Lessons I Learned by Posting on LinkedIn Every Day

Last month, I challenged myself to write on LinkedIn every day.

During this time, I published 30 posts, 2 LinkedIn articles, and countless comments. 

Having done that, I learned a few lessons about posting on LinkedIn. In this article, I want to share them with you.

1. I will never return to daily posting again

The two posts I wrote right before the challenge got 24k and 31k views. Most of those posts I published during my 30-day challenge didn't even reach the 10k milestone. Somehow the daily posting schedule didn’t work for me, so I reckon 2-3 posts per week is an optimal frequency.

2. LinkedIn is perfect for content validation

Thanks to the challenge, I realized that LinkedIn is a great place to validate the content before posting it on the blog or elsewhere, (e.g., on HackerNews or Reddit.) The audience on LinkedIn is usually less strict, but you still can get useful feedback about your article or post, then polish it before distribution.

For example, here is my LinkedIn article about hiring a remote team:

After publishing the article, I made a post in my feed with a link to it. That helped me to get some extra views:

Since the article performed well on LinkedIn, we decided to change it a bit and published the outcome in our blog. Afterward, we made a post on HackerNews with a link to the article on the blog. The post was quite successful and brought us 4,000 unique visitors:

Here’s another article I published about common resume mistakes in the IT community:

On HackerNews, it performed even better:

The latter HackerNews post brought 6,000 unique visitors to our blog.

3. LinkedIn articles are still a thing

Besides being useful for content validation, both of my LinkedIn articles performed far better than most of my usual LinkedIn posts. 

4. It's better to remove a post than to edit it

Before the challenge, I used to edit my posts frequently after publishing them. However,  when posting daily, I noticed a consistent pattern: the more you edit your post, the fewer views it gets. So, if the post isn't getting enough reactions and views during the first hour, it's better to delete it, then edit and re-post it.

5. Outbound links won’t ‘kill’ your post...

2 out of my 3 most successful posts during the challenge contained an external link to one of my products (Relocate.me) and tagged a company. The third most successful post didn’t have any outbound links and was dedicated to working remotely from the beach. I guess the topic determined its popularity.

6. ...but be careful with them

So, I cannot say that outbound links will definitely 'bury' your post, but adding more than one link is not the best idea. Moreover, LinkedIn can 'dislike' particular websites, as it does with our CV Compiler. Whatever the post is about, linking to CVCompiler.com makes it less popular than my typical post. I reckon the same thing can happen with any other website. Sad but true.

7. Know your audience

Since 80% of my 1st-degree connections are recruiters and developers, the majority of my successful posts related to them. For instance, I asked people to tag the best recruiter in the comments or relate funny interview stories. Such posts almost always get over 10k views. So, write with your audience in mind — if your network is made up mostly of marketing specialists, even the most engaging post for software developers will hardly perform well.

8. Tagging companies doesn’t work

I’ve tagged several companies across my posts, yet failed to draw their attention. Tagging people works much better. Though I’m not a big fan of this approach, it’s up to you.

9. Don’t rest on Sundays

Contrary to popular belief, Sunday is a great day to post something on LinkedIn. When people return to work on Monday, your post will be one of the first things they see in their feeds.

10. LinkedIn isn’t a magic wand

No, even if you start posting regularly, you won’t attract dozens of new customers or users right away. However, your audience will still grow, which can have a positive impact on your business. For example, the challenge helped me to reconnect with 5 previous clients. They approached me themselves — perhaps, they were just tired from my avatar in their feeds :)

These are my key takeaways from posting every day on LinkedIn. Now, I'm going to take a short break, so you can officially rest from my avatar in your feed :)