LinkedIn is a the great white space in social media at the moment, combining great reach with a natural environment for individuals to talk shop as themselves, not as the company brand or logo. LinkedIn, as with all social media platforms, is continually evolving. In this post we look at where LinkedIn is at, where it seems to be heading and what it means for what you should and shouldn’t be doing on the platform.
“It’s all about video”, “people don’t watch video on LinkedIn”, “LinkedIn articles are the way to go” – if this sounds like the conflicting advice you receive about LinkedIn don’t worry you are not the only one. Generally, the best rule is to create content that you are good at making. The content that gets the most reach might be videos but that may change, perhaps LinkedIn will start giving preferential treatment to LinkedIn articles. However, no amount of the in-depth analysis matters if the content is not good; play to your strengths. Don’t feel compelled to write if that is not what you are good at and don’t force yourself to step in front of a camera just to get the most from the algorithm. The key is to not try to guess what format the algorithm is rewarding and focus on providing value.
The jury is still out on whether any particular content format gets preferential treatment but what we do know is LinkedIn wants content that drives engagement in an authentic way and creates meaningful conversations – not a repost of a popular video or one of those clearly untrue “I hired a homeless person and two years later they are the second highest paid person in the company” posts. Are you reposting popular content in the same way as the popular meme accounts of Instagram? Stop. LinkedIn wants real authentic conversation, don’t leave it too late to correct course and have the LinkedIn algorithm strip away your engagement.
LinkedIn has saw those with larger followings receive disproportionate reach compared to those with fewer but recent updates on the platform are rebalancing this. LinkedIn wants to keep its user base and knows that some may abandon ship if they cannot see benefit in posting on the platform. However LinkedIn also knows filling someone’s feed with poor content won’t help the platforms so don’t expect new updates to give you better reach if your content isn’t of the required standard.
Even the best, most valuable content won’t work if it doesn’t grasp people’s attention. You don’t have a lot of time to convince someone to continue reading or watching your post, make the first line of your copy stand out and include subtitles in your videos so that people can immediately see if the post is relevant to them.
If you implement all the advice mentioned so far in this post you will likely see an increase in engagement on your posts. When people comment on your posts, reply, keep the conversation going. It’s an easy way to keep people on the platform and please the algorithm whilst building relationships that can drive real-world business results.
A common complaint of social media marketing is that it doesn’t work for B2B and whilst it is untrue some people just cannot see themselves growing a B2B business through Facebook or Instagram but they are more willing to accept LinkedIn could work for them. The next step is making sure it does work, paying attention to the platform’s nuances without overthinking it and focusing on putting out good content and engaging with their audience and connections.
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