5 LinkedIn hacks for social media marketers
Overview
Let’s face it, for a lot of B2B companies, LinkedIn sits front and center of their social media strategy. And it’s crowded in there! To stand out in the right way, a business needs to follow best practices; optimizing content to boost its visibility and success.
Pushing relevant and engaging content to the right people at the right time is no easy feat. One of the key ways to boost performance on LinkedIn is to understand how its algorithms work. Let’s take a closer look.
Most people presume that a new piece of content gets pushed to their entire network straight away. The truth is that on average, only 6-7% of your first-degree network sees your content in the first instance. Say you have 1,000 connections. Imagine, 250 of them have 4,000 connections. To consume all the daily content of 4,000 people in a network takes a long time. At the same time, the people your content is aimed at might not be online when you post it. In the first hour that you push out new content, LinkedIn shows it to a small group of people. Based on how much traction that first hour gets you, impacts further uptake. So shares, likes, and comments in the first hour are really important. Comments are worth more than likes. Having that small group ‘like’ or ‘comment’ on a piece of content increases its visibility within your own first-degree network, as does your response to comments, and the timing of your post – ideally during working hours. Lunchtime is a good time to post. Tagging keywords and people in a post is important. But when it comes to tagging, quality is most definitely better than quantity. Tagging four or more related keywords can have an adverse effect on your post by making it appear spammy to the algorithm, e.g. #emailmarketing, #marketing, #marketingcommunication, #contentmarketing. Pick the most relevant ones and use them, going from broad to niche. Also, be careful about who you tag. If 50% of the people you tag don’t engage with your content, it can have a negative impact. The simple answer is to let them know before that you’re going to tag them to encourage a response. The LinkedIn algorithm puts your post in one of three categories: low, medium, and high quality. Tagging individuals likely to engage with your post is one way to ensure quality. Get their attention by opting for specific topics over broad subjects. Quality includes the obvious: format your content for easy readability, and make sure spelling and grammar are accurate. Avoid clichés such as ‘like’ and ‘subscribe’ but encourage interaction by posing questions. Integrate robust keywords to bolster discoverability. You can also bypass LinkedIn’s algorithmic restrictions by placing outbound links in comments instead of the post itself. LinkedIn is selling eyeballs. Whatever those eyeballs happen to be looking at – text, video, photos, or files – the algorithm encourages users to consume content on the platform, rather than directing them elsewhere. So uploading a video to LinkedIn is better than posting a YouTube link. And taking advantage of the carousel feature for sharing photos is a great way to keep people engaged with your content, and keep them on the platform for longer. Here’s the thing: the LinkedIn algorithm penalizes you for sharing too regularly – more than once every three hours. At the same time, most of the people on LinkedIn don’t actually share content. In fact, out of the half a billion people on LinkedIn, only around 1% of them actively share content. That means just one post a week catapults you into the top 1% of active LinkedIn users. Content might be king, but to ensure it has a long and successful reign, it needs context. The way content looks and feels on LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms. Content directly ported from other platforms won’t work on LinkedIn unless it’s given the right context – so think twice before reposting that cute cat video from TikTok unless you can make it relevant to your LinkedIn network. To be a successful social media marketer on LinkedIn, your content needs to do two things: follow best practices, and fit with the platform’s algorithms. Kapturall is a digital marketing agency – and the largest Marketo partner in Europe – serving clients across the world with tech-based tactics for generating quality leads and increasing sales. Discover how we can help your business grow. Contact usThe Golden Hour
Tag it right
Ensure high quality
Keep content on LinkedIn
Join the top 1% of LinkedIn users
Content that’s King of LinkedIn
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Youri Kuper
Chief Revenue Officer in Kapturall
Youri is a marketing guru with a passion for helping businesses grow. With years of experience in the field, he have become an expert in using marketing automation tools to streamline and optimize marketing efforts. He has trained thousands of entrepreneurs and business owners in marketing tactics, empowering them to achieve their business goals. With a keen eye for detail and a results-driven approach, is committed to delivering measurable results and helping businesses succeed.