by Do you share content on LinkedIn? Wondering how to publish LinkedIn content that gets more clicks and engagement?
In this article, you'll discover how to develop and share LinkedIn posts people click on.
Content That Works on LinkedIn
People want to know you—your passions, your sense of humor, and what makes you someone worth paying attention to. You have valuable stories to share. You know things, which is why you're doing the work you're doing. Sharing your knowledge, expertise, and experience on LinkedIn can help other people achieve their dreams.
With access to so many people on social platforms, we often get lost in the idea that we have to appeal to a lot of people or even everyone. The best results come when we're true to ourselves, leading other people to find us for what makes us unique and interesting.
You want to develop content for LinkedIn that will appeal to an important group of 500–1,000 people who can make a difference in your business. Don't focus on virality because viral content is either lightning in a bottle that's hard to duplicate or something that gets a lot of marketing push. The volume of quality content over time is the game you can control.
Keep in mind that LinkedIn loves to see two things happen: clicking on a post and staying on the platform. So the core approach is to create content that keeps people clicking inside LinkedIn.
#1: Research Engaging Content Ideas for LinkedIn
Before you create content for LinkedIn, you need to find topics that will engage your audience on the platform. Here are three sites that can help you gauge interest.
Vet Topics With Quora
For content you plan to post on LinkedIn, vet your topics on Quora. This means go to Quora and answer questions that users have posted. When you find a piece of content you like on Quora, you might consider expanding it for a longer-form post on LinkedIn. Pay attention to the questions that come up repeatedly on Quora and aggregate them into LinkedIn posts.
Contribute to HARO
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is an online sourcing service for journalists. They use the site to seek sources on topics they're writing about. It's also a great resource if you want the opportunity to get your expert insights picked up by journalists.
When you sign up for the site (for free), you'll receive daily emails with links to articles that reporters are looking for people to contribute to, as shown in the example below. You can then submit responses to their questions, and if your answers aren't picked up for an article, use those comments as LinkedIn posts.
Answer Questions on Reddit
I'm in subreddits that are relevant to my digital advertising business, and I submit comments on posts that I can expertly speak to. As with Quora, the best of these comments turn into LinkedIn posts.
The benefit of contributing to Reddit in this way is you get a sense of the topics on which you have expert knowledge that other people are looking for. The marketplace defines what users like and don't like, and you have a way of vetting the best content for LinkedIn.
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CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE#2: Publish Longer LinkedIn Posts to Activate the See More Feature
This tactic is straightforward: Write longer posts with no links outside of LinkedIn and no images of any kind. The key is to get the See More link to appear at the bottom of your post, encouraging people to read your entire piece. This counts as a click, which tells LinkedIn your content is engaging.
LinkedIn posts can be about 1,300 characters, or 170 words, which is more than enough space to write a full story, share facts, and define supporting examples for your network to read.
#3: Post 6+ Photos at Once
This is the visual version of See More, where your LinkedIn post shows five photos and a “+1,” “+2,” and so on for more photos to be seen if the user clicks. Each click gives LinkedIn more feedback that your post is engaging and pushes the post to more people.
Here are some ways you could use this feature:
- Share photos from an industry party and tag the people you met as a follow-up to your brief interactions, recreating that sense of togetherness.
- Post six images that tell a full story, where you pair images and short quotes.
- Highlight six brands that are having an impact on your life right now.
Ideally, you want to post your own photos rather than stock photos. And post faces rather than places, buildings, or hands. The reason faces do better is because we're born with a greater capacity to understand faces and less capacity to recognize locations.
#4: Share Valuable PDFs on LinkedIn
It's possible to post PDFs to LinkedIn from the desktop. At first glance, uploading PDFs to LinkedIn may not sound interesting but I think it's currently one of the best-kept LinkedIn secrets. PDFs are click-generating goldmines because each page gives the user a fresh piece of content to click on.
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PDFs are often dry, with small fonts, lots of text, and the potential for a snooze-fest, but you can do much more with them. Try creating PDFs that are visually appealing square canvases with combinations of big bold text, colors, and designed shapes to make the message simple.
This easy-to-consume content is a new way to communicate in a professional environment. Combine a strong central point and supporting facts with decent design elements and easy-to-read text.
Here are some ways to use LinkedIn document sharing:
- Tell an informative story with images and text. If you have five bullet points you want to share, each bullet can be a slide, along with an intro slide, a thank-you slide, and two to three supporting slides scattered throughout.
- Distill podcast knowledge into 10 slides containing the top quotes from the episode.
- Share insights and trends for the upcoming year in your industry.
- Share five industry facts from new research, one in each slide.
#5: Play to the LinkedIn Algorithm
Regardless of the type of content you post on LinkedIn, following these practices can help you get better visibility for that content:
Keep people on LinkedIn. While not a hard-and-fast rule (linking out is fine occasionally), do your best to keep your content on LinkedIn. Don't link out on your posts. Upload videos directly to LinkedIn if they're shorter than 10 minutes, rather than linking to YouTube.
Use up to three hashtags on LinkedIn to get discovered in relevant content channels. The more relevant your content, the more likely people browsing that channel will engage with your content and share it with a larger audience. Make sure you choose hashtags that are relevant to your post.
Engage with your commenters quickly and often. The more engagement, the better your exposure, not to mention the engagement level of your business prospects.
Repost Iterations of Successful Content on LinkedIn
Your LinkedIn posts can always go further. To give them a shot at reaching as many people as possible, repost the content iteratively. Here are three ways to repurpose your posts.
Change the Headline
Simply post the same content three to five times with different headlines. Sometimes one word can make a difference.
Change the Format
Let's say you have a blog post with commentary and stats. You can take a blog post and put some or all of the content in your LinkedIn post, and for the longer-form version, link to the site. Version 1 is a link to the site; version 2 is the content of the blog as a post on LinkedIn; and version 3 may be the same content shown as PDFs with illustrations, screenshots, imagery, stats, and more emphasis on visual design.
Change the Imagery
If you're not getting the views you want on a LinkedIn post, try posting the same copy multiple times with different images. This works because LinkedIn will often push out the post to different people.
The key point of emphasis for LinkedIn, which is now a standard theory for social media properties, is to push out content to people that keeps them engaged. More engagement keeps the user on the platform.
Conclusion
Your industry, network, strengths, and content, when combined, create a unique opportunity for you on LinkedIn. To get the best results from your efforts, keep these points in mind:
What you do well: What do you excel at, both professionally and expressively? Are you better at writing, making video, creating images, or communicating with audio? Share your expertise, journey, experience, and day-to-day reflections.
What the marketplace wants from you: For your LinkedIn posts, you'll see the number of views you get and the types of posts that get you high and low volumes of views. Pay attention to the format (image, video, audio, or writing) and type of content (technical, motivational, experience, memes, educational) that give you the most views and the most engagement.
Also look at the comments and reactions you're getting—what feedback the marketplace as a whole is giving you. There's no need for statistically significant analysis here. Just scroll through your posts and see where you're getting the most reach and engagement and do more of that.
What you like to do: You may be great at something professionally, but if you don't like it, you won't stick with it for long. Similarly, if you're a talented writer, but you prefer to be on video, then be on video. Do what makes you happy because you'll be more likely to stay committed to it long-term.
What do you think? Will you try any of these techniques to get better results from your LinkedIn content? Do you have any tips of your own for getting more clicks on LinkedIn? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
More articles on LinkedIn marketing:
- Learn how to use LinkedIn to build a powerful network.
- Find out how to create and manage a successful LinkedIn group.
- Discover how to use LinkedIn video to acquire more customers.
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