In our last post we looked at how to freshen up your LinkedIn profile to drive better engagement from LinkedIn during lockdown.
Much of what was explained was aimed at how to take your LinkedIn profile from ugly duckling to, well, you know...
Without further ado - now let's take look at your LinkedIn Content!
A lot of your general day-to-day LinkedIn engagement, profile views and positive networking outcomes, will be as a result of your being both reactive and pro-active around LinkedIn content.
Reactive
When you go onto your LinkedIn home screen, you'll notice the newsfeed - this is mainly a collection of articles and posts coming from your own personal network of connections, and the groups you have membership to - the larger your network, the bigger and faster moving your newsfeed.
When it comes to your activity - a general rule of thumb on LinkedIn is - little and often.
Aim to dedicate around 20-30 mins during your day to scroll through newsfeed posts, then...
This is typically well received as it's showing the author that you value their views and opinions, moreover, it offers you a platform to share your own ideas and insights based on your experiences and expertise - which will help raise your personal brand and industry credibility - you may even gain some fans and followers along the way...
Pro-active
Rather than waiting for the content to come to you so that you can like, comment and share - start creating your own content.
Most LinkedIn content starts off life as either a website blog or LinkedIn Pulse article - the latter being preferred by the platform (+ the LinkedIn Pulse articles you've written can be showcased on your LinkedIn profile).
Did you know - LinkedIn drives the highest highest amount of website click-through traffic than any other social platform?
Sharing Third-Party Links
It's not always possible to write your own original content, especially if you're looking to post frequently.
I'd recommend that you discover and share good Third-Party articles daily - there are several tools that can be used to pull together industry article links from multiple sources e.g. Feedly
Writing original content
So, you want to write a LinkedIn Pulse article and you want to know where to start?
Given that you want to write about something that's relevant to yourself, the industry you work in and your audience of connections - I'd suggest that you:
Research what to write about
There are a number of websites who specialise in helping you find what content is trending within your industry - they're simple to use and help give you great ideas for what topics to write about which are going to interest and excite your audience.
Here is just one example BuzzSumo
Start writing your article
Once you've planned what you're going to write about - I'd suggest sticking to the following tried-and-tested post formula that is generally accepted by the industry if you're looking to maximise engagement:
- Create titles between 40 and 49 characters long
- Add up to 8 images
- Make titles ‘helpful’ i.e. Top Tips, How-To’s etc
- Aim to write around 1900 to 2000 words in a post
What time to post
If you're looking to reach other business professionals, I'd recommend scheduling posts either early to hit the commuters, mid-morning breaks or around lunchtime - or if this is too ambiguous, try to post between 8am - 1pm.
I look forward to reading your articles!
