LinkedIn users numbers and engagement continues to grow.
It’s pretty incredible for this type of platform to be growing this far along in its life. I remember signing up for LinkedIn probably around 2007. I was graduating college and looking to get into the workforce.
Back then it was a curiosity. Shortly after that it seemed to gain wide acceptance. Now it seems to be a fairly normal part of a professional life for many people. Especially those that have changed jobs in recent years.
Obviously there have been some spam issues over the years. But it seems that overall LinkedIn has done a good job to protect its users while also providing a few great professional services including recruiting and sales.
Right now, if you’re in the B2B world or even the B2C world, there is a great opportunity for promoting the content you create on LinkedIn.
Here are a few tips for doing that in 2020…
#1. Native Posting
It doesn’t matter what social platform you’re using, they all prefer native content. In other words, content that is meant to be consumed right on the platform.
You can get some engagement and traffic by sharing links on LinkedIn, but I find that you’ll give more if you share mostly or entirely native content.
It’s what LinkedIn wants. It’s really what the people on LinkedIn want. So why fight those two forces? Just use the content you’re creating right on LinkedIn.
You might not get direct traffic to blog posts or things like that. But you’ll increase your audience and get more indirect traffic like people clicking your homepage link in your profile or googling your brand name or even googling you, seeing your phone number and calling you.
If you create content off of LinkedIn, repurpose it to share natively. From a blog post, create 2-3 snippets to share. You can do the same with video and even with podcasts.
Create full posts on LinkedIn. Create unique posts that you share on LinkedIn.
#2. Frequency
In general, my view is that more is better. Most people don’t share enough on LinkedIn and you can always back off of it if you feel you’re getting negative feedback.
Check out your favorite or the most popular people on LinkedIn and you’ll see that they’re sharing quite often. Probably multiple and even up to 10 or more times per day.
That’s obviously a lot of work, but it’s the frequency that’s needed.
#3. Commenting & Engagement
Another part of promoting the content you create on LinkedIn is commenting and engaging on other content. This helps you build your audience that will lead to more people seeing the content you post.
You can follow industry hashtags on LinkedIn and find content to comment on that way. You can connect with people that you want to target and comment on the content they’re sharing.
If you have a lot to share, maybe comment about 10-20% of the time. If you don’t have a lot of content to share, aim for more than 50% of your time on LinkedIn being spent commenting on other content.
#4. Personal vs. Business
If you have a business it can be a challenge to create enough content for your personal brand and for your business brand. It comes down to what your goals are professionally and what you want to press more.
The other side of this is whether you should share personal-type content on a professional or business platform like LinkedIn. I think it’s good to include some personality on LinkedIn. Personal stories. Things that make you laugh. Maybe not as high of a percentage as you would on a platform like Facebook, but personal is good.
It doesn’t have to be business all the time on LinkedIn. Some of the best selling relationships often include a good dosage of personal information sharing. Interests, hobbies, family, etc.
#5. Connecting & Messaging
The messaging and connecting on LinkedIn is where things can get spammy. You can choose to be choosy with who you connect with. And you can always unconnect with someone if they want to connect and then start getting annoying or aggressive with their sales pitches.
As far as content promotion, it can be good to share your best content with your connections via direct messaging. There is a balance. I think it’s good to try and see how it goes and if you start getting negative feedback then you can back off or try a different approach.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is a great opportunity for promoting content in 2020. Some of the same best practices apply as they always have. There are a few new nuances that come with promoting in 2020. But mostly you’re looking to align your goals with those of LinkedIn and its users. Do that and you’ll likely find the most success.
