How often should you post?

Does it pay to post 2-3 times a day or 2-3 a week or month? Should we be putting out LinkedIn content daily or less often? This week I'm covering the tricky subject of posting frequency.

Also;

• Are LinkedIn being disingenuous about the recent HiQ ruling?
• I chat with John Espirian about this years algorithm research
• An amusing and very topical Twitter related post of the week

LinkedIn wins its 6 years old lawsuit against hiQ Lab

I was pleased to see that LinkedIn finally got what it wanted (and deserved) from this weeks US supreme court ruling. Here's what they had to say about it

What I find annoying about this statement is that the inference is that they fought hard to win this for our protection.

I'm calling BS!

HiQ Labs were not spamming us or acting in any way that would cause us harm but they were using LinkedIn data to sell an HR and recruiting product that helps CHROs and business leaders engage with their employees and provide insights that help them determine skills gaps or turnover risks months ahead of time.

LinkedIns most valuable asset is our data and that is what they were protecting, not us. They had every right to do that and I’m pleased they won.

HiQ were using this data to provide a service that LinkedIn wants to offer exclusively. They can now continue to sell our data without competition so it’s a really good win for them.

Our data is still a commodity to be sold, just not by anyone that isn't LinkedIn or another Microsoft subsidiary. I have no issue with that, I fully accept that I pay for my LinkedIn access with my data but don't pretend your protecting me LinkedIn, when you're just protecting yourselves!

LinkedIn Algorithm Research

Congratulations to Richard van der Blom and his team for producing another fascinating algorithm report. 9500 posts across 200 users were analysed, the work involved to put this together must be incredible!

But it is important to see it for what it is...interesting research of a set of post results from 200 users - according to this report, 5.2% of LinkedIn users post content, that is 45.5 million people! So it's important to keep this report in perspective...it's more comprehensive than most will ever attempt but it's a tiny sample of those 45,500,000 content creators on LinkedIn.

I had a chat with John Espirian about some of Richards findings and this is a summary of what we discussed;

• New connections. The report suggests we will see all posts from our new connections for 2 week. We both felt this sounded wrong and that there are so many variables at play that it would be impossible to accurately state this. It's quite possible that you are more likely to a new connections content in the first 2 weeks after connecting but it's by no means a given.
• Videos with captions are performing much better than those without (although overall video post views are down). This is good news and another reason for the introduction of auto-captions (coming soon). Even if you don't care about accessibility (and you should), it makes sense to add captions for greater reach.
• Video posts and Articles are showing a downward trend in reach compared to last year with the winners being Document posts, text and multi-image posts. For me these 'trends' are actually more important than the actual results. This survey is in it's 4th year and becomes more valuable each year as we assess the trends.
• External Links. The report still suggests the algorithm is to blame for the poor reach of posts with links. LinkedIn explain it by stating that users choose not to leave the platform - this makes more sense to us. LinkedIn are trying to improve the reach of external links so it's not an algorithm related problem. The issue lies with the audience who either click the link (and fail to engage which impacts reach) or they chose not to click on the link and swiftly scroll on - either way, a lack of engagement leads to poor reach.
• Posting frequency (see main section below). It is concluded that you should not post within 18 hours of a previous post. This might make sense if the post has attracted an average amount of engagement but if the post 'bombs' then you will do no harm posting earlier than 18 hours.
• The algorithm will penalise your post if you edit within 10 minutes of posting. This one is hard to swallow in that it appears to make no sense at all. We have also been unable to see any evidence of it being the case. John did suggest that it might be a measure put in place to prevent someone posting something that LinkedIn will view favourably and then completely changing the content to something more nefarious to trick the algorithm. This just feels like a conclusion that can't really be made from this type of research...why 10 mins? Did they test 11 mins and how many times etc? I would rather correct a typo than adhere to this advice!
• Only the first engagement action counts. This one makes much more sense to me although I also imagine it's hard to conclude this with so many other variables at play. That said, if you are going to Like and Comment, it makes sense to always comment first.
• Leaving an insightful comment on your own post after 24 hours to boost visibility. This was new to both of us and not something we had ever considered before. It could well work as it intuitively seems to make sense...so it's got to be worth holding back a small part of your content and try adding it in as a comment after 24 hours.
• Hashtags in comments are indexed by search. Both of us have tried on several occasions to prove this one and failed. As far as we can tell, hashtags (or any words) in comments are not found via a post search. As well as putting your hashtags in the main body of a post, I also have always advised tagging people there as well, because you want to avoid those that are tagged replying (which provides much less reach than an original comment). Richard however, refers to tagging people in comments as 'accelerators' who improve reach. I can't deny that such tagging will improve reach but I doubt it's a better reach than tagging in the main body of the post.

