Grégoire Vigroux is a French Serial Entrepreneur and Business Angel, based in Romania since 2006. He co-founded and invested in 21 businesses across Eastern Europe and had 4 exits. The French entrepreneur believes entrepreneurs have an increasing role to play in shaping a meaningful world. He thinks success, in business, must come with responsibility. Profits with purpose. Growth with progress. Prosperity with philanthropy. Connect with Grégoire on Linkedin.
Since 2007, LinkedIn has been effectively supporting my companies’ recruitment, marketing, PR, and commercial development. Some of my posts attract as many as 70,000 views. These 10 rules will help your posts go further on this social network. My last tip will probably surprise you!
1/ Authenticity is essential. Put heart and inspiration into your posts, choosing topics that you care about and know about. Your audience isn’t stupid. They will soon realize your competence, legitimacy and sincerity.
2/ Be consistent. Don’t be all over the shop with your posts. Ideally, stick to the same themes.
3/ Hone your story. Pay attention to the writing. Do not neglect style: writing well shows respect for your readers. Use numbers and statistics sparingly. Share personal examples from your own experience. Focus on storytelling.
4/ Be clear and precise. Write short, impactful sentences. Like a journalist, pay particular attention to hooking your reader with your first two sentences. These are visible on the feed and will make your readers want to click on the post to see more – or not. Use short paragraphs and separate them with line breaks to make the entire post easier to read.
5/ Use visuals. An image, GIF or video will make your post stand out in the LinkedIn feed. Always illustrate your point. Feel free to use humor, references and metaphors.
6/ Be humble. LinkedIn doesn’t like a braggart. The social network is a huge ocean, where there will always be bigger fish than you, so be modest and careful. Never be arrogant or condescending.
7/ Post regularly. Set yourself a realistic writing rhythm and frequency of posts. It could be one post a day, or one a week – it doesn’t matter. But be disciplined and stick to it.
8/ Post at the right time. LinkedIn is a professional network, so people mainly use it during working hours. Try to avoid posting at night or at the weekend. Keep in mind that the platform’s busiest days are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
9/ Set up an exchange. End your posts with a question, to invite your readers to dialogue with you. Reply to comments. Remember that LinkedIn is a social network and was designed to generate interaction.
10/ Know how to juggle algorithms. A post’s visibility is subject to LinkedIn’s operating laws. To ensure your posts go further, observe these rules to the letter:
- Don’t post external links. Always favor native content. LinkedIn loves LinkedIn! The social network doesn’t want you to send your audience off to a news site, and certainly not to a competitor, YouTube in particular! If you do that, LinkedIn’s algorithms will penalize your post by curbing its distribution.
- The first 60 minutes are crucial for your post’s success. LinkedIn’s algorithm delivers your post to a small part of your network within the first hour. Depending on the number of reactions generated during this period, LinkedIn will increase its visibility – or not.
- Algorithms treat comments as five times more valuable than likes and shares. If you want to support your friends’ posts, write a comment rather than liking or sharing. But doing all three is even better!
- Favor long content. The dwell time – the time readers spend on your post – is one of the key indicators for LinkedIn’s algorithms. If the subject you’re tackling inspires you, write long posts – obviously within the 3,000-character maximum.
- Don’t use more than three hashtags. LinkedIn only counts up to three. Choose your hashtags carefully. Always do preliminary research to make sure they are well referenced on the site. Also, make sure they have a significant number of followers. I recommend combining one niche hashtag with two popular ones.
- Never tag more than five people. Make sure that the tagged people interact with the post, otherwise LinkedIn may consider their addition on your part as spam.
- Never edit your posts after they have been published, or you’ll be penalized by the algorithm.
To increase the relevance and visibility of your posts, write clear, neat and illustrated content. Choose topics that are meaningful to you. Always be authentic and consistent. Most importantly, interact with your readers. Never lose sight of the fact that the success of your posts is governed by algorithms. LinkedIn is a robot that follows strict operating rules. Outsmart it!
