There’s a chance that you may now be able to get more traffic from LinkedIn to your blog than you could have before.

Is LinkedIn a significant part of your content marketing strategy already? Let us know in the comments.

DigiDay has a very interesting report out indicating that LinkedIn has made some changes that enable publishers to get more traffic.

Last summer, publisher traffic from LinkedIn (which used to be a fairly good traffic generator for some) took a nosedive. This occurred while LinkedIn was pushing itself as more of a publisher platform (which it still does).

According to the report, however, LinkedIn has made some tweaks to its Pulse news reader that have turned into traffic spikes for some.

“LinkedIn did not return requests for comment, but publishers say that the changes are a result of a series of tweaks made to Pulse, LinkedIn’s news aggregation app. In November, it added a feature called ‘universal links,’ which loaded Pulse articles within the app rather than sending readers to the mobile Web,” DigiDay’s Ricardo Bilton writes. “That feature, coupled with the publisher recommendation feature LinkedIn added last September, have made it easier for Pulse users to find and read publisher content. Pulse has been downloaded 1.2 million times since last August, according to Apptopia.”

According to Bilton, Forbes saw a 127% increase in LinkedIn traffic from July to December, with the biggest spike happening in December almost overnight. The Financial Times and Business Insider saw similar patterns, he says. He also cites data from Parsely, which found a significant increase in LinkedIn referrals to publishers on its network.

Of course it’s one thing for LinkedIn to send more traffic to big well-known publishers, but how does this apply to you? Well, nothing is certain, but you can get into Pulse, and that means you do have a shot at getting some blog traffic out of this.

Your content can appear in Pulse if you have a blog and include the LinkedIn InShare button, which you can acquire here.

LinkedIn says in its help center:

If you represent a publication such as The New York Times or CNN.com or have an external blog, you’re considered a publisher. A publisher’s content can be featured on Pulse when there’s an InShare button on the website All the news articles featured on LinkedIn – the homepage module, Pulse, Channels and email updates – are powered by what members are sharing on the network. Without the InShare widget, content is invisible to the algorithms that parse and distribute the right headlines to the right professionals.

Note that you must have an “external” blog, which means a blog that is hosted outside of your website.

LinkedIn to fulfill the requirements of the above, you must add the InShare widget to your site to enable members to share your content on LinkedIn, and recommends reading through the below SlideShare deck and using a Company Page to build an audience of followers on LinkedIn.

John White, the Chief Marketing Officer at The Good Men Project has some advice for getting an article Featured on Pulse. He writes:

Having your article featured on LinkedIn’s Pulse greatly enhances your distribution range. It can be the difference between getting a few hundred views on your article to getting tens of thousands of views. I have heard many people comment on this topic and give their opinion as to what they think the secret is to getting featured. The fact of the matter is nobody knows for sure the exact formula behind the algorithms for Pulse, except for the mad scientists at LinkedIn. So, while I don’t have an exact answer to this burning hot question within the LinkedIn publishing community, I CAN tell you what has worked for me to get featured 80 times.

First and foremost, choose a topic that is relatable to your followers. The more organic viewers, comments, likes, and shares you get on your article substantially increases your chances of getting featured. If your goal is to get featured, the topic must also align with one of the Pulse channels. If you are thinking about writing an article on an advanced technique in basket weaving, it might not get featured in Pulse. There is no basket weaving channel on LinkedIn. I’m not saying don’t write your article on basket weaving. Read why every article on LinkedIn is good. However, if you were to write an article on how you turned a basket weaving business from a small start-up in a developing country into a global enterprise by utilizing organic marketing efforts with little to no investor money into a profitable global organization, you might have a smash hit on Pulse. The point, when choosing a topic to write about ask yourself, what Pulse channel can you envision your article being featured in? If the topic does not fit into one or more of the Pulse channels, chances are it will not be featured.

While he has plenty more advice in his article (which you should read if this topic is of interest to you), another important thing he mentions is tweeting your article with “Tip@LinkedInPulse”.

Obviously, above all else, you have to have the right content.

Do you consider LinkedIn to be a potentially valuable source of referral traffic? Share your thoughts in the comments.