PSA for Marketers Using LinkedIn: A Handful of Tips
Inspired by seeing a half-successful content marketing effort on LinkedIn. I had made the same mistake in the past. Seeing someone else make it made me realize what I did wrong.
PSA for Marketing asking employees to reshare content: GIVE THEM OPTIONS!
Over the past few days I've seen 20 (and counting) employees from a moderately large software vendor share the exact same post from their profiles.
It's really good information; valuable decision-making content for this company's existing and potential customers based on rock-solid research.
On the one hand, congrats to their marketing team for getting employees to share this information.
At various stops in my career, I had a hard time getting the AUTHORs to share what they wrote! Much less anything they never touched and doesn't directly fluff their egos.
On the other hand . . . maybe a wee bit of variation? Give 6 folks one option, a half dozen a different one? Or give them the freedom to tweak the post and put their spin on it. Most of the employees sharing are involved in the actual doing of what the research covers. They probably have great insights to add.
Or give them a couple of different variations or different stats to use so there's some variation (and with different angles shared, might realize the angle you didn't think your potential customers would be interested in is the one they ARE interested in.)
And coach them not to share the link in the post, but in the comments. Just eyeballing some of the profiles, they've probably cut their potential reach by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of impressions.
10 Tips to Expand Your LinkedIn Visibility
Here’s what’s starting to work for me and a handful of company pages I manage.
Stop sharing just a link and the article title. It adds zero value for someone scrolling. Every once in a while, there will be a title that grabs attention, but most of these receive fewer than 10 impressions (essentially zero). LinkedIn restricts ANYTHING with a link.
Don't add links in a post. Add them in the comments. LinkedIn, like every other platform, wants to keep people on the site as long as possible. They gotta sell ads, after all!
Think of each post on LI as a mini-blog in and off itself. Add value in the post itself - a quick thought, 3 bullet points, or just embed a short blog as the LI post (you don't drive traffic to your website via LI today anyway).
Formatting - NO LONG BLOCKS OF TEXT. Ignore what your 3rd grade grammar teacher said. Paragraphs can be a single sentence. Or single word. Word. See? Don't have anything more than 3 lines in a LI post because most folks read on their phone. (FYI, this also applies to blogs and newsletters!) And try to avoid widows — that’s a lonely word at the end of a sentence as a single line. That’s different than using a single word sentence on it’s own line.
Comments extend reach. When someone reshares and tags you, comment on that post. Comments are signals of quality. Don't be lazy. Add value, not just "Agreed." Don't be boring and useless.
Bonus: works on every other social platform; past, present, and future.
Reply to comments on anything you post.
Tagging folks is a game of chance. If they respond, it amplifies your reach. They don't, LinkedIn takes that as a signal that you're spamming and constricts your reach. So if you DO tag someone, let them know in advance/send them the link when you publish so they can do their thing.
Sharing is caring, but it doesn't move the needle. Comments are more valuable. I’ll still share something I really like, but comments do seem to be most helpful here.
Attaching images. Used well, they can serve as a great hook. They also take up more space as folks are flipping through their feed, giving that extra fraction of a second for them to register you and read.
Carousels. I think of these as ebook clif notes. Short, punchy distillations of a topic over 6 to 12ish PDF pages. Canva is a great, free way to create these. I’m waaaaaaaay far away from being a designer. I can create these and they don’t suck. I’m experimenting to find what grabs folks' attention.
Hashtags. I “grew up” on Twitter. Hashtags were fun and the only way to sort through the deluge to find interesting topics. Then search tech behind the scenes got better, so hashtags are no longer needed for that sorting. I still kinda like them for the IT space. Some folks say they suck, others say they work. I think they fall into the "don't hurt, might help" category of things until I find out definitively one way or the other.
If you’re going to ignore anything in this, feel free to ignore this.
Oh. Yeah.
Be yourself. Have a personality. Don’t just be a corporate drone.
What’s your experience on LinkedIn? Anything in particular working well or poorly for you? Share below, a rising tide lifts all of us.