5 Ways to Elevate your LinkedIn Game in 2021 by Ben Givon
LinkedIn is considered one of the more prominent channels for building your personal brand, let alone establishing yourself as an influential business person and all this within your niche. Maximizing the benefits of this platform implies the understanding of its purpose, while trying to generate the best response and utilize its various tools for optimal effectiveness. To aid you in achieving these goals, Ben Givon will list 5 ways that can help boost your LinkedIn profile with additional advice on how much you should post, when and what, but also how to take advantage of some of this network’s notable features.
- Post Regularly, Never Too Much
A consistent posting schedule is one of the major things to maintain on LinkedIn, as posting too much and flooding the feed can hurt your chances of making a good impression. Statistics show that those individuals who post 50 times a month see an average of 26 engagements per post. On the other hand, those who post 30–50 times per month have an average of 56 post engagements, while those who post even less see more engagement. Ben Givon recommends posting 2–3 times a week and also to post in the mornings so you can revisit the post later, reply to comments and boost engagement additionally.
2. Avoid Using Automation Too Often
Automation can be a great time saving tool, but if used incorrectly, it can damage your visibility. As noted in the previous statement, posting too frequently can reduce engagement; automation is automatically spotted by LinkedIn algorithms, which can in turn hide your posts, so if you’re planning to use automation tools, you should keep in mind to limit the number of these posts to no more than 30 times a month.
3. Share Visuals and Videos
Extensive research shows that articles that contain images and other visual content get 94% more views in total. Therefore, including images, videos, slides, podcasts or documents, which LinkedIn added as an option in 2019 is a definite must. In fact, documents can be turned into a carousel post on this platform — if a series of visuals is uploaded in document form. LinkedIn will display this as a carousel, so users can in turn side-swipe through the content. Ben Givon pro tip: when posting content, it is preferred to upload directly to the platform, rather than linking another website that hosts it. For example, post the video directly to your LinkedIn profile instead of a YouTube link.
4. Use LinkedIn Live
In the pandemic times, it is crucial to maintain a connection with your audience despite the restrictive measures and obligatory social distancing; thankfully, LinkedIn live is here to assist you in preserving contact with your crowd. LinkedIn live can include anything from monologues, live streaming events to hosting webinars with guests online. Statistically speaking, 79% of marketers believe that live videos lead to more authentic interaction, and on the other side, approximately 82% of the audience prefers watching a live video, instead of reading a social post. LinkedIn live videos seem to have more engagement compared to regular video uploads, going up to 7x more reactions and 24x more comments, for example.
5. Tag Employees, Influencers and Use Hashtags
Tagging employees within LinkedIn posts encourages further engagement, as they get notified immediately of the mention. No direct link to the tagged people is necessary, so Ben Givon advises tagging 2nd degree connections as well. The important thing to bear in mind is to only tag people that are relevant to the post or else the post could be perceived as spam. Being strategic in mentions is crucial, given that you should make an effort not to over-mention certain people or tag the same people frequently. Tagging too many people is also a no; the same reasons apply, as a long list of names can be seen as spam.
Moving on, Ben Givon’s second advice is to use hashtags. It will help with new content discovery, as well as help LinkedIn categorize and differentiate your posts from other content. Adding relevant hashtags along with trending ones enables others to get to your content more easily in their search engines. Using hashtags also ensures localized specific content — easy and accessible to all; the only action needed for reaching this content is clicking on a hashtag. Pro tip: be sure to try options like “Followed Hashtags” and “Discover more” at the bottom left of your homepage. This will list recommendations that might further enlarge your reach and give you a better chance of elevating your LinkedIn profile. The recommended hashtags page shows the number of people following each hashtag, so this can help you in prioritizing those that correlate to your requirements.
The LinkedIn platform’s continuous growth and improvement, ensure one of the top places on the influential platforms all-stars list, as we move forward, past the pandemic and into a new era of re-building society. All of this will subsequently lead to new opportunities, following the aforementioned growth and thus, it is only logical that those who start with building a strong LinkedIn profile now, will only benefit from it in the future and will stand the best chance of capitalizing and maximizing potential on this network.
