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Get your LinkedIn posts to go further and grow your brand
LinkedIn is a mercurial social network. Those individuals that crack it can grow their profile dramatically. But sometimes it seems impossible to see why some posts gain traction while yours languish on a handful of likes and a few AI-generated comments.
The good news is that there is a formula for this.
The accounts you see with thousands of followers, that seemingly get hundreds of likes and comments on every post have worked it out. It’s not easy by any means, but there is a blueprint.
In this article, we’re sharing the key steps to gaining traction on your individual LinkedIn posts and your account overall. But first…
LinkedIn is still a unique platform in that it’s where professionals go to engage, create content, and develop their business. On no other major social network can you see someone’s employment, career history, skills, achievements, business updates and personal-development-related content, all in one place.
LinkedIn should be a goldmine of opportunity to grow your personal brand and generate interest in your services, especially if you are a coach, consultant or influential thought-leader. Individuals that have swelled their account to the thousands and tens of thousands are inundated with enquiries.
Okay, so you might be here because you’re trying to make LinkedIn work. You see the potential for your business and you know you need to turn up and share in order to be seen. You’re spending hours each week on the content grind…
But things just aren’t happening.
First let’s look at how posts generate interest, engagement and ultimately get shown to your target audience. Then, we’re going to look at how to actually turn it around and put things on an upward trajectory.
Like all social networks, LinkedIn uses an algorithm that determines whose content is shown to whom. This algorithm is designed to make LinkedIn an interesting and value space for all of its users.
Remember, the vast majority of LinkedIn users don’t post much content; they’re there to consume content. So LinkedIn’s job is to make the content someone sees on their feed as relevant and valuable as possible.
The LinkedIn algorithm is how it does that. It combines a huge number of variables to determine who sees what, including whether someone is a follower of the sharing account, when they became a follower, what interaction has happened on the sharing account recently, what the scrolling account has interacted with recently.
Engagement on the post plays a huge role too. How many people are seeing a post and engaging with it? What is the nature of that engagement? This all signals to LinkedIn who the content is relevant for and the quality of that content.
When posts gain traction, the LinkedIn account that shared it gains followers. These fresh new followers are primed to be shown the next pieces of content from that account. This means the reach of new posts will be higher.
The more content gets seen, the more likely it is to find an audience that resonates with it. When these individuals engage, it sends clear signals to LinkedIn about its value so it’s shown to more of these people.
With all this real-time feedback about what content works to grow their account, individuals can keep improving their content, gaining more and more traction each time. Now they can consistently grow their account and, before you know it, they have tens of thousands of followers.
So what does this all mean for you?
If your LinkedIn updates aren’t going anywhere as near as far as you want, there are good reasons. Having read this far, you might have some ideas. Here are the most common reasons:
Your network is stale: you’ve been on LinkedIn for a decade but have only made 10 new connections this year. To them, you’re old news and 90% of your audience is here for a previous version of you.
Your content doesn’t resonate: maybe it isn’t relevant or simply lacks value for people in your audience.
Your content isn’t formatted correctly: even if it’s relevant and valuable, if you’re not structuring your posts properly, people will scroll on by.
You’re not engaging with other peoples’ content: LinkedIn rewards active accounts; active community members. Only using LinkedIn to post your own stuff isn’t a good look and this bears out in the data.
You’re too inconsistent: posting consistently is what your audience expects and what LinkedIn wants. It’s better to post 2x per week forever than 5x per week every now and again when you feel like it.
So let’s fix all this.
This sounds really simple, but do not overlook this detail. The truth is that in order for your content to gain traction it must secure engagement in the form of comments, likes and shares. But this ONLY happens if the content resonates deeply with those shown the post.
This means you need to really understand your audience; what they like, what annoys them, what they aspire to, what they fear. It’s not a case of defining their demographics. You have to do better than that.
There are four powerful drivers of engagement for LinkedIn. This is true for all businesses and professionals, but especially those in the coaching and consultancy space. That’s because you can show you understand your clients on a fundamental level and, therefore, you can help them.
If you can define these four areas for your ideal customer profile, this forms the basis of the content you should share on LinkedIn.
Dreams: these are the deepest desires and ambitions of your audience. Knowing exactly what they want to achieve, what they dream life looks like, means you can share content aligned with that vision or that can help them get there.
Fears: fear is powerful. Many of us have a fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of losing it all. But there will be fears that are specific to your audience. Addressing them and alleviating them will keep them engrossed.
Beliefs: beliefs reflect people’s values, how they see the world, and what they say and do. Championing the beliefs of your core audience members is a great way to gain attention and traction. Not only will your content align with their beliefs, but they’ll want to show they agree too.
Knowledge gaps: this is literally information you have that would massively help your audience, but most of them simply don’t know it. Understanding these gaps gives you a goldmine of content ideas.
Think, reflect, research, even ask some audience members about these four areas. These will form the basis of your LinkedIn content. On to step 2.
Now you know the topics that will resonate with your audience, you need to craft posts the right way. This is honestly the difference between your content landing well and being ignored.
Even if the content is great. Even if it’s well worded, well thought out and has a nice picture, if it’s not in the right structure for LinkedIn, it won’t work. Remember, your content has to compel someone to take action on that post to signal to the LinkedIn algorithm that it’s valuable and should be shown to more relevant people.
The most important part of any written communication online is the hook. That’s the very first line of the post. This is literally what “hooks” the attention of the scrolling reader (or not!). Check out these LinkedIn hook templates for a start.
