So you’ve put in the hard work by creating content for your LinkedIn page, but somehow those engagements which are the lifeline that your business or career need to gain exposure are not just coming through. Honestly, it can be discouraging, to say the least, but what can one do to increase the level of engagement that a post gets on LinkedIn? I’m guessing that’s why you’re here. Well, congratulations because you’ve come to the right source as the tables are about to turn.
The first question that you need to ask yourself is how engaging your posts are? This is an important question and step in the right direction because an engaging LinkedIn post is the kind of content that makes your visitors check your profile and want to know more about what you do.
Below are five tips that you'll need to start practising today to increase the level of engagement on your post.
Before we dive deeper into this, let’s ensure you know the difference between LinkedIn posts and articles.
A post is a short status update that is displayed on the LinkedIn home feed. LinkedIn posts usually fall between 800 to 1,300 characters, while a LinkedIn article is a long piece of writing that can get up to 100,000 characters. Therefore, to increase your engagement rate, you need to publish both valuable posts and articles consistently. The reason is that LinkedIn counts the views for each post differently from every article that is published. While the view on a post is counted whenever it appears in someone's home feed, an article's view will only count whenever someone clicks and reads through the article. In other words, this means that whether the content of a LinkedIn post was read or not, the views will increase by simply popping up on someone's page. But the same does not apply for articles as the visitor will need to open and read through before the view is counted.
With what we've explained, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you anymore if you see your posts doing better than your articles. To increase the number of views on your articles, you will need to be consistent and ensure that the article's content is informative and engaging. That's the only way you will save someone through the stress and time opening and reading an article that he would have spent reading through a couple of posts. Publishing posts may have advantages that might favour the content owner more than articles, but this isn't a constant as coaches and consultants can use articles to demonstrate their authority and expertise.
Anyone can easily claim they are an expert just about anything on their LinkedIn profile, but the real challenge is proving you are truly the expert you claim through your content. One certain way to position yourself as the expert you claim you are is by constantly publishing valuable content that solves some of your clients' are experiencing. This will automatically set you apart from the crowd. In addition, engagement for most social media platforms is what many people use to measure success. So you might notice that someone might judge a post as being successful based on comment instead of views. Either way, they still count.
Text-only posts over time have proven to perform better than almost every other content format that is available on social media. You can also make these text-only posts appear more visually appealing by including either emojis or bullet points.
While this strategy might come in handy, repeating the same type of content to increase engagement is one thing you should avoid. Instead of repeating content, switch things up by mixing some images and videos.
Consistency always pays in whatever we chose to do. But publishing randomly to increase views and engagements will only result in you losing followers.
The best way to increase engagement on your LinkedIn post is by publishing content that people care about.
Below are four styles of post that you can experiment with to get more engagement on LinkedIn.
- The review post
This is the kind of post that allows you to review your client’s experience on how you could help them. While doing this, you can decide to tag other people that have been a part of the experience. It will also help increase the number of views that you will receive on your LinkedIn posts. Tagging people to a post is one sure way of increasing the level of engagement that you will receive on your LinkedIn post. It would be best if you aimed at tagging at least three to five people on every post. But, again, you should avoid overdoing it as it can quickly move from being fun to being irritating.
Another thing you should have in mind is that you should tag only those that you feel will contribute to the topic. Also, you can spice things up by not tagging the same set of people on every post you make.
- The appreciation post
The appreciation post is where you get to reflect on some positive experiences that you've encountered, which allows you to show your clients how to help them. Some of these experiences could be a recent speaking gig, a project that you have been working on for a while, or a workshop that you've done in the past. You can also tag other participants that you shared a similar experience.
Next,
- The ‘behind-the-scenes’ post
This is where you get the chance to display some behind-the-scenes of your business. For example, if you run a floristry business, you can share videos of you making a bouquet for your clients. If you are into event planning, you can share pictures or videos of your team setting up equipment for an event.
- The ‘grenade’ post
Last but not least is the grenade post. This is where you get to post controversial topics that you know will get people talking. Grenade post is not for the faint-hearted, but they are efficient. Also, have it in mind that many people may not agree with you, and some may react negatively about your post, but they will give your views a big boost. Grenade posts might be effective, but you should use them sparingly. Say, once in two or three months because the moment it's abused, it could backfire.
LinkedIn Videos are also essential when it comes to increasing your views. Sometimes people get it wrong by posting a video on other social networks and sharing the link on LinkedIn. This is not a crime, but it's not an advisable approach to increase traffic as over 50% of the people that will come across such links will skip to the next. Another thing you should know is that LinkedIn's algorithm favours posts that are directly published on LinkedIn over those from a different source. If you must use links from external sources, then you can include them in the comment section as they won't affect your algorithm.
It's easy to think that you solely need to channel all your attention on your feed to increase the views and level of engagement on LinkedIn. But it's not the only way to grow your account. The saying, do unto others what you will like them to do unto you, is applicable in real life and on social media. If you want others to check, like, and comment on your post, then you should do the same on their feeds. By adding value to others, it will encourage them to reciprocate the same. Remember that it's called social media for a reason and a good rule of thumb that you can try, especially when you're new, is to like and comment on at least ten posts before you publish yours. Then, again, never forget to respond to other people's comments on your post.
Like most social media platforms, LinkedIn tends to favour a majority of the comments made in the first hour after publishing. Even if you're not available to respond to comments immediately, they are made, hover around the post and respond as soon as you can. Another strategy you can use is not responding to all the comments at once. You can choose to respond to them in an interval of one to two hours as this will let the LinkedIn algorithm know that your post is active and engaging. This will equally increase the probability of it appearing in other people's feeds.
CONCLUSION
These are some effective strategies that you can adopt to increase the number of views your LinkedIn posts receive.
If you’re new to LinkedIn, you should aim at posting once or twice every week. But as soon as your account starts generating the desired traffic and attention, strive to be more consistent as it would pay off in due time.
We additionally suggest the following article on:
2. Professional Content Marketing Tips: The Best Time to Post
3. 3 Things You Should Know About Using LinkedIn Content Marketing
