Author: Logan Lopus, Senior Marketing Strategist
LinkedIn is the largest professional social media platform today. LinkedIn ranges from finding a job, posting on the job boards, recruiting, networking, and marketing for your business. This blog will focus on posts and using the algorithm to your advantage to increase reach. These tips can help you get more value out of your time when posting and optimizing your posts.
Table of Contents
Curating the Perfect Post
When you are posting on LinkedIn, it’s important to include features that will boost your performance. LinkedIn will “test” your post with a focus group in your network when you first post your content. If it does well, it will boost the post and share with another group of connections. If your account is not complete or you are breaking the algorithm (we will touch on this later in the article), LinkedIn will hide your post and demote it. So, to try and succeed through the initial “test” with the focus group of your network, include the right kind of content and follow the rules to try and create engagement. 
These rules start with the written content of a post, it should not exceed three lines. After the three lines of text, the text will be cut off with a “…see more”. If your post will exceed the three lines, try to grab the attention of your reader before the text is cut off. Next, adding an image to your post can generate twice as many comments compared to a text post. Images you can upload include PDFs, PowerPoints, and SlideShare Presentations, all great options to create custom content. Try to avoid using stock images and aim for images that are custom for your brand. Another kind of content you can use is videos, as videos see 5x engagement compared to all other types of content. If you are posting a video, remember to enable closed captions so more people can view your video. Another part of the perfect post is hashtags, when too many are used LinkedIn could identify your post as spam and demote it. Try to stick to three, but five should be the absolute maximum. Have the hashtags relate directly to your post and brand to optimize your reach.
Algorithm or Bust
Posting blindly on any social media platform is a waste of time for you and your company. That is why understanding how a platform ranks posts can help boost your content. LinkedIn’s current algorithm ranks content on signals it receives from posts. These signals can be anything from personal connections, interest relevance, and engagement probability. Those seem like very broad signals the algorithm receives but there are ways to tailor a post that feeds into those signals. To rank with personal connections, it is important to engage with people who follow you and are connected to you. You can do this by naming the audience you want to reach like, “Calling all Dog Lovers!” Not only does this technique create a more personal connection, but it increases the interest relevance with your target audience. Creating a post with the criteria talked about in the above section increases the ranking and the engagement probability. The algorithm demotes and promotes different kinds of posts depending on how you share your content. Below are the different types of posting and how to work around the algorithm demoting your post or how to promote a post. 
Overall
Posting on social media is more than just creating a caption and posting it. There are many rules with platforms on what works with their algorithm vs. what breaks the formula. Don’t find yourself posting aimlessly with no direction or plan, all that results in is wasting time and effort. LinkedIn has many different uses whether that be personal or for your company, so guarantee your success by implementing these tips and tricks to optimize your posting.
Recent Comments