How it Works: The LinkedIn Algorithm
At Squirrels&Bears we believe in simplicity, and we like to provide clear answers to your questions. In our #howitworks series we focus on simple explanations of various aspects of marketing, highlighting the basic facts, what works and what doesn’t work. And we hope to make your life a little easier.
The Basics:
LinkedIn is one of the most effective platforms that can help you to target and reach a specific audience and grow your business. Whilst some people see LinkedIn as a purely job search focused social network, it can also be a powerful professional networking and advertising tool.
If your target audience is specific, LinkedIn allows you to segment them on a wide range of demographic criteria, meaning that it is the perfect place to gain access to people with the job titles, industries, skills or business-related profile traits that you are looking for.
Once you are connected to someone on LinkedIn, you have access to their email address and any information available on their profile. But to stay on top of their mind, it is important to engage with relevant content and updates.
One of the most significant differences between LinkedIn and other social networks is that any social interaction - a like, a comment or a share, gets your content seen by a portion of that person’s network. If you are sharing something that others find compelling enough to interact with it, your content can reach your network’s network, and then that network’s network, and so on.
Do:
Make the most of your smaller audience. If you have a large audience and no one engages with your posts, LinkedIn sees that as less relevant and shows it to less people. LinkedIn looks at who you have interacted with recently through comments likes and shares, and it gives personal connections more weight.
Avoid being classified as spam! You can do this by not tagging too many people, using the hashtags #like or #follow, using bad grammar, including multiple links or posting more frequently than every three hours.
Make use of hashtags, like with other social platforms LinkedIn uses hashtags to help find your posts. For best results, use around 3 hashtags – one should be broad, the next one more niche and the last one very niche. (For example #marketing #socialmediamarketing #b2bsocialmediamarketing).
Try take advantage of the ‘Golden Hour’ which is the very important first hour after posting your content. If you haven’t received any interaction during that time, it’s not likely to perform well. To spark engagement, ask questions and interact with others in the first hour of your post being published.
Don’t:
Take a long time responding to engagements on your posts. The quicker you respond to any interactions on your content the longer your post will stay.
Focus too much on video based content. It is no longer prioritised over image based or text only posts. Spend more time building a content strategy that encourages your followers to get involved in a discussion or weigh in on topics.
Rely on users interacting with your posts only, LinkedIn builds your feed based on what you have interacted with previously and takes into consideration the hashtags, people and pages you follow. So, it helps to have an active account.
Forget to utilise all the tools available to you, LinkedIn is a great sharing platform and has the same potential for platforms like Facebook for growth. There are also little tricks you can use, like notifying your employees of an update, that will encourage them to share and broaden your reach.