Have you got a LinkedIn profile? How many people liked or shared your last LinkedIn Post? Not many, eh? That’s why this podcast is for you.
How to Write a LinkedIn Post That Gets You Noticed
Ian Denny coaches people how to write a LinkedIn Post. He’s good at it too.
Ian is all about education. He has built LinkedIn communities that are supportive of each other. It’s like a networking group.
What is LinkedIn?
What people want LinkedIn to be, and what it actually is, is different.
Ian helps you to understand the rules of LinkedIn. He informs his clients about the LinkedIn algorithms. And more importantly, he coaches people about the LinkedIn Human Algorithm.
This comes back to copywriting. Ian helps people to communicate in a way that people understand and keep reading. He coaches posts that engage people and that do something for them.
LinkedIn is a newspaper.
With LinkedIn its newsfeed is created by our LinkedIn Posts. LinkedIn edits these posts to determine what content we see. They do this using an algorithm.
The majority of people on LinkedIn are salespeople. It’s hard for these guys to stop being sales people. When they get on LinkedIn, they sell! However, LinkedIn doesn’t want to have a newspaper stuffed full of classified ads. It wants news and information. Useful stuff. You would not read such a newspaper, would you?
Don’t put links inside your posts.
Ian advises that LinkedIn wants you to stick on their platform. Therefore they don’t like you to click away on the links embedded in your LinkedIn post. If you do have such links, they will penalise the growth of those posts throughout the platform.
With links it will only travel as far as first degree connections.
What you should do, is put that link into the first comment under your LinkedIn Post.
Don’t use language in your LinkedIn Post that would throw an email into a junk folder
LinkedIn have 3 tests for every LinkedIn post that goes out.
Is it:
- Spam?
- Low quality?
- Clear?
If it is not sure, it presents the post to a small selection of your first degree connections. This tests whether of not people like, comment or engage with the post. If they do, LinkedIN will show it to more people.
These 3 tests protect the content of the LinkedIn feed. It stops LinkedIn from being a wholly classified advertisement based feed. Which would kill it stone dead.
The spam test is just like a spam filter on an email application. It looks for junk mail, risky content, sales language. The algorithm looks for keywords associated with sales messages.
Low quality is largely an unknown. Elsewhere, it refers to people making short visits to the site. In other words clicking away quickly. Or having popups. Low quality also comes from articles that are broken up and where you click to the next page. The LinkedIn algorithm follows similar rules and restrictions.
If the algorithm is not sure, it passes the query to a human.
Formatting Your LinkedIn Post
If you do have a link to send people to in your LinkedIn Post, use the first comment. It is similar to Facebook in this respect. They are trying to keep you watching and tuned into LinkedIn.
A post is like an advertorial. LinkedIn is a publishing platform. They are passively editing your LinkedIn Post.
Educate Your Audience First
Educate your audience on your areas of expertise. But, not all the time!
If you are an accountant, don’t talk about spreadsheets every day. You will not get a following that way. Talk about general principles of business. Occasionally, talk about a personal story. Talk about an analogy from your personal life that can apply to business.
Sometimes, humour is appropriate.
When you scroll up and down your newsfeed, what catches your eye? Which of those subjects would stop you?
You are not doing a Ken Dodd routine.
Be Yourself
Ian advises BE YOURSELF ON SOCIAL MEDIA. Choose the version of yourself that is applicable to business.
For many in corporate world the LinkedIn agenda is very formal. Cannot put a foot wrong. Zero vulnerability. Total bullshit.
Ian recommends your persona on LinkedIn should be you at a Starbucks, meeting an old client. The topic will not be business all the time. Family and football. Do what you would normally do with a client.
The people succeeding on LinkedIn have found themselves?
Break the Rules of Copywriting
Ian advises that to find your ideal clients on LinkedIn, you need to speak to all the people in-between. They might be people who work on reception, in accounts, sales, job hunters, recruiters. The way the algorithm works is when people like or comment on a post it then reaches their connections.
To do this, you have to talk to 2 audiences SIMULTANEOUSLY!
If you address your LinkedIn Post JUST to bosses, then salespeople, receptionists, accounts people, etc would switch off. They wouldn’t like, comment etc. Instead, if you write the post in a way that asks if you were the boss in this situation, what would you do?
That way you get both audiences tuning in all the time.
On average Ian gets 17,000 views from 8,000 connections
Your connections are not the total market.
You are reliant on the first degree connections, and by liking, commenting or sharing the content.
Ask a question at the end of the post. Where do they answer? In the Comments.
A LinkedIn Post is a conversation starter. What would you vote for? Yes, no or maybe? A comment, a share and a like.
But,
Views are vanity, profits are sanity.
Have a medium to long term perspective on views.
And remember, even if you do have a link to a website in or near your LinkedIn Post, you have a second landing page…
YOUR PROFILE PAGE!
What appears under your photograph when you comment? Under Ian’s Photo, it says:
“How to write a LinkedIn Post that gets you noticed. Steal it or buy me a coffee.”
This encourages a click through to his profile page. On his page, he educates people about his offer. Clever, eh?
Graham bought Ian Denny a coffee!
Do you have a purpose and plan?
If you post with intention. Forget instant results. Build an audience that listens and likes naturally. Reciprocate. Connect with the people you genuinely would like to follow.
Put aside time each week to invest in your LinkedIn Posts.
Become genuinely social. Don’t just choose your target audience. CEOs don’t typically like and comment anyway. Everybody on LinkedIn is EQUAL. Everyone can click and share. The algorithm from a receptionist is the same value as a CEO.
Ian got 105,000 views for a student looking for a job. She started with 53 connections.
How Ian Helps?
- Provides material you can steal!
- Offers an online club of up to 40 people, who network together. £15 per month (+vat).
- Ian also writes people’s posts.
LinkedIn Post versus an Article
A post is different from an article. An article will not get as much reach. An article is a showcase and can feature on your home page/profile page.
If you start writing in the box at the top of your LinkedIn feed then that is a LinkedIn Post…
An article is more like a blog post. A LinkedIn Post is like a status post.
- Show some vulnerability. But don’t be fake.
- Be yourself.
CONTACT IAN
The Next 100 Days Podcast is brought to you by Graham Arrowsmith and Kevin Appleby
