The difference between a LI and a FB/IG post when it comes to its likeability

As I’ve been recently getting quite a few questions and heated discussions on the above, I decided to devote a short article with my take on this bone of contention.

As an obvious difference,??LinkedIn is NOT a regular social media platform. It is far different from FB/IG in that it is designed to help you build a professional brand by networking, blogging, news reading or writing, sharing, helping and understanding.?It all involves mainly reading and writing, rather than shooting and posting pictures, videos and short motivational quotes.

LI builds your personal business brand from the ground up - LI Articles (Pulse)?delivers you curated news articles, while?LI Jobs?help you find optimal employment opportunities, LI Talent Solutions facilitate your headhunt, and?LI Learning (Lynda)?assists you in developing business skills. All in the name of pairing you with real-world corporate opportunities.

Surely, LI uses similar algorithms as other SM platforms to encourage likes, shares, comments and posts, albeit for a different purpose. However, you need to be careful and understand LI more intimately when patting yourself on the back or giving yourself a bad score for the amount of “likes” you get on this business application.

How LI differs from FB/IG

Not getting enough likes on each LI post is not always equal to not reaching and influencing people. Unlike other social media, LI has an audience with a strong reading habit, not so much liking and photos’ scrolling habits. They still give you “likes” on LI when you touch them on a personal or business level, but not clicking the button doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t read or didn’t like what they read.??That’s why on LI impressions (how many people saw your post or read your article for more than a few seconds) do weigh in more then they do on FB or IG.?

Just as the opposite is also sometimes true. A top CEO getting a hundred likes on their LI sporadic posts mainly from colleagues or business partners might simply be people fakely trying to warm up to the C suite executive, not even having read or having been particularly impressed by what they read.?Hence, this user's clout on LI would be much less than what might appear only judging from their posts' likes.

How LI resembles FB/IG

However, just as with other social media, low average post’s likes and impressions, as well as low content creation activity, when observed consistently for your profile, do mean your content is lacking and does not reach people even if you have thousands of followers. Engagement, or comments, (especially when not artificially provoked with a “vote in the comments” type of prod), always equals genuine quality content. Habitually high average post’s likes is also a guarantee for a strong content and effectively influenced followers’ base.

The thin line you walk on LI

Having said that, LI has one more bizarre quality - “if it’s not announced on LI, it’s like it's never happened” (just like "if your pictures aren't trending on IG, you aren't wanted enough or your lifestyle isn't sexy enough"). In a sense, posting sometimes unembellishable dry content about a deal, promotion, certificate you gained on LI is needed and inevitable as this is how the business event is being introduced into the corporate society. You just need to be very careful with the proportion of those posts out of your total posts. Also, there is a big difference when announcing such an event from a business or a personal account. With your personal account you can and you always must bring in your unique personal perspective. Your followers want you, not the impartial news reporter.

For more on my personal LI tips, you can also refer to one of my recent posts here.

If you want to insert an external call-to-action link in your LI post, do so in the Comments and not in the post itself, as the algorithm doesn't like links sending people off the LI platform.