Good hooks are usually short (seven or fewer words) sentences that pique the interest of the reader by hitting on one of the four content areas discussed and creating an information gap. This is then followed by a deepening line, that adds a little more context but still leaves intrigue.
The hook and deepener essentially get a reader to stop scrolling and actually read the body of the post; where you’ll deliver value to them. This will be helping them achieve their dreams, addressing a fear, championing their beliefs or filling in a knowledge gap.
This section of the post is nearly always best delivered in bullet points. These can be very short (just a few words) or longer (up to a couple of sentences) if they’re providing more information. Usually between three and seven point work best, with a clear line break between each one.
After delivering your value, you can’t just leave it there. That’s not enough for someone to engage.
First off, you need a hard hitting line that reflects back the beliefs of your audience. This emphasises that you’ve delivered something that matters to them, regardless of which of the four pillars you worked with.
“You’ve only failed if you quit.”
“Business is meant to be hard. You’ve overcome worse than this.”
“If selling widgets was easy, everyone would be a widget millionaire.”
Then you finish with something that makes it easy for someone to comment. It’s a call to action of sorts.
“What’s been your toughest moment of 2024?”
“Who inspires you the most? Tag someone.”
“What’s holding you back?”
This is purely here to attract comments from your network. This is how they’re going to help your post get shown to more and more people.
Want more inspiration for what to post? Check out the 10 types of LinkedIn posts coaches and consultants should share on the platform.
This really is the secret sauce of LinkedIn success. You see, LinkedIn doesn’t just want people to share content and leave. It’s too selfish.
LinkedIn wants people to spend time on the platform and that means spending time reading other people’s content, engaging with it, and commenting on their work too.
To give your content the best chance of success, you need to be active around the time you post. This activity should be on accounts similar to yours in size, nature and target audience. Ideally they’re a little larger than your account.
Make a list of some accounts that fit the bill so it’s easy to find them and comment on their recent activity when you next share. Some people also form engagement groups or pods or formalise their engagement activity, ensuring it’s fair.
It’s also crucial that you don’t “post and ghost”. This means you need to hang around and respond to anyone that comments on your post.
Thank people for their thoughts or ask a follow up question if appropriate. If you get any hate, it’s best to ignore it and don’t feed the trolls (unless you’re prepared for that battle!).
Compound your networking efforts on the platform by giving the best first impression possible. People are seeing your name pop up on posts of people they know – they’re going to check you out to see if you’re worth following or connecting with. Here’s how to optimise your LinkedIn profile (particularly as a coach or consultant-type).
This sounds like the easiest step, but it’s by far the hardest. The truth is that if you’re only just starting this journey, it’s going to be tough for a few weeks.
Remember all those reasons why your content isn’t gaining traction? Some of those factors will still be at play when you begin taking LinkedIn more seriously.
You’ll have stale connections. Some of them might not even use the platform anymore. Many of them will no longer be in your target audience and your new content won’t resonate with them.
If you’ve been posting sub-par content for years, your audience won’t be anticipating anything interesting from you (and neither will the algorithm!). This means you’re going to need to go through those low gears before things begin to snowball.
Creating amazing “thumb-stopping” content doesn’t just happen. You need to give it your best shot and hone it from there.
Which hooks really hit home? What values are your audience really seeking? Can you entice enough people to engage to get on more people’s radars?
It’s an art and a science and it’s going to take some practice to get right. Are you going to push through until you produce consistent results?
Strong LinkedIn growth requires posting regularly. Most LinkedIn pros suggest posting at least five days per week, Monday through Friday, but some advocate every day. Three days per week seems like the minimum if you’re trying to build from a small number of followers (fewer than ~2000) to a moderate-sized account (10,000-20,000+).
When you first decide to give LinkedIn your focus, you’ll easily be able to post three or five times per week. You’ll carve out the time needed, spending an hour each day crafting your post and engaging with fellow accounts. But when the post ideas dry up and ‘real work’ gets in the way, will you still find the time to make LinkedIn a priority?
Make a posting schedule and block out time each week for post ideation and seeing which content works for other accounts. Over time, you may find writing posts becomes easier as you begin to think in that structure.
The good news is that there are tools you can use to make life easier on LinkedIn. Here are our top five.
ChatGPT is unlikely to write great LinkedIn posts for you, but where it excels is ideation and co-creation. It’s perfect for discussing those dreams, fears, beliefs and knowledge gaps and coming up with topic for content. This saves time and also helps you come up with ideas you’d never have thought of.
Yes, our tool makes our list! That’s because we literally designed and built a tool within Coachvox to create LinkedIn posts in the right format for the platform. Use the dropdown to choose a post type and complete the simple text fields. This will provide you with three post options to choose from that are written in your style.
Learn how you can create an AI coach with Coachvox.
It’s far easier to batch your content than having to wake up and decide what you’re going to post that day. Other scheduling tools are available but LinkedIn’s own works fine and there is less chance something won’t work.
Having a day a week where you schedule that week’s content is perfect. Any ideas for posts you come up with, add them to your post creation task so you have ideas to work with straight away. Diarise when your posts are scheduled so you know exactly when to do your interaction.
LinkedIn is a powerful social network and those that have built a strong presence are reaping the rewards. Recognising why your posts aren’t gaining traction then following the 5 steps to success will set you on your way.
There aren’t secrets to LinkedIn; there are proven methods. But do not underestimate the focus and effort required to make this work. Good luck!
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