills. Thus, the better the skills graph represents your talents, the more attractive you are to recruiters or potential business partners who wish to hire your services.

LinkedIn currently recognizes over 39,000 skills, but those associated with Collaborative Articles are limited to about 160 business-related skills that range from Account Management to Writing. To position yourself for skills in the comprehensive list, such as landscape management and lawn care, focus on influence with the business skills those disciplines require. For example, team building, operations management, and leadership are three skills in demand in this industry and many others. 

Comments are social media currency

Astute social media practitioners understand that comments are the gold-standard metric of interaction and influence on every social media network. This is how Facebook, LinkedIn and every other platform determine if the content you share merits greater visibility.

In a nutshell, Linkedin Collaborative Articles are a path to earning the attention of like-minded professionals. When that happens, they transfer their influence to you. The algorithm recognizes this connection and increases your influence, thereby opening more doors.

You should jump on every opportunity to comment on LinkedIn Collaborative Articles. If the network doesn’t invite you, seek out opportunities for the skills you want to profile by going to those pages. Follow the pages and choose one or two articles to add your contribution. You’ll discover your comments are limited to 750 characters, which is about three short paragraphs.

You may as well use this as an opportunity to clean up your LinkedIn profile, paying special attention to your skills. Having too many skills makes it difficult for the platform to determine your most valuable strengths.

Regardless of your strategy, any activity sends a favorable signal to LinkedIn that you are contributing to its mission by adding value to the network. When you contribute to LinkedIn Collaborative Articles, that helps LinkedIn and it signals to the algorithm to help you in return.