When will newspapers embrace LinkedIn?

There is a reason that half our clients are marketing agencies and consultancies of various descriptions from media to social. "The cobblers’ kids have the worst shoes", goes the saying. Marketing people can't market themselves. Content people can't create their own content. PR people can't PR themselves. Advertising people can't advertise themselves.

The media though I think are even worse. National newspapers and trade publications from big brands like The Guardian to local Singaporean brands like The Straits Times. They're just not getting it. LinkedIn has 400 million professionals on it. They all want to read, share and engage with business content.

Do these brands wish to engage with them or ignore them and pretend that their website is going to get any more views and users than that? Do newspaper brands want them to share their content with all their followers on LinkedIn and use them to share with their connections? Do they want followers to become their biggest brand ambassadors and amplify their content for free? In many cases the answer appears to be...no.

LinekdIn is now the largest publishing platform in the world. Build it and they will come is not true in this content, LinkedIn built it. Go there.

News Corp's CEO Thomson ranted recently that Google and LinkedIn did nothing for his content. He sounded like a dinosaur raging against the dying of the light.

Why doesn't he embrace the platforms and use them to sell more subscriptions and engage with content. Check out the Daily Telegraph or The Wall Street Journal LinkedIn page  or even worse The Times of London page  - last update 8 months ago, no news just jobs? You’re a daily newspaper with minutely news….would you do this to your website? No. So why do it to your LinkedIn company page?

News breaks every second. Business news is important to business people...all these papers have business sections yet don't wish to share with 400 million professionals and potential customers.

Share and engage and you will drive potentially 400 million professionals to your website to enjoy your content. Don't and you will miss out and wonder why your ratings are going down and no one is talking about your content.

The Financial Times and Economist, New York Times, Forbes and many others get it. The Economist and FT have days where they give away content for free on LinkedIn so that people can engage and enjoy their content and potentially upsell and subscribe. They get it.

Harvard Business Review not only are active on LinkedIn within their company page but have one of the best groups with over 1 million members engaging and discussing topics sparked by HBR content. This is fantastic content engagement. They realise the power of LinkedIn and have embraced it. They are more influential and powerful as a result amongst this key professional audience.

Even local brands like the Baltimore Sun have an engaging LinkedIn company page. If they have the resource to do it why not the larger better financed brands?

The Business Times in Singapore contrasts nicely with both Channel News Asia and The Straits Times. The Business Times is now very engaging (it didn’t used to be that way, I used to have them in my examples of what not do to…) whereas The Straits Times is non-existent and Channel News Asia seem to think that one update a month is good enough….. This is the same brand who tell you news every minute on their TV channel and their website.

The New Paper.... well clearly they are too focused on their trashy stories than engaging on LinkedIn.

 The China Daily seems to have forgotten that they have an audience here. The South China Morning Post by comparison has lots of updates to influence and engage people with.

CNN Asia….really? Is that it? No rolling news to report?

USA Today has been taken over by their HR teams rather than editorial or marketing as should be. Who gets excited about these nondescript jobs? Why aren’t they engaging with content? This is a global business platform that they are missing out on.

Where are the missing papers? Where are the trade magazines, especially marketing ones, doing this? They have failed to understand that social media is a platform that used to be called "word of mouth" and "newsagents".

Get with the program or leave the stage for those willing to embrace it openly and engage. But don't protest that other platforms are moving on and you're not and don't complain about falling circulations and falling advertising revenue when you haven't embraced LinkedIn.