by Caroline Leach | Jul 3, 2017 | Social Media
What content do people engage with the most on LinkedIn?
For me, it was a surprise.
As I began to analyze the analytics for my activity feed, posts on major holidays were among the content that rose to the top.
This seemed counterintuitive because all I had done was share a leadership quote relevant to the holiday along with a beautiful photo.
This is why analytics are so powerful – you can see what type of content is engaging your network the most. Then you can build on it and improve what you’re doing.
As part of your social media savvy strategy, here’s a 3-step process for posting holiday-related content:
1. Find a leadership quote relevant to the holiday.
Align your holiday quotes with leadership and business themes you frequently post on. Search Google for leadership articles related to the holiday. See which of your favorite sources pop up as well as new sources. Be sure to appropriately evaluate and vet your sources.
- Choose less-well-known quotes. Look for quotes you’ve never heard or seen before. Keep searching until you find one. That way, you’re more likely to surprise and delight your network with something fresh.
Here’s one I chose for Memorial Day. The quote was new to me, I learned more about citizens who serve in the Seabees, and it focused on tenacity and persistence – qualities that are helpful to all of us.
- Provide a diversity of perspectives. Broaden your lens. Keep an eye out for compelling quotes by both women and men as well as people of different ages, ethnicities and backgrounds.
For Thanksgiving, this quote by author Alex Haley caught my eye. It works equally well for professional and personal purposes. Not to mention that it powerfully sums up Thanksgiving in just 6 words.
2. Pair it with an eye-catching image. I swear by my subscription to iStockphoto, which is the source of the images in the LinkedIn posts featured here. Canva is another good resource for photos and design.
And there are great ideas about “awesome free images” in a detailed post by blogger Marko Saric.
3. Add hashtags. Make your post more discoverable by adding one or two hashtags. Search LinkedIn and Google for the obvious hashtag for the holiday – e.g., #FourthofJuly – and see what other hashtags people are using in their posts.
Lastly, keep an eye on comments and respond in a timely manner to further engage with people in your network. Holiday posts elicit the most “hi, how are you doing?” types of comments. That makes them a fantastic way to keep in touch with people.
How do you make the most of major holidays on LinkedIn?
by Caroline Leach | Jun 29, 2017 | Social Media
An interesting thing happened when I posted to LinkedIn every weekday for a month.
I also tweeted a few of my shorter posts. One of them was about knowing when someone has true leadership skills.
This was one of my learnings: tweet every LinkedIn post and article. But a bigger learning was still to come.
In sharing this particular post, I expressed thanks for the great bosses and leaders I’ve had to far in my career. And I asked “what leaders have inspired you and why?”
While I follow the best practice of asking a question in posts and tweets, I must confess they don’t usually generate much engagement.
But this time was different. To my surprise and delight, a colleague responded by singing the praises of one of our other colleagues. She did it in wonderful detail, mentioning specific leadership traits in an enthusiastic and engaging way.
Soon, the other colleague joined the dialogue, with thanks and good humor. All in all, it was a pleasant way to connect with people who are in my network but separated by busy work schedules and a 3-hour plane ride.
The even better part? I had an upcoming meeting with the colleague getting the accolades. I knew the conversation might be difficult due to the sensitivity of the subject. And our LinkedIn-inspired conversation in Twitter added a more upbeat tone to our working relationship.
(This is where I remind readers that opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
And it was in a positive and pure way, because my intention was simply to share valuable leadership content with my network.
This underscores the importance of giving in social media – without the expectation of getting. Because you never know how others in your network will respond and what good outcomes may happen.
But what if you want to be a little more strategic and focused in creating a stronger business relationship through LinkedIn?
Who are the important people in navigating your career – now and in the future?
And how can social media add to your efforts to build a positive, long-term relationship?
Once you’ve identified a few people to build stronger relationships with, here’s how you can use LinkedIn to add to your efforts.
If you’re not already connected on LinkedIn, send a personalized request. Remember, always personalize your request. Remind the person of how you know each other and why you’d like to connect.
- If it’s your boss, say you’d like to connect because of your reporting relationship.
