LinkedIn will never be as popular as Facebook and Instagram. Although it has almost 700 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide, it will never be as trendy and attractive as some other social networks around. That’s because it doesn’t need to be. The quality of leads from LinkedIn is much higher for B2B businesses than from any other network.
If you’re looking for a way to give your content more exposure, LinkedIn is the place for you.
Getting your content in front of the right people
As most research shows, although most social shares do come from youth-centric social networks, most traffic to business websites comes straight from LinkedIn. That’s because LinkedIn users use the network in order to discover interesting content.
The network doesn’t aim to simply entertain but to connect real business people. Of course, that doesn’t mean that LinkedIn’s user base is only made up of old business executives. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The vast majority of LinkedIn users are quite young. As a matter of fact, a 2019 Pew Research study has concluded that more than 60% of LinkedIn users fall into the 25-to-34 year old demographic.
With all of that in mind, most of us will agree that LinkedIn is a great place to promote content. However, you need to know how to do it.
How to Get More Views With Your Content
If you’re familiar with LinkedIn’s algorithm at all, you know that it changes a lot. Most of the time, the programmers deploy huge changes to the algorithm without any warning. That’s why you should avoid using novel content promotion tactics and stick to ones that have worked for years.
Below are five steps you should follow in order to boost your exposure on LinkedIn and get more eyes on your content.
1. Make sure your posts have the correct format
While networks like Twitter are perfect for users with short attention spans, LinkedIn allows you to indulge in your writing a bit more. Different users prefer different content types and lengths, so you need to experiment a little.
You should try both long-form and short-form writing to see which one engages your followers more. Once you see the results, you can start planning your content strategy more carefully.
But the important thing to keep in mind is that you also need to nail the format. For instance, whether your content is long or short, you should try using bullet points in your posts as much as possible. That way, you’ll be able to stand out on the timeline and catch the eye of users.
2. Optimize your content for mobile screens
What many people fail to realize is that not all people use the same phone to consume content. Also, not all social networks process images and text in the same way. That means you need to make an effort to optimize your content strictly for LinkedIn.
When it comes to sharing articles and links, there’s going to be an image preview. You want people to see that preview correctly. Use images with an aspect ratio of 1.91:1, according to Buffer.
If you plan on including lots of images in your content, you need to start thinking about the resolutions you use too. When it comes to image size, according to Hootsuite research, 1200 x 628 is the ideal size for your blog posts.
3. Put the Link to Your Website in the Post Comment
Before we continue, we need to explain one thing: LinkedIn penalizes content that directs users away from their platform (i.e. links to external sites). This doesn’t mean you should avoid putting links in your updates altogether. Far from it, actually. Data collected by QuickSprout clearly shows that including links in your updates can increase your engagement by almost 400%.
The goal is not to look overly promotional and put the links where the LinkedIn bots can’t find them, – in the comments below your post.
4. Encourage Comments and Reply to Every Single One
Of course, you should always encourage your users to comment on your posts. Every single video on YouTube constantly tries to lure you to subscribe, like, and comment, right? Encouraging engagement is a given on any social network, sure.
However, when it comes to LinkedIn, comments are especially important. Did you know that you can actually go viral on LinkedIn if enough people comment on your post?
The more people comment on a post, the more see it. Encourage discussion on every single post and make sure to replay to as many comments as possible. That way, people who want to have a chat with you will feel more encouraged to comment and LinkedIn favors this highly in their engagement algorithm.
5. Start Leveraging Group Chats to Boost Engagement
Recently, LinkedIn started allowing people to create group chats like Facebook. While this may not seem like a huge deal, the function can be used for promotion if done correctly.
For example, you can create a group with former colleagues, share your content with them, and ask for feedback. That way, you’ll be able to know how many of them actually have read your posts. Plus you’ll have the opportunity to discuss it with them in great detail.
You can also create group chats with influencers from your industry and ask them for their opinion. If they like it, you can send them your material on a regular basis.
Conclusion
Those are just a couple of things you can do to get more people to read and interact with your content on LinkedIn. Of course, these aren’t the only tactics available — these are just the ones we think are the most effective. Which one should you focus on? Well, you should leverage all of them as much as possible, but you don’t have to implement these tactics all at once. Just work through them step by step. Combine all of these tactics, experiment and after a while, you’ll start seeing results.
