How to best spend 15 minutes on LinkedIn if that’s all the time you have for now (1) All about posts
If you’ve ever joined a face-to-face networking group and milled around the room, trying to meet the right people and get to meet them in the given time, you know the challenges. When you did meet someone you wanted to, the dilemma was to know when to listen to them and when to talk about yourself and get noticed. So it is with LinkedIn: you want to engage with others but want to let them know about what you’re doing as well.
You’ve also got limited time and wonder if you’re frittering away that time writing a post on LinkedIn — will it get lost in the ether? Are such actions as reading and reposting others’ posts, searching for connections, checking your feed, liking others’ posts and following new people equally likely to get results? Time passes swiftly by and your available time is up.
But have you spent your time usefully? Some people are almost superstitious about their behaviours on LinkedIn, or are stuck in repeating the same old ones, but if you do, you may find yourself working against the algorithms and your luck will run out!
If you depend on what you knew about LinkedIn when you first went in there, you may not realise that 2021’s algorithms are so last year and many things changed in 2022 and are changing in 2023. Some for the better, but not all, and if you are flexible, you can quickly catch up with how to optimise your time on the platform.
How much do you know about how LinkedIn works? In this article, we present you with a short test to see how far your knowledge goes about posts and feeds. The purpose is not to test how savvy you are but more to alert you to the multiple goodies available and the things that work best for what you want to do in LinkedIn. Christmas is almost upon us and if you have the correct answer to these statements then you’ve got a stocking-full of tips for your LinkedIn use.
Here’s the quiz:
Answer true or false to the following questions (you may feel some answers have a bit of each).
1. TIME TO POST It’s best to post between 8–9 am every day except weekends when it’s better to post later.
2. NUMBER OF POSTS The best thing to do to get reach is to load your posts at one go and repost yesterday’s as well.
3. MAXIMISING YOUR POST REACH You will affect the reach of your own post if you engage with your connections’ posts.
4. TYPE OF POST Multiple pictures and slide shows get more dwell time than single picture posts.
5. MOST REACH FOR POSTS The most important thing is for you to get the most reach for your posts.
6. PUSHING YOUR POST If you don’t get comments on your post, it can help the ball rolling if write your own.
7. TIME WINDOW Don’t worry if you don’t get immediate responses to your posts — somebody will eventually see it.
8. POST LENGTH Make sure your posts are over 2500 characters long.
9. POST LINKS Adding external tags and links drives people to your website or other platforms with a click.
10. NEWS FEED LinkedIn has 50–60% more control over what you see in your feed than you do.
11. FEED INFLUENCE Once you make a connection, their posts will automatically appear in your feed.
12. LIKES, COMMENTS, FOLLOWS AND SAVES Liking someone’s post is not sufficient to change your feed but commenting on their post, or saving and following it does.
In the second part of this post, you’ll find the answers to the quiz and some add-on goodies.
~ This research was done for the Six Revolutions tip library. For more info, see https://6revs.com/category/thought-leadership/development-support/