As part of our ethos of our firm, we believe that people connect with people – not brands. And as it turns out, the LinkedIn algorithm agrees with us.
Content that employees share has two times more engagement than those shared by a company. This is because the algorithm for the social network is designed to highlight individuals over company profiles.
If a company creates a post and employees share or interact with it, it has much more visibility of that post to a larger network increases. If a company has more followers, the algorithm will bump your page higher in LinkedIn search results, which in turn, sparks a greater reach.
At the end of the day, you are writing for humans and by doing so, you will outsmart the algorithm naturally. But sometimes we need a little boost to help get noticed. LinkedIn themselves posted a blog explaining their new penalizations that will flag LI to sort or spam or deprioritize content in the feed. So here are a few ways to get the algorithm to work in your favor this year on LinkedIn and get more people to see your content.
Seek Engagement but Don’t Beg for Likes
A new change in the LinkedIn algorithm this year: if you ask for likes (such as, like or subscribe to my page!) – you will automatically be demoted in the feed. The reason for this is they have seen a number of posts that expressly ask or encourage the community to engage with content via likes or reactions.
“We’ve heard this type of content can be misleading or frustrating for some of you,” LinkedIn states. “We won’t be promoting this type of content and we encourage everyone in the community to focus on delivering reliable, credible and authentic content.”
Be Bold. Be Different.
Authenticity is always the key. In everything as it relates to brand and social – and LinkedIn posts are no different. We’ve seen posts that have been prioritizing humor or even “weirdness” to show more brand authenticity – and it pays off. It’s because people understand that there’s a real human behind the screen and behind the words and pretty Canva-created post. It also goes without saying that everything must have proper grammar and be well-written. It’s important to also remember that eye-catching content could include images or video (LI loves carousel posts) and (this is new) emojis! to break up the text while drawing attention to certain parts of the post.
Outbound Links
Just like many websites, LinkedIn likes you so much, they never want you to leave their site! So it makes sense that outbound links are no longer prioritized and the new algorithm will even penalize posts for outbound links that take users away from the platform.
According to Hootsuite, posts with outbound links got six times more reach than posts with links.
This is one that we struggle with as well, when we want to share news stories or content that is off LinkedIn. Brands counteract this by posting the outbound link in the comments or decide to share an aspect of this information with the audience and see how far it goes for you.
Time of Day Matters
While there’s a lot of research that goes into the perfect time to post for any social network, it’s always a good rule of thumb to think about yourself and how you interact with the app. Do you use LinkedIn during your lunch hour? Do you find yourself checking it first thing in the am?
If you know where your audience is and how they interact with the social channel, then you should try to tailor your posting around those times. Most of the time, you will find that if you post during the work week during the work hours, you will find that you get the most interaction.
Remember: the first 60 minutes after you post are the most important for your LI content – some call it the Golden Hour. If no one reacts to your post within the first 60 minutes, then your post is going to get downgraded or deprioritized in the feed. If you make a post for your business or on your personal page, you might ask a colleague or friend to interact initially so that it doesn’t disappear into the content ether.
You may also issue an alert internally asking staff to interact with the post – to share, like or create a post and tag the company page.
If you are looking for a place to start with your company LinkedIn or would like a specialized and tested method to approach educating your staff on how to use LinkedIn, please reach out to us at hello@bramblecreative.com – we’d love to help!
