Publish and Be Damned

A connection of mine on LinkedIn reached out recently to ask for some advice on getting noticed in the newsfeed.  Although they had thousands of followers and connections the engagement on their posts was low. 

Why was that and what could be done? 

My advice resulted in this message from my connection a couple of days later; 

Wow. You weren’t wrong. ????  I did one post without a photo that flopped, but my latest post was a personal one and I have never had so many likes and comments. Thanks again.

Here was what I had suggested;

LinkedIn changed its algorithm to behave more like those on other social networks. At the end of the day, they want you and your followers to stay on the platform so any sharing of external links like your news articles is not rewarded with exposure. 

Of the 6,000 followers you have, many of your posts with those external links are getting shown in the newsfeeds of way less than 5% of them. That can be the same for other types of posts so you want to think about providing a mix. 

Here are my suggestions; 

1. Less is more – users of Linkedin are not on it 17 times a day like Facebook so posting once a day maximum is more than enough. A few times a week is sufficient.  
2. You get rewarded (your posts get further exposure) if you get engagement in the first hour or so. The next type of engagement are comments, a like is not enough. To get more comments spend time commenting on others posts that you feel may follow you and likely comment on your posts. 
3. A view on a post is just that, someone scrolled past it in their newsfeed (maybe stopped but often not). If someone clicks like that’s half a point, a full point is if they clicked the Read or See more link on the post but the real ‘juice’ for two points is if they commented.  
4. Only use a maximum of 4 hashtags and try to choose at least one you use consistently and want to get known for. 
5. Mix up the form of posts you make. Believe it or not, text-only posts perform particularly well. Up to 1300 characters including spaces – 2-300 words.  It’s like a mini-article. 

BONUS TIP: Use tagging of people very sparingly – if they do not respond then LinkedIn assumes you do not know them well enough and will penalize your tagging the next time.  

Other formats of post to use; 

Video – gets a lot of preference. Ideally use an app like Clips from Apple to add subtitles as many people have sound turned off because they access LI at work. 

Documents – you can upload PDF and Powerpoint documents and comment on them. Keep them to a few pages max. 

Polls – this is a returning feature, fairly new and therefore is preferenced by LinkedIn at the moment. (That will change). 

Multiple images – 6-9 work best as it then produces the + sign and stops people scrolling because they want to see what else was in the ‘collection’ 

Single impactful image tied to a personal story. People like to know the person behind the business profile.  

There is nothing wrong with posting the occasional post with an external link but use now and again not frequently. 

Beyond posting (which is more of a push strategy) be sure to be reaching out and messaging directly with connections. 

You could do a few tweaks with your profile but its probably already at All-Star status so its more cosmetic unless you are looking to use your profile as an attractor for your company or you. 

What strategies for getting noticed on LinkedIn have worked for you?  I would love to hear in the comments below.

If LinkedIn is a platform you want to perform better with reach out and we can talk about how I can help you stand out or generate business.