I’m a life-long learner and that means I’ll always grab the opportunity to expand my knowledge – particularly in areas that are subject to rapid change.
When it comes to social media, my audience are mostly on LinkedIn, so that’s the platform I’m most active on. As a member of the HoLT community, I have access to lots and lots of masterclasses on all kinds of subjects – and I’ve attended two LinkedIn Masterclass courses. In November, we looked at content generation and in January we explored how to expand reach and engagement.
These are subjects that are top of the agenda when it comes to generating potential business leads. And, let’s be honest, most of us are not on LinkedIn to make new friends or watch cat videos – we’re there to build our businesses.
The algorithms on LinkedIn have changed dramatically with the advent of AI and today the content of your profile is the influencing factor in who sees your posts. That means that hashtags on LinkedIn are no longer useful and the AI prioritises long form, high value content.
It’s been interesting hearing different experts share their knowledge – and one question that keeps coming up is ‘How often should I post?’
The key points that have come up in response to that are:
- Good value content is more important than frequency.
- Daily posts are a good target to aim at.
- More than one post a day can mean each post gets less reach, as LinkedIn only focuses on the latest post, until there is response on existing posts.
- Reaching the right audience is more important than going viral.
Lots of people are complaining that their reach has tanked, but reaching thousands of people who are random isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s better to reach the people who fit your ideal audience profile, and LinkedIn’s AI uses your profile to determine that, so ensuring that is accurate, focused and up-to-date is important.
The other aspect of getting seen is all about comments. Not getting them on your posts, but adding good quality content on other people’s posts. That means investing time each day to read the feed and try to add value.
So, not ‘Great post’, but an intelligent comment that adds to what has been says or adds your opinion on the subject the original post is about. Some people get a greater reach on their comments on other people’s posts than they do from their own original posts!
The answer to quality v. frequency is always quality. However, if you only post once a month, don’t expect to make much headway!
Be authentic, be human, add value and you’ll start to make a difference.
