Start Doing These 4 Things to Generate a Positive ROI With Your LinkedIn Efforts
Every single day, you come across LinkedIn posts from people you don’t know with thousands of ‘reactions’. These posts are often informational, inspirational, or even just work-related memes. You wonder – how did they end up on your timeline? Regardless, you now find yourself reading through a three paragraph novel about how five day work weeks are a thing of the past.
Achieving such massive reach on a business-oriented social media platform is incredibly valuable. Nobody can expect to reach tens of thousands of people with every single update they make, but everybody can take advantage of some simple tactics to increase their chances of reaching a valuable audience and growing their network.
Here’s some simple, yet incredibly powerful practices that you can begin implementing to end up on a stranger’s timeline sooner than later.
Curate you news feeds (outside of LinkedIn)
Websites like Feedly and Pulse News are content aggregators that allow you to curate your own feed of content. What sort of news and information are you interested in sharing with your professional network? This is your opportunity to share internet gems and start conversations that your connections may not otherwise discover.
Include Rich Media When Possible
On average, posts that include some sort of rich media like images or video are 80% more likely to be read. Comments (engagement) are extremely valuable in the eyes of the LinkedIn algorithm. If you’re looking for some rich media inspiration, check out our gallery.
Pay to Play
‘Sponsored Posts’ allow you to reach more people with your content by paying LinkedIn and other social media platforms. They also allow you to choose the industry, position, etc. of the people you are promoting your content towards. This allows for more strategy than the ‘shotgun’ approach taken with normal organic posting.
If you really are putting time and effort into LinkedIn, then that energy is wasted if nobody sees it. What’s $10 – $20 per month to get your content in front of people who may find it valuable and want to do business with you? Identify the sort of content that has resonated with your audience in the past, and experiment with throwing a few dollars behind them. Use these insights to generate new ideas going forward. This is advertising 101.
Game the Algorithm
For better or worse, social media algorithms control how your content reaches people.
A key metric for Linkedin’s algorithm is engagement. How many people engage with your post is huge, especially within the first few minutes of posting. Early engagement lets the algorithm know that people find your post interesting and will prompt them to show it to more people. Beyond posting meaningful and interesting content, a great way to generate engagement is to ask questions and respond to all comments
Another aspect these algorithms take into consideration is consistency. Find a posting frequency that you think you can stick to, and be consistent with it. A good rule to follow here is starting small – you can always scale frequency up, but try to avoid scaling it back. Note: wasting people’s time with BS filler content does not count.
You’re a Publisher – Start Acting Like It.
Finally, a tip that should be super obvious, but seems to fall on deaf ears. Share relevant content that people may actually find interesting or useful.
The days of simply sharing a company update and expecting engagement are over. If you’re sharing something with your connections, what is your ‘why’? Add context and share your thoughts.
Let’s begin taking this opportunity more seriously.
To learn more about media distribution, creative advertising, and all else digital marketing, give Bedrock Media a follow on social media!