Conclusion.

Use this research to challenge your preconceptions and beliefs about how LinkedIn works but please don't consider this to be factual. It's just a snapshot and not everything will be true for you.

If someone else announced their own research tomorrow that was just as comprehensive but provided vastly different conclusions, would you still believe Richards results to be the authority? Even if LinkedIn did the research on every single post on LinkedIn over a 12 month period, their conclusions still wouldn't be definitive for you!

Your network of followers is unique and it's your job to focus on them more than the algorithm.

Use these results to try things out. You don't have to be analytical and start firing up spreadsheets...just try things and go with your sense of what seems to work and avoid what doesn't. It's endlessly fascinating to think about algorithms but in truth, you are usually served best by making sure your content is authentic, interesting and highly relatable. As John puts it "Meet the right people, chat with them like normal human beings and you will be fine!"

Post Frequency

This subject was motivated by this post from Ashley Leeds

So how often should you post? Multiple times a day, daily, several times a week or less?

As you would expect, the answer is not as straightforward as we would like!

My advice for most people is that they should be aiming for 2-3 posts a week. Posting more might work for you but I wouldn't advise more than daily or leaving big gaps (weeks) between posts.

The reality is that most of us are relatively time poor so if we can achieve the best visibility by posting less then that has to be a good thing. I struggle to see how anyone can produce high quality content multiple times a day, every day. For me, the quality of your content is paramount.

Which of these weekly results do we think is the best for visibility?

10 posts - 10,000 total impressions

5 posts (daily) - 10,000 total impressions

1 post - 10,000 impressions

The challenge with impressions is that we have no idea who they are but I would suggest that the 10,000 from the one post would be much more diverse and more deeply penetrate the network than the 10 posts which may have many duplicated impressions.

When your posts attract engagement, especially comments, they will reach more deeply into the network and that has a better chance of introducing you to someone who has never come across you before. We want our content to build relationships and keep us front of mind with important contacts but we also want it to open the door to new opportunities. High quality, engaging content achieves both...can you really achieve that by posting multiple times a day?

On the other hand, it's very true that practice makes perfect and the more we post, the more we learn about our audience. Someone that posts every day will, in theory, understand what highly effective content is 5x quicker than someone who posts once a week.

The algorithm research mentioned above also suggests that posting too soon (within 18 hours) damages the reach of both posts. Of course that only counts if the original post does well, if it bombs then you might want to post again sooner.

What I always come back to is asking "How many posts can you deliver each week without diluting the quality of your content?" The answer is usually a low number so I then ask "What can you do to improve your ability to create more high quality posts?"

It might be hard to believe but 2-3 good posts a week is pretty easy for many people and it can be for you...you just need to work at it. You need a content training program that works a little bit like a couch to 5k running program! Start with one a fortnight, then one a week and gradually build it up to 2-3 a week.

The key in being able to do this is to stimulate your mind with plenty of content ideas;

• Consume content, on or off LinkedIn on topics that are relevant and interesting to your target audience.
• Use a notebook of some sort to capture ideas. These are just ideas and not by any means fully formed and you may never return to them or at least not for a long time but that simple seedling might, at some point flourish into a great post.
• Be highly observant of your daily life experiences - personal and work related. What confuses you, excites you, makes you laugh, makes you cry, worries you or annoys you? Can you take that and find a way of blending it with a topic that you know is relevant to your followers. Finding a topic and delivering it in a relatable way is key...always keep this front of mind.
• Keep a close eye on your LinkedIn feed for content that attracts a lot of comments, observe what topics seem to attract engagement.

The ability to produce enough content to get good at it requires a commitment to consume content and a desire to produce many many ideas for future content. Without this it is really difficult to get to 2-3 posts a week.

Finally I would also warn you not to force content out. Consistency is good until it becomes a stress and pressure on you to post because you feel you need to. Never post content when you know that it's not right and you're doing it because you have committed to x amount of posts this week. Cancel the post and spend the time consuming other content to gather more ideas.

Post Of The Week

This made me laugh and it's clever use of a topical story. OK we don't all have the opportunity to deliver a post like this but how many times do we miss a content opportunity when it presents itself?

Parag has turned a frustration into a visibility opportunity with this image post. It's certainly more Likeable than comment-worthy but even so it still attracted over 1200 comments.

That's all for this week. Keep in touch and let me know if there are any LinkedIn topics you would like to know more about.