- If it’s a peer, mention a common goal or project you’re working on.
- If it’s someone in a function beyond yours, share your interest in learning more about what they do.
- If it’s someone on a project team, share your enthusiasm for your work together.
- If it’s someone more senior to you, talk about a key project they’re working on that you’re following in the news.
See what connections you have in common. Which connections intrigued and surprised you? Can you come up with a hypothesis as to how they know each other? This might be important later when you’re engaging with content.
Is there anyone you expected to see, but didn’t? Is there anyone in your network who might be valuable for this person to know? Consider making an introduction at the appropriate time.
Observe their articles and posts. View their current content and look at past content for the last 3 to 6 months.
What topics are they posting on? How do those relate to your current work or your future interest? What kind of reach and engagement are their posts generating?
Like, comment on and share their content. Once a week, like a post or an article and leave a substantive comment. Mention the person by name so they’ll receive a notification of your comment.
Thinking back to who it might be helpful for this person to know, see if you can mention and weave that person into the comment, if the subject matter lends itself to it.
Here’s where you can help augment the reach of your connection’s content. Share it with your network, if it’s aligned with the types of content you share. Mention the person by name so they’re notified of the share, and add your perspective to the content. End with a question to invite more engagement.
See what groups they belong to. Do you have any groups in common? If so, engaging with content in that group could help build your relationship.
Do they belong to any groups you’d like to learn more about? If so, you could message your connection and ask them for their thoughts on the the group and their advice on engaging with it.
Focus on giving and keep it light. Be generous. Think more about how you can give and how you can help your connection.
In doing that, keep it light. Your interactions should be just frequent enough – no more than once a week or every few weeks – so they’ll appreciate hearing from you.
Don’t stalk your connection by interacting with them too often. Keep your interactions interesting and insightful.
What are ways you build a stronger business relationship on LinkedIn?
by Caroline Leach | Jun 18, 2017 | Social Media
How do you prepare when you have an upcoming business meeting with someone you’ll be meeting for the first time?
Sure, you’ll set objectives for the meeting. You’ll create an agenda. And you’ll think about the information you want to share. These are all best practices for effective meetings.
But don’t stop there.
Social media gives you valuable opportunities to learn more in advance about the person, or people, you’ll be meeting. It opens a new window on what’s important to someone and how they think.
It’s all part of making a great first impression, as Rebecca Knight covers well in a Harvard Business Review article. It’s packed with tips from thought leaders Whitney Johnson and Dorie Clark.
With social media, you can take 15 to 30 minutes to get to know someone’s career, their professional interests and their potential commonalities with you.
Here are 6 ways to do that, as part of your social media savvy strategy.
Visit their LinkedIn profile. Focus on their current role and the problems that person is solving in their work. Consider how that connects with your meeting objectives.
See what other jobs they’ve held, what groups they’re part of and where they went to school. Read recommendations to get a better sense of who they are. See if you have any connections in common.
Look at their other social media activity. Are they active on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook? Visit those sites to round out your view of what’s important to this person.
Read their blog. If they have a blog, read the most recent 3 posts. Scan previous posts for topics that might be relevant to your upcoming meeting.
If they don’t have their own blog, see if they’ve posted articles in LinkedIn that would give you similar insight.
Search Google. No research is complete without a Google search. You can search on the person’s name, as well as the person’s name along with their current employer or other keywords related to your meeting topic.
See what pops up on the first 3 screens of your search. Visit a few of the links to learn more.
Send a personalized LinkedIn connection request. Once you have a sense of what you might have in common, or what’s especially interesting to you about this person, send a LinkedIn connection request.
In your personalized request (always personalize!), you can mention your upcoming meeting and that you’d like to connect in advance. This helps better establish the relationship, and it may prompt the person to view your profile and learn more about you.
Make sure you’ve put your best foot forward in your profile. Any recent content you’ve posted should further – or at least not detract from – your meeting agenda and objectives.
Comment on their content. In your research, what content stood out to you as especially salient to your upcoming meeting? You can like and comment on a recent piece of content that is aligned with your meeting topic. And if it would be valuable to your own network, consider sharing it more broadly.
