Want eyes on your latest article? Pressing publish isn’t enough—you’ll need to promote it. LinkedIn is an incredibly useful (and free!) platform to spark conversations about your work. This social media platform is geared to professionals and hosts a wide variety of users from many fields, from doctors to street artists. This means that your work will be able to reach an incredibly wide audience of potential readers.
No matter where your article was originally published—an industry journal, your company blog, or self-published right on LinkedIn—if you want people to read it, you need to share it with them! Here are our top 4 tips on how to do that.
Step 1: Post it
In order to promote your content on LinkedIn, you need to post it. Most of the time, the hardest part of posting is coming up with a caption. It can be easy to agonize over the perfect words, but remember that it doesn’t need to be overly long or fancy. Simpler is often better.
Your goal should be to create interest. While LinkedIn has increased its character count limit to a very generous 3,000, that doesn’t mean that you need to use it all. Remember: less is more. By giving readers just enough information to get them interested—but not so much that they feel like they’ve read the entire piece—you’ll create some mystery to motivate them to click on your article and find out what it’s about.
While LinkedIn may at first appear to be just another social media platform, in reality, it’s a powerful business tool that can help you form genuine connections.
Step 2: #hashtags #forthewin
Hashtags are essential to getting your posts seen on a worldwide platform. They categorize information by topic and allow others to find your post simply by searching for that hashtag. Many Linkedin users follow certain hashtags, so if you use relevant hashtags, your post can get served up in their feed—even if you’re not a Linkedin connection. The result? Lots of fresh eyes on your work.
Although hashtags are powerful, we don’t advise using as many hashtags as possible or simply adding random ones that come to mind. The best strategy is to include a small number of carefully selected hashtags—this comprehensive article on Linkedin hashtags recommends three—that relate to both your content and your target audience. For example, if you’re a pediatric doctor based in New York, you might use the hashtags “#pediatrician #healthcare #newyorkpediatrics”.
Step 3: Sharing is caring
Linkedin is all about making connections and supporting one another. You might consider creating a casual arrangement with a fellow professional in the same industry to regularly share each other’s content. This benefits both parties: resharing other people’s posts is a great way to maintain your presence on LinkedIn while having your own content shared is especially powerful. LinkedIn is about making connections and supporting one another, making it the perfect place to show this type of mutual support.
Another way to share your post with as many people as possible is by sending it to your coworkers by means of a direct message. While people may miss a tag or mention, they’re almost guaranteed to check their DMs and see the message you’ve sent them. Once they see it, there’s a good chance that they’ll share it, or at least give it a like, helping you achieve your goal of generating as much traffic to your post as possible.
Promptly responding to comments shows that you care about your readers and helps your post become a place of conversation.
Step 4: Don’t leave ‘em hanging
Once you start receiving comments on your posts, it’s essential to respond to them in order to keep the engagement going. Promptly responding to comments shows that you care about your readers and helps your post become a place of conversation. In order to quickly respond to comments though, you need to see them—keeping notifications on or frequently checking LinkedIn after posting is essential.
The number one key element of LinkedIn success is consistency. In order to continue growing your audience, you need to post regularly. Setting a goal can be helpful in this area, whether your goal is posting once a day or once a week. Make it easier by creating a habit of checking LinkedIn during your lunch break, at the end of the day, or whatever time is convenient for you. Being consistent can take time, patience, and effort but it will undoubtedly be worth it as you watch others engage with your content and then seek out your professional services.
Now that you’re equipped with our tips and tricks, you’re ready to go forward and take the LinkedIn world by storm! Looking for more ways to become a successful thought leader? Check out our top tips in this article.
With many thanks to Victoria Woods for her contributions to this article.
