How Is Your Social Media Business Going?

Another quarter has passed and once again it’s time to take a look at how my social media “business” is going. Ok, it’s not really a business as I am not selling anything (at least no one has paid me to do what I do). In terms of activity, it has been a really exciting quarter with lots of records being broken. It doesn’t mean that I’ve had hundreds of thousands of views or anything like that but really just that I’ve continued to see good growth on all parameters, made lots of new connections and certainly strengthened my brand even further. If I compare to the same time last year the numbers get even crazier but we’ll get to that later. 

Personal branding has never been more out in the open 

Let’s first take a look at this social media thing from a more general point of view when it comes to personal branding. It was also in the 3rd quarter that LinkedIn reached 1 million publishers on its platform. That’s a million people publishing their thoughts on almost any imaginable topic before the eyes of more than 300 million users on LinkedIn. That’s what you could call MEGA personal branding. 2 years ago all these people were largely unknown (Ok, they might still be but at least they are giving it a shot) and now every time they push the “publish” button they’re like standing naked in front of the public opinion sharing their views, taking hits, making new connections and generally doing good things for their personal brand. A lot of new business has come from LinkedIn’s publishing platform and I’m sure many people have gotten new exciting jobs as well. Now a million more people than 2 years ago have their own social media business where either they’re selling themselves or an actual tangible product or service. That’s quite an achievement and it must have been a good business for LinkedIn too! 

When you’re in business you should track how you’re doing 

Now everyone might not be as fanatic with their LinkedIn stats as I am but since August last year I have tracked: views, likes and comments and this year also followers (including connections). I have made a status in both 1st quarter and 2nd quarter and I will continue to do so until I stop writing (if it ever happens). I do this to keep myself accountable but hopefully also to inspire others to get working on improving their personal branding. So let’s take a look at the numbers. 

As you can see things are going quite well. While Q2 wasn’t spectacular by any means when it comes to growth Q3 has been out of this world. There is no doubt about that getting featured on Pulse is what fuels my growth but also worth noticing that while 92% of my posts were featured in Q1 “only” 83% was featured in Q3 yet I had more than double the views, more than triple likes and more than double up on comments. My following also grew significantly in Q3 and while this is, of course, a blend of connections and pure followers I now have almost 600 pure followers. This, to say the least, is very humbling. Again, you’ll find publishers out there with many more pure followers but I can only look at myself and say I am extremely satisfied with the growth I am seeing. Compared with the same time last year (I only started publishing in May 2014) and you can see on the KPIs that much has changed. 174% more views/article, almost 7 times more likes/article and almost 5 times more comments/article. Clearly with a Pulse hit ratio of 79% vs. 0% for same period last year it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what sparked the growth. 

How come you get featured on Pulse all the time? 

Being featured on one of Pulse’s channels makes a significant difference for the success of your posts. So everyone is asking themselves and others. 

“How do I get featured on Pulse?”

Basically, there are two ways: Either you get picked up by the algorithm or your post is found by one of LinkedIn’s editors who finds it interesting and tags it to a channel. Exactly what you need to do to be successful either way is difficult to say. There’s a ton of posts out there giving you good advice on how to get featured, but this one by Will Robbins is more exhaustive. No one contacted me or made anything public about why I am lucky to get featured most of the time so I can only take an educated guess. Below are some of the reasons I can think of. 

• I post frequently and at regular intervals (weekly)
• I write about topics (development of the finance function) which readers find interesting but few write about (at least on LinkedIn)
• I try to be specific about the channels I see myself getting tagged on (like many of my posts about job hunting or personal branding)
• In terms of what time of the day/week you should post it’s a bit more blurry to me. I typically post Monday afternoon and usually my post gets featured 7-8 hours later. I used to publish in the morning, but suddenly I stopped getting featured so I made some changes and seems it worked
• It has nothing to do with how many views, likes, comments or shares it gets initially at least not when it’s a LinkedIn editor featuring you (I once had a post featured which only had 3 views at the time it got tagged to a channel)

LinkedIn is obviously keeping it a secret exactly what you need to do to get featured which is certainly the right thing to do. People should publish because they have something to say and not because they just want to be featured on some specific channel. I know many publishers who are happy if just 50 people view their post and get a few likes and comments. It’s not about quantity but quality. So if you haven’t been featured yet don’t give up on that but rather focus on writing quality content which means something to whoever reads your post. 

Oh, by the way, I mentioned some personal records were broken in the quarter. 

• Most viewed post Why You Need To Land A Job Before You Graduate with 3,148 views
• Most liked post Why You Need To Land A Job Before You Graduate with 236 likes
• Most commented post There Is No Chivalry In Recruiting with 40 comments

So let me ask again. How is your social media business going? Have you achieved the goals you started with or are you still thinking if this social media business is something for you? I can only urge you to get started. As always like, share and comment so we can get a good discussion going. You can also read more about social media, personal branding and writing below in some of my previous posts. 

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 

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.