Don’t Dismiss LinkedIn: 7 tips to unlock growth and meet your goals faster

In Never Stop Learning this week I will be covering the following 1-2-3:

• One Big Thing - Getting the most out of LinkedIn

• Two Recommendations - a side hustle podcast and a great YouTube resource to help you with your social media

• Three Actions to take this week

In return for sharing this post I will upgrade you to Paid for the month of March!

One Big Thing - Getting the most out of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is no longer just a place to advertise and search for jobs or show off about your latest award at work. Since the pandemic, LinkedIn has been going through somewhat of a transformation. It has evolved into a platform that you really should consider, regardless of your personal or business goals.

Building a personal or business brand is very possible now.

Social media these days can turn into a shouting match that can get nasty very quickly. LinkedIn certainly isn’t like this at all. This is probably due to the origins of the network being work based but you will find a kind and supportive community on LinkedIn. It has grown into a genuinely nice place to hang out compared to Twitter or Instagram.

The LinkedIn algorithm likes longer content and its growing newsletter feature has real potential for you to grow a presence further.

The platform hasn’t stood still either. New features are always appearing with an array of different content types now available such as short form video, LinkedIn Live, carousel posts, polls and engagement groups.

People are building engaged audiences that helps them get their message across in whatever field they are in. You can too.

You will also notice that some posts get massive engagement but others seem to have fallen flat. This is where it gets interesting.

What are these posts doing that others aren't?

To help you improve your LinkedIn game I have watched YouTube Videos, listened to podcasts and studied good and bad posts.

Here are my 7 tips based on what I’ve learned so far. I think you will find them useful.

1. The first three lines are key

Scroll through your LinkedIn feed. Notice that you don’t see all of each post. You only see the first three lines of a post. Therefore those three lines need to hook the reader and encourage them to hit “see more”.

You don’t need to write a click-baity headline. It just needs to give the reader enough information for them to want to know more. There is obviously a balance there.

2. Engagement in the first hour after your post is important

A number of different sources have said engagement in that first hour after you post is important for whether the algorithm continues to recommend and present your post to your followers. This seemed to play out with most of my posts.

Knowing this shows how important it is to time your posts for when your followers are most likely to be on the platform.

When you first post, the algorithm serves up your content to only a small sample of your followers not all of them. This can be surprising at first. Basically, LinkedIn is testing out whether your content is any good and likely to drive further engagement. If you get that early engagement from that sample then the algorithm starts to serve it to more of your followers and it can then start to gain momentum.

3. The time of day and day of week you post is important

I tried posting early in the morning, mid afternoon and mid evening. The result from this test was pretty conclusive.

Given the findings from point 1 above it would make sense that you are most likely to get continuing engagement when posting at times when your followers are most likely to be on the platform. For a tool such as LinkedIn, that is quite often used for work related topics, it makes sense for this to be in work time.

Why the afternoon works best? Possibly as the afternoon drags on people are more likely to reach for their phones? Posting in the afternoon means there is also a large portion of the day still remaining to gain further engagement.

It is worth noting that the day after a successful post sees about half the engagement of the first day and by the third day it has almost dropped to zero.

4. Include a picture

As you scroll through LinkedIn you will notice that posts with a picture occupy more of the space on your screen. This gives your post a few split seconds more of a chance of registering with your follower before they scroll on to the next post below it.

This was borne out in my posts from the last few weeks. Posts with a picture seemed to get marginally more engagements than those that didn’t have one.

5. The post content, length and structure seems to help the algorithm

The algorithm favours longer form content and I have certainly noticed my longer posts getting better engagement and reach. However, you should not be tempted to simply write a large block of boring text for the sake of it.

Space out your text into short paragraphs. It's the way of the world today but of you are viewing on mobile (and most are) people find it much easier to navigate a post that has short paragraphs.

Your English teach would throttle you but the algorithm wont!

6. Don't post links directly in the posts

The algorithm prefers content that is actually on the LinkedIn platform rather than links that take the user away from the platform. This makes sense. As a platform you want to keep people within an environment you can control.

If you are looking to direct people to an external page using a link, a neat trick is to add it to a pinned comment rather than in the original post. You can then tell people in the post where to find the link. Apparently, the algorithm doesn’t notice links in the comments and therefore doesn’t affect the reach of the post.

“Check out my newsletter article in the top comment below👇👇👇”

However, so far I’ve not noticed a material difference in the performance of posts with and without external links. One to watch out for though.

7. Always reply to comments

If you have generated some initial engagement in that first hour you may be fortunate enough to have had someone post a comment. The first thing to do here is acknowledge the comment with a Like. Basic courtesy really.

Then, make sure you reply to that comment. That person has taken the time to engage and write a comment so the least you can do is write a reply even if it’s just a thank you. Even better, if you can keep the conversation going that will set you apart from most people who post.

The community would love to here your thoughts on gaining traction on LinkedIn. Feel free to use the comments section below.

BONUS Tip: Share carousel posts

From my experimentation, one type of post that really can push your engagement forward is carousel posts. A carousel post can be created on a site such as Canva and consists of a number of pages that the user can flick through. These are great for classic list posts such as “6 ways to improve your sleep” with a page on each individual way.

The algorithm takes the user flicking through the pages as equivalent to a “like”. With people much more likely to flick through that hit the like button, the algorithm sees your post much more favourably and pushes it to more people.

Click here for an example I created on LinkedIn.

Starting with these basic steps will move your posting on massively and give you big jump forward in your engagement. Another area that LinkedIn has started to push more is LinkedIn newsletters. More on that in a post for another day!

Two Recommendations - what to consume this week

1. The Side Hustle Show, Nick Loper: 533: How I Built a Multi 6-Figure Business While Still Working Full-Time

I discovered Nick’s podcast a few months ago. There’s some great episodes in here to get your creative juices flowing. This particular one I chose because it blends nicely with the LinkedIn post above. Enjoy!

2. Social Media Examiner - How to Improve Your LinkedIn Reach and Engagement 

Again, to complement this post. If you want to dig a little deeper into LinkedIn this is a great video (and channel) for getting tips on how to improve your game.

Three Actions To Take This Week

My vision for this newsletter is to provide you with weekly actions that you can take away and use in your life in the coming week. So, here are three things you could try this week:

1. Have a go at using my LinkedIn tips above - why not try them out and let us know in the comments below whether you found you got more engagement.

2. Book that appointment you’ve been meaning to book - dentist, doctor or optician. Get it booked in.

3. Create a list of 6 things you will do tomorrow - no excuses, these things need to be done.

📝 Other Newsletters I Recommend

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