Back in March I wrote about a personal social media study I did in trying to increase my overall influence online. I mentioned in that post that I’d started writing articles on LinkedIn, and how it had started bringing me some attention.
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At this point I have 21 articles there and I’ve started to see a pattern. There are some things that seem to help determine how many eyes are going to see what you’ve written.
I can’t guarantee that every post you write, even if you follow these rules, is going to get seen by more than 1,000 people like this post on getting unstuck did but there seems to be some rules to follow if you want as many people to see your posts as possible.
First, unless you’re a known entity or someone that LinkedIn has determined is a major influencer across the board, list posts seem to get viewed the most. It’s probably for the same reason they work so well on blogs; people like seeing something that they expect is going to have specific points that maybe they can identify with.
Turns out it doesn’t matter if you use an actual number or write it out as a word, but lists work well. Also, it helps if you bold your numbers in the article, whether it’s the word or the actual number (like I’m doing for this post).
Second, although this goes against the grain of how some people think, longer articles seem to get more attention, even if they’re list posts. My longer articles, which also have been list posts, have more numbers than all my other posts, and if you know me you know that I’m not normally about really short posts to begin with. Substance seems to be a big winner, so if you’re writing a long post make sure you have something to say.
Third, short titles don’t work well either. I’ve never really paid much attention to titles on this blog for every post but I’ve noticed that on LinkedIn you’ll get more eyes if your title is long enough to tell people what you’re writing about.
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Fourth, write articles where you’re offering something to help others. My posts that have helped someone in some fashion have garnered the most attention. Even on a post like this, where I gave 7 ways to tell if you’re a bad leader, got 400 views because there was a perceived value. Actually, there was a major value in this post but if you’re a bad leader you might not have picked up on it. lol
Fifth, it’s smart to have some kind of picture to put at the top of your article. They give you the opportunity to put a picture with the pixel size of 698×400. Just like with blog posts, images seem to help rather than having a big gap without anything there.
I have tons of pictures so I go through them looking for something I think might fit. Since all my pictures are much larger than that I can crop when I need to before resizing.
Sixth, don’t forget to do the spacing like most of us remember to do when we write our blog posts. It helps with readability.
Seventh, when you’ve completed your post LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to add 3 categories to your articles. However, you have to use the categories they give you if you go that route; if it’s not there then you don’t get to do anything.
I’ve found that the articles I’ve written that get the most attention are those that I haven’t categorized. What happens is that if your article is seen by enough people, and that magic number is usually at least 100 people, it’ll decide where to put it so you don’t have to. Truthfully, that works better anyway, and it takes the pressure off you to have to do it.
That’s pretty good stuff to consider if you’re just starting out or have been thinking about doing it. If I get anything more out of it I’ll certainly write about it here.
Mitch,
Thanks for these tips. I have been posting more at LinkedIn. This helps a lot.
Roger, are we connected on LinkedIn? I haven’t seen any of your articles, which means you’re probably not seeing mine either.
Write articles that gained attention on Facebook means easy and lots of people do like that including me.. But focusing LinkedIn is bit harder than other social networks. Because, if we wanna get attention from LinkedIn means, we need to write some powerful article like you said.. I’m going to try some articles for LinkedIn now. Thanks for shared this informative article.
Good luck with it Thyrone. By the way, how’d you get from “Kajan” to “Thyrone”? lol
lol.. Thyrone is my real name and kajan is my email ID.. that’s it.. 🙂
Ah; had to ask since I know many people named Tyrone, so that H is a little different. lol
Really interesting information, Mitch. I don’t use LinkedIn much at all. Ok, not at all. I have an account there, but don’t even share. I’m pretty sure my audience isn’t hanging out there too much. But I’m guessing there will come a time when I need to expand, and I’ll be using these tips to make sure I do it right!
Kelly, my thought is that if one does anything business-like they need to have a presence on LinkedIn. As my wife was reminding me yesterday, it’s not always up to us to determine who a customer might be. 🙂
Hey Mitch,
I didn’t even know you could write articles for Linkedin. I used to write articles for Squidoo but don’t anymore because they want you to constantly update and promote the lens. If you don’t they remove the article which I think sucks.
I assume Linkedin isn’t so crass?
Nope, LinkedIn isn’t so crass. It’s probably not a good place to write advertisements as posts, as I’ve noticed the few folks that have get very few views, and it’s possible LinkedIn might remove those later on. But one can get a nice bit of publicity if an article takes. My only problem is that I don’t always remember to add my little “about the author” piece; have to get better with that. lol
I guess browsing through posts and deciding which one to read is like picking a book. I often wondered what helps me pick up a book at the library and most important what is it that really gets my attention. Most of the time, it is the things you just mentioned, I guess I am an artistic person because color really gets to me, tells me a lot, pictures, whether they are funny, or boring, or are missing, and of course the title. I know it can get really stressful when you have to come up with the title for anything, but the good news is, the longer the better. So it doesn’t have to be “read me”, it can tell a little more and I think that is so important. great point.
You ask an interesting question Nye. I guess I wonder the same thing, what makes me pick up certain books in the bookstore while others just get ignored. I hadn’t thought about it before but I guess these rules apply to more than one thing. Great thought!
Thanks for sharing…! Honestly, the above is really nice information about how to work with linkedin.
Actually, I have registered linkedin almost 5 years, but I never keep active on those community since I lacked some techniques of users engagement. Moreover, I have less time for social media marketing.
YOu know..? I just keep active on some few platforms such as Facebook, and Twitter.
I found that a lot of people said about Linkedin, because it is the professional connecting.
However, I’m not so interesting because I still keep active on Facebook, and Twitter.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. It was really impressed to me..
No problem Kimsea. If you’re ever ready to do more on LinkedIn I hope these tips help you some.