These actions will enable you to know your audience much better and help foster a positive working relationship from the very beginning. (A reminder that opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
Just remember to keep it light in both your virtual and real-life interactions. Don’t like or comment on too much content and don’t bring up subjects that your new business acquaintance might consider too personal or intrusive.
What are ways you connect with people in social media before an initial meeting?
by Caroline Leach | Jun 11, 2017 | Social Media
Three is a magic number. In a whimsical, 3-minute video, Schoolhouse Rock explains why.
Maybe that’s why it took 3 separate LinkedIn messages from connections for me to notice a trend.
What were they? Friendly invitations to check out their latest LinkedIn articles.
They were from a diverse group, with no overlaps in our networks.
One was a work colleague I met first through LinkedIn, Anthony Robbins. (Opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
One was someone who connected with me through the MAKERS conference, Kari Warberg Block.
And another was the CEO of a partner company with a previous employer, Terry Traut.
They each sent a personal message to me through LinkedIn highlighting a recent article and inviting me to read it and engage with it.
And in doing so with me and likely many others, they generated not only a high number of likes, but also a great dialogue of comments.
This is a powerful proactive strategy in sharing your own articles with key people in your network. It’s something I’ll be experimenting with – and writing about – in the coming weeks.
There’s also a reactive play. Here are 6 aspects to consider (and that’s 3 times 2, for anyone following the theme of 3).
Engage with articles that align with your social media goals. How does an article relate to your social media savvy strategy?
Look for something in it that connects with your professional interests and goals. That will both highlight your personal brand and help provide the basis for your comment.
Scan other comments to put yours in context. See what other people have posted and how that has extended and amplified the author’s point of view.
If any of the commenters are in your network, like their comment, remembering to look before you like. Consider posting a comment to further your relationship and the dialogue.
If any of the comments are of particular interest to you, visit the commenter’s profile to learn more about them. Like or comment on the comment. Maybe that commenter is even someone you’d like to get to know and invite to your network.
Post comments that add something to the dialogue. Consider your comment as additive content to the original article, beyond simply a “great post!” statement that affirms the author but doesn’t add anything new.
What resonated with you the most and why? How has your experience been similar or different and why? What additional ideas, links and people can you add to the conversation? Ask yourself these questions and more as you write your comment.
Mention the author in your comment. To keep it informal and eliminate extra words, delete the author’s last name when LinkedIn auto-populates it and use the first name only.
By mentioning the author, they’ll be notified of your comment. And they may choose to like or respond to your comment.
Stick with the rule of 3. Keep your comment to 3 sentences, max. Write it and then edit out extra words and thoughts. Ask yourself how you can make your point in fewer words.
Proofread, proofread, proofread. Make sure your comment is free of spelling and grammatical errors.
I learned this the hard way with a comment today. I proofread it, fixing a spelling error that had been auto-corrected incorrectly (it was a Colin Powell quote using the word “simplifiers,” which auto-corrected to “simplifies” without the “r.” Oops.
But after I posted the comment, I realized that one sentence didn’t have the right subject-verb agreement. As of now, you can only delete a LinkedIn comment and repost it; unfortunately it’s not possible to edit it.
Not many people might have recognized the error, because the subject and the verb were separated by intervening words. But content can live on the internet forever. So I deleted the comment and re-posted it with the correct wording. Next time, I’ll proofread 3 times before posting.
Speaking of grammar and subject-verb agreement, it’s encouraging to see the 2017 AP Stylebook will “include guidance on the limited use of ‘they’ as a singular pronoun.” This a positive step forward for gender equality. And that’s why I use “they” as a singular pronoun.
Back to boosting engagement with LinkedIn articles, what strategies are you using?
by Caroline Leach | Jun 5, 2017 | Social Media
What happens when you post daily to LinkedIn?
In the month of May, I found out. I did an experiment. I posted every weekday to see what I would learn.
Why every weekday?
It takes about “20 LinkedIn posts every month to reach 60 percent of your audience,” according to a data point that Carly Okyle cited in an Entrepreneur article about LinkedIn profiles.
