"Nailing the Long-Form Post on LinkedIn" - TomJacquesson of Taplio
Victoriano D. Cabiles
A PhD candidate with extensive experience in data analysis, reporting, and presenting a report/executive summary with actionable evidence-driven insights from raw or aggregated inputs - both qualitative and quantitative.
All credit goes to #TomJacquesson of Taplio Abridged from #Email
"Long-form posts have definitely become the norm on LinkedIn.
And there's good reason for it:
But not all long-form posts are a hit.
Most people actually fail to get any sort of traction on them, despite putting in a lot of effort.
So we decided to dissect LinkedIn's most popular format and give you actionable advice for your own posts (+ examples).
Remember: User > Algo
Too many people prioritize the LinkedIn algorithm when they write their post. But that's the wrong way to go about it. The algo might be imperfect and get tricked, but its goal is to maximize the time users spend on LinkedIn, which in the end means having good content that satisfies users.
By putting your reader and making sure you deliver value, your content strategy will become stronger when facing algorithm updates, and your personal brand will grow stronger leading to better relationships and opportunities.
So let's see how that applies.
The hook
Surely what you want to say in your post is interesting. And surely you want that to reach as many people as possible. The best way to achieve that is to start by writing a good hook.
Generally speaking, the hook is whatever comes before the “see more” button. Whatever is displayed natively in the LinkedIn feed without any prior interaction from the user. Otherwise known as a “scroll stopper”.
How?
Here's a few examples you can use:
But everything isn't about the hook and getting the user to hit that “see more” button.
A disappointed user is much worse than one who just wasn't interested. Angry users close the LinkedIn tab or app, which is something LinkedIn really doesn't like. And likely it's also someone you'll lose forever because trust will be hard to re-build.
So if you have a great hook but can't follow through with good “meat”, then your long-form post will hurt you more than it will serve you.
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What constitutes good content after the hook?
You want 2 things in your content: form and substance.
The substance you can get from digging into your own personal experiences, points of view, knowledge and research. What's even more effective is identifying the pains that your audience is facing and what you can teach them to help solve their problem.
But form is the key ingredient that will make or break the performance of your post.
Remember you're not writing a book. You're not even writing a Word doc. This is still social media and though it may not seem like it on LinkedIn, people are here to be entertained.
So you need to catch the users attention throughout the entire post, not just through the hook.
Here's a few copywriting tips to achieve that:
End on a high note
If your readers go through the trouble of consuming your entire post, it's likely they found what they were looking for: value and entertainment. So now you need to encourage them to take action.
And there's 2 reasons why you would want to end your post with a call to action:
To take them to the logical next step which will strengthen their relationship with you: following you, subscribing to your newsletters, getting notified of your next post, sending you a DM, etc.
?Here's a few actions your audience could take after reading the post:
That's all very nice, but at Taplio we really believe in learning by example.
So we've identified 5 long-form posts we think are great examples to take inspiration from:
And just for reference, here's how each one of these posts looks in the LinkedIn feed (before the “see more” button):"
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