LinkedIn is undoubtedly the single platform with umpteen organic reach at this point in time.
I have been exploring the power of LinkedIn for personal branding, networking, hiring & general gyaan for the past 6 to 8 months now.
I kept experimenting with a variety of posts on LinkedIn, with different formats, different tonality, structure, and so on, to try and understand how to get my word out in the best possible way i.e. how trending posts on LinkedIn works!
Before we dive into details, let’s try and understand what trending really means and how do posts gets trending on LinkedIn!
Content on LinkedIn goes trending for a particular hashtag. Here’s an example:
One thing that’s clear is – it’s not about the engagement, it’s about the reach you gather, in a given duration of time. If the reach for a certain hashtag in your post is higher than usual benchmarks, your post goes as one of the trending posts on LinkedIn.
How does having your post trending on LinkedIn help?
Apart from the ego-boost we all get, LinkedIn now ensures that the post reaches even further, to all the people following a particular hashtag. LinkedIn drops notifications to relevant profiles so that they can come across your content, which in effect now increases your reach in multiples!
Eg:
After analysing a lot of such trending posts on LinkedIn, and mapping my learnings with content that goes trending from my connections, I present to you, some key points that will help you trend too!
Before that, here is the post that went trending:
These numbers look charming, don’t they?
Key learnings on how to get your post trend on LinkedIn!
1. Longer content:
Most posts that go trending on LinkedIn has at least 150 words in the post copy.
2. The start matters the most:
Whenever you write longer posts on LinkedIn, LinkedIn truncates your content with “See More” when your post appears in your connection’s feed. When people ‘engage’ with your content by clicking on “See More”, LinkedIn loves it. Hence, typically use an open-ended question or a click baited opening line, which makes people want to read the whole post.
3. Avoid links in the post:
Like any other social media platform, LinkedIn hates it when you have its readers leave the platform. Hence, always avoid links in the content, instead post them in the comment section. Although it’s NOT true that posts with links don’t trend, I have seen trending posts on LinkedIn that happening enough too.
4. Use generic & short hashtags:
Unlike Instagram & Facebook, where the trick is to NOT use generic hashtags so that your post doesn’t get lost in the clutter, LinkedIn encourages you to use generic hashtags and may help your hashtag be in the league of LinkedIn trending hashtags. Hence simple hashtags like #thankyou #gratitude #inspiration #innovation #workfromhome etc. should work great for you. It does not matter where you place these hashtags. You may use up to 6-8 hashtags in your content and this might help in the long term game of trending hashtags on LinkedIn!
5. Keep your content structured well:
LinkedIn wants users to spend time on your post, which means they find it valuable. If you use a single big block of content that makes reading a little difficult, it could reduce the number of people who read the full post, and you could miss out on getting the post as trending posts on LinkedIn. In order to avoid this, break your content into smaller sentences, and end the post with a question.
6. Post content that encourages engagement:
LinkedIn rewards you when you have users on the platform to spend more time on the app. So when you start a dialogue that others want to participate with, your content goes as one of the trending posts on LinkedIn!
7. Time of post:
This is a no brainer, don’t post at 3 AM in the morning. Like all social media platforms, the algorithm takes into account the number of engagements you get in the first few hours of posting the content.
8. Tagging helps:
Tagging influencers & organizations you know personally can help you get some brownie points in way of levelling up your post as one of the trending posts on LinkedIn.
9. Sharing your post URL on other platforms:
You can choose to share your content on other social platforms like Whatsapp, FB & Twitter. LinkedIn likes it when it receives incoming traffic from multiple sources to a post.
10. Keep experimenting with emotions!:
Keep bringing out different emotions in your content. For me, “gratitude” has worked the best.
There you have it!
Implement these tips & let me know if it worked for you!
Follow @digital.marketing.school & @digi_chefs on Instagram for more!
Also Read: Top 10 Tips to Optimise Your LinkedIn Profile in 2020
