If you are not engaging with your network on LinkedIn you are missing opportunities to build your awareness, authority, and simply engage in conversation with those you are connected to. The key to leveraging those opportunities are these 7 tips for getting your LinkedIn posts read.
Before I you read the 7 tips, I think I need to back up and explain WHY you want to share a post in the first place. Hopefully, you joined LinkedIn to build your professional brand, network or a new job, create awareness for your product or service, make connections with prospects, referral partners or colleagues.
With that said, if you took the time to create a dynamic LinkedIn profile that stands out, then the next step is to show up and network based on your objective for being on LinkedIn in the first place.
Establish a LinkedIn Strategy
Whether you are looking to change jobs or prospect for customers you want to establish a strategy to build awareness for you or your service.Just hoping someone will find you is simply not enough. I relate that to being a name collector which is someone who sends and receives invitations to connect but never does anything to build a true network.
Your Network is your Net Worth
When you build a network of meaningful connections, they will be interested in what you have to say. If you have positioned yourself with expertise in your field, then those connections will come to expect content or comments that support your expertise.
Develop an Engagement Strategy
First, why should you be engaged versus doing nothing at all or being a lurker? The answer is simple – you want to be influential within your niche and you want to stay top of mind with the people in your network.
Part of an engagement strategy should include posting status updates to your network from the home page. There is some strategy that goes along with posting because first you need to know how to play the LinkedIn algorithm game and second you want to post interesting content people actually care about and are not self-promotional.
Here are a few other tips to consider before your next ‘status update post’
1. It seems that the longer the text you writeperforms the best which means you get more views which leads to likes and comments. You want the text to be long enough until you notice the ‘see more…’ indicating your text continues.
2. When you upload an image to accompany your post, be sure you still have included enough text to trigger the ‘see more’
3. LinkedIn’s algorithm doesn’t seem to prefer posts with a link because you are taking the reader off their site. Some of my colleagues are suggesting you put your link in the comments field instead. I suggest you test this both ways – at the bottom of the post and then as a comment after you post.
4. So far it looks like the new Native Video is getting the best results. The viewer must be on the post for at least 3 seconds to constitute a view. If you upload a You Tube link they also count toward views.
5. Don’t make the mistake of posting just to show up. Be more thoughtful.
Is your post interesting, relevant and maybe even humorous?
6. Always reply to any comments and try to keep the interest of the post going by asking a question back to your commenter.
7. @tag people in posts or comments if it makes sense. It is not necessary to @tag everyone.
LinkedIn rewards activity. That means the more actively engaged you are on their site, your content will be shared/shown to more of your network. Therefore, it is worth the effort to be consistent and engaged resulting in more top of mind presence for you.
Remember, you are missing opportunities to build your awareness, authority, and simply engage in conversation with those you are connected to by ignoring your network.