For the individual user, cultivating a well-regarded personal brand helps them to position themselves as an industry thought leader, potentially advancing their career and garnering recognition amongst their peers. For associations, the same applies. Fostering a strong brand on LinkedIn can assist with the attraction and retention of members, the development of partnerships, and help boost visibility with their industry.
Forming a prominent presence on LinkedIn, however, is no easy feat. Whether you’re looking to establish a recognisable brand for yourself or for an association, you need to have some strategic understanding of the platform, its ever-changing algorithm, and insights into content marketing as a discipline in order to succeed.
What follows below is some basic guidance on how to create content that is likely to find favour with LinkedIn’s algorithm – allowing it to find a wider reach and increase your chances of yielding positive results.
The All-Important Algorithm
Whether you have 10 connections or 100,000 followers, if you want your content to be seen, you need to produce it in a manner that aligns with the platform’s algorithm.
LinkedIn’s algorithm dictates what content appears on users’ feeds, based on factors such as relevance, engagement and timing. Posts that receive a lot of engagement – likes, comments and shares – are far more likely to appear on people’s feeds, because the algorithm has understood that this content is attracting attention and keeping users on the platform.
Core Considerations
Central to finding algorithmic favour are two key principles: consistency and variety. The importance of regular posting cannot be overstated – as not only is this recognised and rewarded by the algorithm, but like any other professional skill, being able to create compelling content is a competency developed over time and takes practice. Similarly, producing a variety of content – in format, focus and style – is crucial to reaping algorithmic reward and keeping your audience engaged.
These two tenets are perfectly exemplified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ (IEEE) presence on the platform. They have amassed a staggering 498,000 followers thanks to their shrewd approach to social media management. Posting on an almost daily basis, their feed features content in a wide variety of formats – from videos and images, to polls and text posts – covering everything from member spotlights to discussions of trending industry topics. In establishing this far-reaching digital community, IEEE have become more overtly attractive to sponsors looking to access this audience – as well as to prospective members who are immediately confronted with social validation of the organisation’s reach and repute.
As is apparent on IEEE’s feed, there are several core content formats available on LinkedIn, and what follows will examine two of them and suggest the best practices for their production – so that you too can, hopefully, replicate something of their success.
The Typical Text Post
Text posts supported by a single image account for 48% of the posts on the platform. For the majority of users, they represent the easiest type of content to produce – and text posts can yield strong results. When constructing a post, the key considerations to keep in mind are: readability, providing value, and captivating your audience.
Arguably the latter of these is the most important – particularly as it pertains to the first few sentences of a post, otherwise known as “the hook”. Given the sheer volume of content on the platform, having a compelling hook is vital. The hook will dictate whether or not users decide to read your posts rather than any other on the platform.
The importance of regular posting cannot be overstated – as not only is this recognised and rewarded by the algorithm, but like any other professional skill, being able to create compelling content is a competency developed over time and takes practice.
Your introductory sentences must make it clear what the post will be about, as well as overtly signposting the value that it will provide to readers. Take this example from the American Marketing Association (AMA), who have cultivated a following of roughly 330,000 on the platform:
“Investing in promotional products is investing in long-term brand visibility and recall. Here’s why they’re a game-changer:”
Here, the AMA outlines the topic of the post, “promotional products”, while also clearly demonstrating what readers will learn from the post, “why they’re a game-changer”. Note also how this post uses emotive language, “game-changer”, to grab the attention of users and entice them to read on.
So, working together, this impactful language and clear signposting will capture user attention and allow them to quickly determine whether or not this post is relevant to them. This constitutes good practice and should be replicated wherever possible.
In a similar vein, always ensure that posts are formatted in a manner that makes them easy to consume. Writing in short, clear sentences – and avoiding jargon as much as possible – enhances readability, making posts more widely accessible. Long paragraphs should be broken up, ideally with line-breaks following every 1-3 sentences.
Versatile Video Posts
Short-form video is fast becoming the preferred method of consuming marketing content, with statistics from Vidico showing that at least 75% of people prefer watching video to reading text as a way of learning about products or services. To meet this demand, both individuals and associations alike are increasingly focusing their LinkedIn content production efforts on video.
Video content created by the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors (NAR) – who boast roughly 625,000 followers – exemplifies many of the core elements that result in an engaging video.
As with text-based content, you need to grab the viewer’s attention with a compelling hook. The NAR’s videos do this well, opening with intriguing statements such as: “My dad had been a volunteer for the fire department and it was always something I wanted to do”. In the battle for attention, storytelling techniques like this will always win out.
Format is key too. NAR’s videos are produced in a vertical format, designed for mobile consumption, to account for the fact that nearly 60% of LinkedIn’s traffic comes from mobile users. All their videos include subtitles. Not only does this make viewing more accessible for those with hearing impairments, a majority of users consume videos with the sound off meaning that subtitles get read and can lead to a dramatic increase in views.
Finally, they keep the viewer engaged by swiftly moving from one shot to another. In a video recapping their C5+CCIM Global Summit, the shots include the video’s narrator, speakers at the conference, audience reactions and more – dwelling on each for just a moment or two at a time.
While this example is clearly a professionally produced video, this structure can be successfully adopted for at-home video production. Selfie-style videos are growing in popularity, as social media audiences become more accepting – and in fact often favour – this more rough and real style of content. In producing such videos, it is recommended to shoot clips from different angles and with different backgrounds – cutting between these clips and adding variety to the piece.