And because LinkedIn is a social media platform for professionals, most content views are during the work week.
To make it (relatively) easy to post daily, I set up a weekly calendar:
Mondays – a Social Circle employer advocacy program post (note: opinions I share in social media and in this blog are my own)
Tuesdays – content from one of my favorite business publications, like Harvard Business Review, The Economist, or Inc.
Wednesdays – an article, based on a previous post from this blog
Thursdays – a Social Circle employer advocacy program post
Fridays – sharing a post from a colleague, an alma mater, a professional association, a favorite publication or new content based on a holiday or other milestone.
With this content calendar framework in mind, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought to post every weekday. During early morning hours, it took about 10 minutes for most posts and 30 minutes for articles.
So, what did I learn?
Engagement increased each week. How did I measure engagement? By the number of total views each week.
By week 2, views were up 25%. By week 3, up 166% over the previous week. By week 4, up 88% over the previous week.
At the end of week 4, I also noticed my profile views were up by 45% over the previous week.
Week 5 was an anomaly. Views and profile views went down. However, I posted only 4 days that week because I skipped Memorial Day. And views may have been down because some people were on vacation after the long weekend.
Content re-shared by others got more engagement. When my 1st degree connections re-shared my content with their networks, I got the highest engagement as measured by views and likes.
Analytics came in handy, as I could see whether a post got more engagement from my 1st or 2nd degree network. What was harder to know was when my content was re-shared and who shared it.
Views are measured differently for posts and articles. Articles got fewer views than posts, but generated more likes. A view of a post means that “someone saw your post in their LinkedIn homepage feed.”
The bar is higher for a view of an article. Here it means “someone has clicked into and opened your article in their browser or on the LinkedIn mobile app.”
Understanding this, it now makes sense that while views to my articles were lower than for posts, articles generated more likes. People had actually opened the link for articles.
Hashtags are important to make content discoverable. In my zeal to post frequently, I often forgot to include hashtags. That limited broader discovery of my content.
Posts on Tuesdays and Wednesdays got the most engagement. This is consistent with data showing it’s best to post in the middle of the week.
An exception to the learning above? If a post reached my 2nd degree network, then the day of the week didn’t matter. And that’s the most important thing I learned – the power of content that is re-shared.
If content is engaging enough for connections to share it with their networks, it reaches a much broader audience. It exposes your ideas to more people. And it creates opportunities to connect with more people who share common interests.
Most engagement was for posts about how to be a better leader and professional. This is consistent with LinkedIn being a social media platform for professionals in business. These posts were more likely to be positive and upbeat in nature.
And that’s consistent with a study by 2 professors whose research supported the finding that, “Content is more likely to become viral the more positive it is.”
The least engagement was for topics that could be viewed as bad news. This aligns with the analysis I did of my least engaging posts.
They had to do with what could be perceived as bad news – dealing with the death of a family member, thinking about dramatic change, and being reminded of goals we haven’t achieved.
The big question this leaves me with? How to make my content more compelling and more likely to be shared by my connections? Here’s how I’ll approach that.
- Like, comment and share others’ content. I’ll move content sharing to two days a week instead of one, and I’ll mention the person who initially posted it.
- Use hashtags so people can more easily discover content of interest. In my haste to post daily, I often forgot this important action.
- Mention people in posts and figure out if the mention feature works when sharing an article.
- Share every article to Twitter and Facebook using the convenient LinkedIn feature that pops up in the posting and sharing process.
- Study and practice how to write more compelling headlines and summaries. Experiment with what grabs people’s attention.
As I take these actions in the weeks and months ahead, I’ll keep tracking engagement with my content.
In particular, I’ll look at ways to better track when my posts and articles are shared, and by whom.
If the sharer mentioned me, that shows up in my LinkedIn notifications. Sometimes LinkedIn sends an analytics summary. But shares do not (yet) appear in the LinkedIn analytics for posts and articles.
Better capturing these analytics will help me understand which content is shared the most, so I can create a hypothesis about why.
In the meantime, what motivates you to re-share a post or article with your network?
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