LinkedIn is a busy place. Latest stats show that two million posts are made everyday. That means it’s all too easy for your key messaging to be swept away in the tidal wave of daily mediocre content. So how do you make sure that your message cuts through the masses and resonates with your audience?
It’s not about you.
It may be your profile, but it’s not about you, it’s about your audience. Before you even start writing your post it's important to have clarity about who it is you are writing it for and why should they care? Sure it’s great that you’ve won a new contract, but what, if any, are the implications to the people reading it?
HACK: Your posts should be crafted to be audience centric.
Keep it simple
Keep it to one message per post. You want to ensure that your audience understand and recall your key point. Don’t dilute your messaging or risk people missing it altogether by trying to do too much at once.
HACK: Keep it simple and short with one clear message per post.
Action driven
What is the audience outcome that you want to achieve from the post? Visit your website? Read a news story or blog? Or simply engage in a conversation with you. No one has time for a woolly self-congratulatory post that exists only to show everyone how clever you are, they want something from you. Whether that’s a new piece of (useful) information, a ringing third party endorsement or an opportunity that they can’t miss out on.
HACK: Ask yourself what you want to achieve from the post.
Use Multimedia
Posts with images get twice as many engagements. LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritises high-quality multimedia-rich posts. Think pictures, videos and graphics. And where appropriate use profile tagging and topic hash-tags. The top performing hashtags are innovation, management and digital marketing.
HACK: Follow the EAST analogy. Easy to understand, Attractive to look at, Social; start a conversation, Timely; post at time that people are in the right frame of mind to engage with you.
Only post when you have something to say
We’ve all got that one contact that feels that they need to post or comment on everything. All that achieves is the creation of content fatigue and people become blind to what you have to say. Recognise your specialist area and focus on that, creating content that people find useful and interesting.
HACK: Stay relevant to your area of expertise and passions.
