LinkedIn Posts That Work
I have been on LinkedIn for a while and posting regularly for the past few months.
But I am always surprised by what "works" and what doesn't.
Some posts get a lot of traction when I'd have bet everything it wouldn't work.
So I did a little investigating.
Looked at many "influencers" and analyzed what generally works for them.
And I've compiled the list here:
1/ Celebrate
The algorithm loves celebration posts. It works because people in your network want to see you, hear about your achievements and see you succeed. Their “likes” are like a tap on the back saying: “well done!”. Celebrate every milestone.
2/ Inspire
Inspire others with your story. It works much better when talking about your story rather than someone else's. It’s called the “rag to riches” framework. The post doesn’t have to talk about money or success. It can be about overcoming any obstacle really, a fear for example.
3/ Take a stand
Taking a stand against or for something works well because you can rally people who share the same opinion. You give a voice to what a lot of people think.
4/ Lead magnets
I find them a bit annoying, but you know...they work. I am talking about lead magnets. You ask people to comment to get access to gated content.
5/ Ride hot topics
Piggyback on the news or whatever is happening in your industry and voice an opinion. Especially if it’s a hot topic. Be transparent about how you feel about that issue.
6/ Simple how-to’s
Share simple tips & step-by-step guides especially when you have a personal story to back it up.
7/ Carousels
They tend to perform a bit better than other posts. I don’t know why really. Maybe it’s because of the dwell time, meaning the time spent on the post.
Any other type of post I might have missed? Lmk!
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I’ve got a few more types:
The personal milestone post (these do the best):
1 - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikeprivette_defiance-ventures-announces-chief-information-activity-6762369865111105536-Gy-G
2 - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikeprivette_2020-by-the-numbers-from-working-on-fraction-activity-6752018185551130624-9oO1
The data sharing post:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikeprivette_mike-privette-on-twitter-activity-6800452420963971072-WJ9L
I combined that one with asking people to pick Option A or Option B.
New product announcement example:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikeprivette_careers-careercoaching-jobcoach-activity-6785216599038144512-uptj
The give something to the community for free post:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mikeprivette_mikeprivetteawesome-sec-challenges-activity-6770658898195050496-sQmZ
Thanks for adding this! Just followed you there. Great content!
Insightful stuff. I did an experiment where I started posting on LinkedIn every week day for the month of April. Generated around 15K views and followers went up by around 100. I've continued to post (not every day, maybe 3x a week) this month and I'm on track to hit 17.5K-20K.
One thing that you missed that I've had success with too is tagging others in your stories, how to's, stances and tagging businesses.
Often times those who you tag will comment/engage --> seems to fuel the algos a bit!
Congrats on those numbers and you're totally right, tagging does help!
Thanks for sharing! I think you pretty much covered most of what I see on my LI feed :) I'll add that the post format is super important too. Videos and carousels are the best performing content these days. People are sick of clicking on external links (like blog posts for example) so marketers tend to privilege on-app valuable content.
Thanks for your comment. You're totally right about videos and carousels! Yeah about external links they heavily penalize the post anyways. But I've read recently that some people wait for the post to start buzzing then add the external link after. I haven't tried it yet.
This is awesome content. I'm not much of a social media person but I wish someone would do some sort of study of multiple business pages and LinkedIn influencers to get a sense of the data behind these posts. I know there are a lot more manipulating variables that will maybe skew the overall data, including the brand strength of certain figures that will be used in the comparison. It'd still make a good read to me and possibly help people to set personal higher engagement targets.
That's a great idea! Thanks for sharing this
No prob! I'd love your feedback on a 3-part series I'm releasing. I posted part 1 and 2 already. Check them out and tell me what you think and if you agree. Thanks and much appreciated.
In addition to picking an angle, the format of the post also counts a lot. LinkedIn's algorithm is (like all social media algorithms) biased towards posts that keep users on the platform.
So in the past year or so I have seen an important increase in posts that have the following characteristics:
You can see the same kind of stuff on Tik Tok nowadays. At least half the videos I see tell me to "stay until the end", or have a super long boring intro building up suspense for the end, etc.
Absolutely these definitely play a role thanks for adding these different points!
That's cool
Perferct.
It may be just me, but I get a lot of research papers and startup funding announcements in my feed.
There are also those posts which trick you into double clicking. 😑
I get a lot of startup funding announcements as well haha. Not the most valuable content I admit :)
Very cool. I've been trying to be a resource for people - giving people a weekly rundown of what's going to be trending during the week ahead. It did decent last week, going to keep doing it on Mondays. This post is inspiring me to try delivering that rundown in different ways though - maybe via carousels, or inspiration. Thanks for sharing.
Here's what I shared this week. It did decent. Maybe it falls under the "give community something for free" pillar: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/justinmichaelkerby_events-content-socialmediamarketing-activity-6802646739431124992-QSQy
Great job and great content idea Justin, just followed you there.
Well, these are good tips to follow. Please advise how can I get traffic on my site using linked-in? https://outdoorballpro.com/
Tbh, LinkedIn isn't the place, what you need to concentrate in my opinion.
But if you are so particular, you can start following all those basketball players, newbies/beginners/wanna-bees - connect with them & sharing your valuable comments on the posts they make.
Google this search string
'basketball players' site:linkedin.com
& start commenting on those pulse articles, follow those who liked that posts & repeat the process that I mentioned above.
NB: Make sure that your profile is really updated & show your passion towards the spot through different posts, shares etc.
While saying that, out of curiosity I searched this, you are missing out some good amount of traffic since you are not ranked for the keywords,
best basketball shoes
best cheap basketball shoes
best pool basketball hoop
best basketball hoop etc.
There are too many good amount of 'basketball subreddits' that you can drive great traffic. Don't know whether you are active there.
Basically answering people's questions, doubts at any platforms they express will get you laser targeted traffic & sales, no doubt on that.