With over 610 million members, LinkedIn is by far the best social media platform for professionals — but only 1% of active users share posts regularly. The other 99% are missing out on the benefits of LinkedIn’s huge reach for businesses and personal profiles.
Publishing a post on LinkedIn has many benefits. For instance, when you post, your network gets notified in real-time. A frequent posting strategy will not only enhance your brand identity, it’ll also boost the chances of your content being distributed to the LinkedIn Trending feed, and being recommended to a wider audience.
Here’s how to maximise the potential of your LinkedIn posts.
Your title will make or break your post. You could have the best content in your industry, but without a catchy title, your post won’t be shared. According to a recent analysis by Buzzsumo, how-to posts and List posts perform extremely well on LinkedIn. Also, keep them short and snappy – under 50 characters.
You may find it easier to write broadly on your expert subject, but a study by Marketing Experiments shows that the more hyper-targeted your title is the likelihood of it being read increases. more people will read a hyper-targeted post.
Images fuel social media, and eight is the magic number for LinkedIn posts, according to Noah Kahan. They found that adding eight images in one blog post “is associated with a greater number of LinkedIn shares, likes, comments, and views”.
Also, a seminal 2005 Caltech study found that humans are hardwired to respond to faces. While this is not the only factor that will determine the success of your post, it is a simple way to get your post noticed.
Plagiarism will harm your credibility, so you have to write original content. Content producers achieve way more engagement than content curators — so don’t just share other people’s content on LinkedIn. Instead, be an active leader in your industry by creating your own relevant content.
Use the Pareto Principle, that there’s an 80-to-20 relationship between effects and their causes. Since this principle transcends disciplines, it’s often used in content marketing. Use 80% of your time disseminating your content and only 20% of your time for creating it.
For more exposure, you can also cross-post on Medium. However, to maintain your SEO credibility, do not just copy & paste the same content on all these platforms. On Medium, you need to ‘import’ your story, which automatically generates a rel=canonical link — it tells Google your blog is the original source and not Medium.
Overall, if your LinkedIn post has more likes, it will generate more shares, views and comments.
If you post through your personal LinkedIn profile, it’s vital to have a large audience of first-degree connections. It’s equally important to have quality connections — it’s not just about numbers.
You should also make sure your first impression is your best impression, with a well-maintained LinkedIn home page. Keep your photo and cover image up to date — you might not think this is as crucial as your other information, but these are the first things people see when they check out your profile.
Write posts on your personal profile that share your views on subjects that are not only related to your job or industry, but that also can be interesting to your followers and connections. Before sharing a new post, try to explain in a short paragraph, why that is important. If you’re sharing an article you found interesting or a research that’s related to your industry, try to introduce the content writing a short paragraph with your views about it and ask your followers to do the same in the comments section.
If you’re sharing an interesting article or research related to your industry, try to introduce the content with a short paragraph with your views on the topic. By doing that, you’re not only positioning yourself as a leader in your industry but also inviting others to share their opinions too, so more people will engage with your page.
LinkedIn has a number of channels, such as Leadership & Management, Big Ideas & Innovation, Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Social Media. Aim to get your content featured on one of these channels. While this is one of the most difficult parts of the journey, it pays to work towards this goal. Optimising your content for search will also help you reach more people. Make sure that you mention keywords that make sense for your business and that your content can be easily digested by a broad audience. While this does not guarantee that your article will be featured, it does increase the odds.
To round off, the success of content marketing is dependent on a variety of factors. There is no sure-fire way of ensuring your LinkedIn post goes viral. However, follow these tips and you could be well on your way to becoming a LinkedIn influencer in your industry.
Struggling to find time to write thought leadership pieces? Our content marketing team can work with you to create bespoke posts for your website.
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By Matrix Internet
By Jeff Sheridan