By Mike Kaeding
I often get asked how I get such high engagement on my LinkedIn account. Over the past few months I have received about a million views, nearly one hundred thousand likes, and thousands of comments on LinkedIn. This is strong for LinkedIn. Below I share the key tips I followed to make that happen.
Just Start Posting
It’s terrifying to initially start posting content to LinkedIn. We all want to make sure our content is perfect. After all, this is the platform for professionals. But don’t let the pursuit of perfection hold you back. In my opinion, it’s important to post content often. The reason is that posting often forces you to get better. Most of my first posts weren’t very good. But I didn’t know what good was until I started to post content and learn from the feedback I got.
Picture & Title
Articles seem to get better engagement than posts. But for both the picture, title, and first sentence are the most important. You only have a couple seconds to capture a person’s attention. I often spend as much time on the picture, title, and first sentence as I do on the rest of the article. It’s that important!
Know Your Audience
It’s important to know your audience. I used to get frustrated when other people wrote about this tip. Because what do you do with it? Now that I’ve been posting regularly I see how important it is to know your audience. My audience is employees. So, I focus on topics that they struggle with. Then I write in a way that will capture them emotionally.
I’ve learned through trial and error what engages my audience. Here are two titles that I have tried:
Good: A Bad Boss Can Destroy Everything
Bad: A CEO’s Confession
The first works well for my audience because it’s from their point of view and captures them emotionally. The second wasn’t as successful. But it may have been more successful than the first if my audience were CEOs.
Find some people on LinkedIn who are engaging the audience you care about. Read their articles and look for what worked and what didn’t work. This will let you learn from other people’s mistakes instead of having to make all the same mistakes.
Be Authentic
In my opinion, it’s important to be authentic. You can build a large following without being authentic. For me, authenticity has been an important part of building an incredible group of followers. People want to connect with real people on LinkedIn. Be ok talking about your failures. That makes you a real and relatable person. Writing posts is not about making yourself look good. It’s about helping those who are reading your posts.
Reach Out to Influencers
Once I got a rhythm with my posts, I started to reach out to influencers. I did not look for people with a large following. Lots of followers on LinkedIn doesn’t mean much. I’ve seen people with very large followings who get very poor engagement on their articles. Instead look for people who write articles that get a large engagement. Then I engaged with those influencers. Some of them liked and commented on my articles. That made a big impact on the number of people who saw my articles. This was an important step of breaking out of an initially low following.
Engage, Engage, Engage!
Engage with the people who comment on your posts! This is so important. People want to connect with you as a real person. If you don’t respond to comments you are telling your audience that you don’t really care about them. Also, respond to messages and try your best to help others out. This can be a lot of work. But it helps you to start building real relationships with your audience.
Conclusion
Building a highly engaged LinkedIn following might sound daunting. But it really isn’t that difficult. Start posting every day and follow the tips and you’ll start building a following of your own.
Mike Kaeding is president of Norhart. Norhart builds and manages apartments with a focus on creating a better way to live. This affects how they treat their employees and the kind of community they create for their residents. Norhart is one of the first companies to offer smart apartments in Minnesota. They work hard to support the homeless and the local business community. Norhart has won numerous awards including a national award from SCORE for being one of the top small businesses of 2018. Check out the Norhart Blog to learn more useful tips.
LinkedIn stock photo by IB Photography/Shutterstock
