What’s the Latest in Content on LinkedIn?

This article is based on a Link?Ability Live which can be watched in full here ??????

Improvements to articles and newsletters

Because of the many different formats now available for posts, newsletters and articles have taken a back seat. But there have been some changes to those this year that should bring them back into the spotlight and make them worthy of inclusion in our content strategy.

First, there have been improvements to what you can embed in articles and newsletters to provide an instant link. You can embed profiles and company pages which generate large and attention-grabbing images for each. It's much better than tagging a person because readers can see the person’s photo, headline, follower number and directly go to their profile.

Second, comments can be more easily found. Until now, they sat at the bottom of the screen at the end of the article. Now they have moved to the right which makes them easier to spot, easier to read, easier to contribute to and to get involved in the discussion. (As of writing this was still in roll out.)

Third, tags in our articles and newsletters now have a blue background that makes them stand out in the body of the text.

?? Tip: Don’t forget the SEO. Google indexes our LinkedIn newsletters and articles so if you want longevity, to be seen and brought up in searches over time, make sure you've got good SEO included. You can do this from the Settings button before and after publishing.

Reduction in size of the preview image for links in posts

When you put a link into a post the link preview size is now much smaller. When these first arrived they had a big thumbnail image as you can see in this image.

?But recently this has changed and now we have a much smaller image. There's still the same information on it, but it doesn't take up nearly as much room in the feed so it stands out less.

LinkedIn doesn't like us adding links to our posts because it takes people off the platform. If your link is not essential to your post, put it into the comments below. But for times when you have to put the link into your post make sure it displays a nice image even if it is smaller.

New access point for the video feed

The so-called interactive video feed has been around for several months, but access to it has recently improved dramatically. This is a gamechanger for those of us using video as part of our content strategy on LinkedIn.

Up until recently, access to the new video feed had been hard to find. You had to scroll through your feed on the app, find a video, tap on it to open the video, and if there was a prompt that said ‘Swipe up for more videos’, it was your entry point.

But because not all videos were in the feed, that didn't work with all videos. You had to scroll through several videos often to find the access point.

Now, this has all changed and LinkedIn has made it so much easier to access the video feed.

When you go to your feed and scroll down you’ll see ‘Videos for you’. Tap on one of the videos to open the feed and swipe up, just like you do on TikTok.

As well, you might now be seeing the Video button at the bottom of your Home screen on the app. This was promised when the new feed was first announced but has taken a long time to reach most of us.

Now we’ve had the feed for a while we’re seeing a lot more videos from people we want to hear from – our first-degree connections, and people who we respect and admire rather than LinkedIn Learning videos or those from big organisations like news organisations.

When you tap on a video in the feed you’ll see the same information as on your desktop feed: profile name, their photo and the first few words of their headline. You'll also see how many followers they have, the video engagement, and the first few words of the intro post.

?? Tip – if you normally put closed captions at the bottom of your videos they will be obscured by this information. Move your captions to the top or just below your face.

What's working on LinkedIn at present

From our most recent 6-months’ numbers on my posts here are the top engagement rate percentages:

Earlier in the year it seemed that multi-image posts and document posts were doing best in terms of engagement, but they have been overtaken.

We prefer to use engagement rather than impressions for our key metric because engagement is one place to start conversations with people with whom you can build that know like and trust factor.

What is very clear is that video IS working. That is partly because of the new video feed, and partly because the algorithm is boosting posts that appear there.

What’s unclear is how this is measured. Not long ago it was widely understood that a video’s impressions or reach was measured by the number of people who'd watched the first few seconds of it.

There's no indication whether this is still the case or whether views are measured by the number of feeds they are dropped into, irrespective of how many people tapped to open and watch.

Newsletters

Newsletters are also working well for us in terms of visibility even if they don’t appear in the top 5 list.

Just over 50% of my connections are subscribed to my newsletter or, looked at another way, nearly 34% of my followers.

If followers subscribe to your newsletter but are not connected and you like to connect because it opens the door to a conversation, you can ask those people to connect. They've already expressed interest in your content which gives you something to say in your personalised message when you reach out to invite them.

Our company page newsletter has nearly 49% of its followers subscribing to the newsletter.

Whenever a new edition of either newsletter goes out, it is automatically sent to all of those subscribers. Some will receive it as an e-mail, some will receive it as a notification, some people will receive both, so it's a really good way to get in front of all of those subscribers.

Collaboration

By collaboration I mean the kind where you and someone else you know on LinkedIn trust each other and have a good relationship.

You can work together on publishing content, such as in articles and newsletters, or guesting on each other’s audio or live events. If they provide content for an article, you can tag them, embed their profile, and make them part of your article. Here's an example from just last week:

The more people who are involved in your article and are tagged, the more people will see it, because your taggees will likely comment and some of their network will also see it.

When others become involved in your content the engagement rate increases exponentially.

?? Tip – if your tagee/s reply to all the comments on the article, your engagement rate will skyrocket. And along with it your visibility. That’s a win-win-win.

Summary

The formats working best currently are videos and newsletters. The former because the algorithm is giving them a nudge, the latter because all subscribers are notified. However, it's still advisable to keep an open mind and regularly branch out into other formats to keep your content fresh.

Things are changing dramatically quickly on LinkedIn. Even since this LinkedIn live (which you can watch here) there have been changes athough none that alter our assertion that videos and newsletters are your best bet on LinkedIn right now.