New Changes in the LinkedIn Algorithm = Changes in YOUR Strategy

GREAT news! LinkedIn has reported that it's seeing record levels of engagement on the platform over the past year.

BUT... How do you get YOUR Share of this???

LinkedIn announced in October of 2018...

"More and more people are using the feed and giving feedback to their network’s posts: our members generate tens of millions of viral actions (likes, comments, and reshares), and the number is increasing more than 50% YoY. However, we found that these increases weren’t equally distributed. In fact, at the beginning of 2018, we were in danger of creating an economy where all the gains in viral actions accrued to the top 1% power users, while the majority of creators who don’t receive much feedback were receiving less than ever."

YIKES! That's a problem. Only the "big guns & heavy hitters" were getting any views and engagement.

So LinkedIn recently announced (week of June 24, 2019) changes to the algorithm to help the "little guy", and create even more engagement and retention.

Some are calling this the Robinhood effect -- stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Or taking views on the feed that all of the top dogs were previously getting on their posts, videos and articles, and giving more of those views to the posts from the average Joe.

And that's FANTASTIC for you... IF you know how to optimize this.

LinkedIn explains what they've done this way:

"To facilitate professional conversations in LinkedIn’s feed, we have introduced “contribution” as an additional objective in the candidate selection model. Probability of contribution captures members’ intent to share, comment, or react to a particular feed update. The model also takes into account timely feedback to content creators, which is a clear signal for cultivating and retaining audience builders on LinkedIn."

Which means, LinkedIn loves people who create content, or what they call 'audience builders'.

And the more you comment and react to other people's posts the better!

The more engaged you are on the feed, the more your posts, videos and articles will be shown.

Or as LinkedIn explains:

"The goal of feed ranking at LinkedIn is to help members discover the most relevant conversations that will aid them in becoming more productive and successful. Relevance is determined by our objective function which optimizes for three main components: The value to the member, the value to the member’s network (downstream effects), and value to the creator of the post."

What will show up at the top of someone's feed?

According to LinkedIn:

"The more valuable the conversation, the higher in your feed the post will be. How do we know if it’s a valuable conversation? We use the framework People You Know, Talking About Things You Care About."

Here's a great article from LinkIn's Pete Davies which explains how things end up in the feed.

Top Tips for Getting MORE Views & Engagement

The key is being highly targeted in everything you do and go niche and deep!

You want to train the LinkedIn algorithm to work for you, not against you.

And here's how you do it.

1. Your Profile: Know exactly who your target audience, or your prospects are, and show them what's in it for them. Give value to your prospect on your profile. Demonstrate how you can help and serve them. Use key words in your summary, titles and descriptions that your prospects would be looking for. Be sure every section of your profile is complete. Include skills that would relate to your target audience and what they would be looking for from you.
2. Connections: Only invite people to connect with you, and accept invitations to connect from people in your target audience.
3. Get & Give Endorsements and Recommendations: The more you have of these, and the more you give within your targeted connections, the more you're showing LinkedIn that you're an active engaged user, and the more you're training the algorithm who to serve your posts to.
4. Create Content:  Post 1 to 3 times per day, ideally five days a week. To optimize the algorithm, you should have a mix of posts, native videos (not links to videos hosted somewhere else), and articles. Be sure your content adds value and is specific to the interests, challenges, questions and concerns of your target audience. Ask questions in your content to create engagement and elicit responses.
5. Use Hashtags:  Hashtags have become very important and effective on LinkedIn. Be sure to use hashtags on every post, video and article you create. You want to have a stable of hashtags relevant to your audience that you use consistently. Again, training the algorithm to work for you... showing it who will want to see your posts. Follow hashtags that are important to your audience.
6. ENGAGE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE!:  With the recent changes to the algorithm it's now become very important to engage on your feed with people's posts who are in your target audience. Comment, like and share. Provide valuable feedback, ask a question or give a thought provoking comment. And be sure to respond to any comments on your own content. The more you comment on other people's content the more likely they are to engage with yours.
7. Join Groups:  LinkedIn likes to see people joining and engaging in groups. You want to be active in groups where your prospects are. This will continue to help train the algorithm about who and what you're interested in. Which means LinkedIn will not only serve you content that you're interested in, but they'll be more likely to serve your content to those same people.
8. Update Your Profile Regularly:  At least three times a year add something new in your experience section and enable the "Share with network" button at the bottom of the section. This will draw attention to you and what you're doing. Add new skills from time to time, and also add new education, licenses & certifications, new volunteer experiences, and accomplishments.
9. Create Your Custom URL: On the top right corner of your profile page you can create your custom URL by clicking on "Edit public profile & URL"
10. Optimize for Mobile:  Statistics show that well over 50% of people are viewing things on mobile devices. That number is only going up and up. Be sure to view your profile on various mobile devices to ensure that your photo, banner, and any other images or videos look good. ALSO, check your profile on the LinkedIn mobile app! Remember, in 2018 Google started using mobile-first indexing for search results. This effects your LinkedIn visibility because your profile and your articles can rank in the search engines.
11. CONSISTENCY is KEY!:  Both your audience and LinkedIn love consistency. I highly recommend creating a schedule for your posting. You may want to have a theme for each day of the week so you know in advance what you're going to do. I've also found it simplifies my life to know that Mondays and Friday's I'm going to do a post. Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm doing a video, and generally speaking on Wednesdays I'm going to write an article.

If you're serious about building your business and untapping the gold mine of LinkedIn CHECK THIS OUT to...

• Get MORE Prospects
• MORE Customers
• And MORE Team Members FASTER!

Celebrating Your Success!

Rukiya