How To Rock LinkedIn In 2016

It’s been another year and one where many more people took the opportunity to increase their exposure on social media and LinkedIn in particular. Here, many new authors have been born as they frequently publish long-form posts on LinkedIn Pulse. Many people dream of the chance of going viral and receiving views in the hundreds of thousands leading to new opportunities and maybe a whole new career. I think it’s fair to say though that behind the scenes there’s probably 1,000 authors, for every 1 author that goes viral, who never enjoy such success. Less can certainly do it as well but it’s important you have some personal aspirations when putting your thoughts out there. In this post, I will share some more insights, from another year of blogging on LinkedIn on how you can rock your social media presence in 2016 and display how far you can actually come if you just put some consistent work into it (even without going truly viral). 

Tell me more about…

…Publishing

It’s really easy and everyone has access to it. Simply hit the “Publish a post” button as seen below and start typing. 

I recommend that you build a small repository of posts before starting as the first ones are the hardest and you don’t want to have too far in between publishing your posts. You should agree with yourself on a regular posting schedule you can keep up with, be it weekly or monthly, as that is the best way to gain more followers and perhaps even be featured on Pulse. In this way the readers know what to expect, from you. Going on vacation? Then share an update saying when you expect to be back to publishing. Last but not least, I recommend that your first couple of posts at least are within your core area of expertise. Here, you are the expert and people are more likely to listen to you. 

…Engagement

You’ve published your first post and now what? Will someone read it or will all your efforts have been in vain? The answer is not black and white, but it’s very much up to you to get the engagement. Share with your network and the groups that you’re part of. Typically that will get you anywhere from 200-700 views, 10-20 likes and a couple of comments. That’s definitely not bad and you need to make sure you engage with every single one of the people that engage with you. Make sure to reply to all comments and thank every person who shares your post. If you engage, people will also (eventually) engage with you. Not sure how to best do this? Well, go to the analytics page as part of “Who’s viewed your profile”. 

Here you can see details on who has read, liked, commented and shared your post. You will need to go to the post itself to reply to people's comments, but to thank people for sharing this is the place. Scroll down a bit and click on “Shares” and it will display all the people who have shared your post. Then you can click on each of them as shown below to view their share and leave a comment. 

This will, of course, take a bit of work but as I’ve written before publishing on LinkedIn or any site is hard work. 

…Getting featured on Pulse

Ah, the holy grail to some, a mirage to others but really all it is LinkedIn featuring your post for 24 hours to everyone (or at least those that notice it in their feed) who’s following the particular channel. So the question is not so much what it is but more how can you get on it? There are two ways: 

1) LinkedIn is employing an algorithm to pick up posts that matches certain criteria for a channel. No one outside LinkedIn knows exactly what those are but your chances are higher the more engagement your post gets.

2) Your post is noticed by a LinkedIn Editor who in turn features your post on a channel. It’s not an exact science either how to get spotted, but you can try highlighting your post in the official LinkedIn Group “Writing on LinkedIn” or tweeting it to @LinkedInPulse. 

There are no promises that you will ever get there but the good news is that if you do make it there your chances of making it there again are much higher. Take it from me. I published 23 posts before getting my first feature, however, since then an astonishing 75% of posts have been featured on no less than 14 different channels. Think about how many times along the way on those 23 posts I thought about quitting? I didn’t though and today I’m so happy for that choice.

Let’s look at the stats

I usually take a stock count every quarter to see how my posts are doing and compare with previous quarters and years. I started publishing in May 2014 so I now have more than 6 quarters under the belt as an author on LinkedIn. Below you can see how my numbers look.

 2015 vs. 2014 

 Quarterly development in 2015 

As you can see it’s been quite a development and besides from a temporary dip in Q4 2015 it’s actually only been going up. The number of posts varies somewhat from quarter to quarter so it makes more sense to look at the “KPIs”. If we look at 2015 vs. 2014 it’s +166% on views/post, +513% on likes/post and +353% on comments/post. I wish I could say that this was all due to my magnificent writing skills but mostly it’s the effect of getting featured on Pulse. You can notice how my numbers dropped quite a bit from Q3 2015 to Q4 2015 and this is mostly due to less features on Pulse. You can see from the graph below what happened when I was not featured on four posts in a row (after that came 2 weeks of vacation so it looks even worse than it is. 

You can see it’s more or less exponential growth since I started recording my stats in August 2014 until today except for those 6 weeks from mid-October to end-November. That’s 15,000 views missing if my growth would’ve continued. That’s 15,000 missed chances of connecting with new and interesting people. So yeah, Pulse will do wonders for you but it’s important to say that getting featured is only a means to an end and not a goal in itself. If you don’t have a plan with what you want to use the visibility for then there’s no point. 

Did I reach my goals and how will 2016 look? 

At the beginning of the year I set myself some goals I wanted to achieve in the post “5 Insights From A Year Of Blogging” and I’m happy to say that I have achieved all of them. 

• Reach more than 25,000 total views on my posts (result = 56,506)
• Triple amount of likes to 750 (result = 2,943)
• Receive more invitations to do guest blogging or write guest articles (I have published a few more articles in external magazines during the year)
• Be invited as a guest speaker for a conference or business association meeting (I spoke at two conferences in 2015)
• Have more than 1,500 views on a single article (result = 3,249)

I can only express my sincere gratitude to all my readers, followers and connections that made this possible. I never expected to reach these results when I started the year. So now the pressure is on for 2016 or is it? Essentially all of the above are just some metrics that doesn’t mean anything without the stories behind them and the things that were accomplished. At the end of it, what matters is if I helped people or businesses become better at what they do. So that’s also what 2016 is about and here’s what I want to do. 

• I want to help companies transform finance (not least Maersk Line where we are working on some pretty exciting stuff!)
• I want to help more people find jobs
• I want help people develop their personal branding proposition (Resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile etc.)
• I want to become better myself at everything I do and I hope you will help me!

So how will your 2016 look in terms of social media and everything that can be accomplished? You have more opportunities than ever to make something of yourself and help others to do the same. Start now by sharing your thoughts right here on LinkedIn. Click that “Publish a post” button and get started. Reach out if you need help! As always let me know what you think by liking, sharing and commenting! 

For more posts about social media and personal branding please see below. 

7 Steps To Improve Your Personal Brand

Did I Start Publishing Too Soon?

5 Insights From A Year Of Blogging

Personal Branding Is Like Building A Business

7 Reasons Why Your LinkedIn Posts Will Fail

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Publish On LinkedIn

How LinkedIn Changed My Publishing Strategy 

How Is Your Social Media Business Going?

How To Use Social Media For Career Building

Hi, My Name Is. The Powerful Self-Introduction 

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Regional Finance Business Partner for Maersk Line North Europe and is working with the transformation of Finance and business on a daily basis. Anders has participated in several transformation processes amongst others helping Maersk Drilling to go Beyond Budgeting and transformed a finance team from Bean-counters to Business Partners. He would love the chance to collaborate with you on your own transformation processes to help you stay out of disruption. If you are looking for more advice on how to get the most of LinkedIn Anders also has a few tips to share as well as if you want help in your job search. Don’t be shy! Let’s get in touch and start helping each other.