Hack Linkedin - Increase Views 1417%

We live in a world where algorithms govern our lives whether we realize it or not. Everything we see is filtered through news feeds, trying to guess at what we will click on, what will garner our most precious commodity in the digital world attention. Accepting that fact is step one on the path toward leveraging it to accomplish your goals. You have to think about how the content you create and what you publish will capture readers attention and be distributed through likes, shares, and comments. To climb the ladder of success it pays to understand and do what you can to get out in front of the world.

Everything we see is filtered through news feeds - Algorithms

December 14th, two weeks ago I announced I was going to become an independent consultant. I took a few simple steps and raised my linkedin post viewership by 1417%. Steps that if I'm honest were challenging to do, steps that are not appropriate every week but were necessary to execute a successful strategic plan. As with any new endeavor and especially independent consulting others have to know about my new venture and it needs to be part of your social networks gestalt. Below is screenshot of the post and those few simple steps.

• Step 1 - Ensure your post has visual esthetics. It took staying up until late the night before to expunge a wordpress logo that insisted on showing up in a trial linkedin post and instead to include the little owl
• Step 2 - Get to the point - Unless you have a shocking piece of information (emotional, experiential, etc) you want to catch peoples attention in the first line of information don't bury the pertinent information three sentences in. Job changes are good at getting a few extra lines read but the click through rate is abysmal even when they read the notification
• Step 3 - After I posted I linkedin messaged 30 friends and contacts with the following

I'm going to impose and ask for you to please help me optimize the linkedin algorithm by liking, commenting and sharing the post announcing I'm going independent. If I get some friends to do that it will be more likely to show up in everyone's news feeds and be included in email blasts. https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/jeremyharper1_about-owl-health-works-activity-6744232048950620160-OQfa

• Step 4 - I ensured I liked and replied to the comments
• Step 5 - Followup with the people who do a favor for you. (This doesn't help your statistics its just the right thing to do)

I just wanted to drop a thank you. 24 hours in and it registers thousands of views, about 70% are from my contacts which covers the people who login every day. To put it in perspective I typically have hundreds views for the life of most linkedin posts. Going independent is a big leap, and the timing is obviously not ideal, so it helps a lot to have gotten it out in front of my contact list.

People want to help friends and colleagues, giving them a path to do so is a win-win

Now lets take a deeper dive into what was occurring in step 3/4.

1. There was a specific ask
2. There was a direct link, minimizing the friction they would have, if they saw the message all they had to do was click and like/comment
3. Even if they chose to not click like/comment/share, they clicked through to the post itself which helped convince linkedin that people would want to see the content. Engagement is a very high priority for news feed algorithms. I had people message me that they weren't comfortable with the ask, and that's their prerogative, I'm sorry to ask something they weren't comfortable doing. I don't do everything people ask of me either.
4. With Step 4, by replying, commenting, and engaging as an author linkedin gives further credit to your post as it continues to be elevated.

That's it, its that simple. Linkedin first prioritizes the post in your own contacts on the newsfeed because they are the most likely to be interested in anything you might have to say. It didn't require me creating a thousands bots to make my post more popular, it didn't require anything other than a small ask. I strongly suspect that were I to rotate through all my contacts doing this for a month every couple days you'd see a drastic increase in the number of people reading what I put online, not due to innate brilliance or improved content, merely the algorithm pushing people further into streams that appear to have high engagement.

If you want to learn more about the algorithms there are many papers published, I can recommend a general overview of the concept on youtube and smarter everyday from last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY_NtO7SIrY