Description

If you are using social media to promote your business, you might get frustrated from time to time.  You think of something wonderful to post online and write it out carefully, checking your spelling and grammar.  Choose a nice photo to go with it and post it.  Away it goes, into the ether.  And you wait to see if anyone will click like.  Or comment.  Or even better, send you a message via messenger or email. 

But all you get is crickets.

And in the meantime, you see other people posting stuff that regularly seems to get huge engagement. But they are saying the same thing as you!  Aren’t they?

The focus of today’s podcast is to discuss all the weird and wonderful hacks that people use,  with the belief that it will boost their engagement on LinkedIn.

Before we dive in though,  I want to let you know the real way to get engagement on LinkedIn.  

1.  Identify who you are talking to
2. Share something that starts a conversation or helps them in some way
3. Always have a call to action – ask a question or spur some sort of action after they read your post
4. Engage with other people’s posts  

I have been working with an amazing client recently on a series of linkedin strategy sessions.  At the end of each hour, we discuss ‘homework’.   This varies for each individual client (as does the training – it depends on what you need help or strategy on!).  My client’s homework was to write an article for LinkedIn that spoke directly to her ideal client.   Within 2 hours of posting this article, she has already received three comments.  Which is fantastic for a LinkedIn article in 2020.  I expect many more people will leave their thoughts in response to this piece during the next few weeks.  

I don’t believe in hacking the system.  You can use any or all of the following tricks that people suggest but if you share genuine content that your audience is interested in, you will win business on LinkedIn.   Being aware of what works for you is not a hack – I think learning how a social media platform works, what works ON it, and measuring your results is a far better use of your time. 

1.   Some suggest using hashtags that are not relevant to your post e.g. hashtag#innovation

Innovation has 38 million followers. 

However – my work is NOT about innovation. And interestingly, I did attract the attention of some linkedin users to comment on my post, who are not in my network and after they posted, I was pretty sure I won’t be adding them any time soon! 

I recommend you choose hashtags that relate to what you are saying – then someone who follows that hashtag is much more likely to be interested in, and engage with, your content. 

This is a highly debated topic amongst LinkedIn users.  Some will publish their post and go back to edit it, and add in the link.   Others will put links in the comments.  

Why does it matter?

The theory is that the algorithm doesn’t like you sharing content that takes the reader off LinkedIn. I actually wonder does the reader decide he/she doesn’t want to go off linkedin!  IF you consider the high volume of people accessing social media through mobile apps n (57% of linkedin users),  they are scrolling through the posts on that platform and it would take a high interest story to take them to another site.  

Gary Gleeson made the following point - . I have tried putting the link in the comments and the reach does increase, but I still prefer to post using...