With over three-quarters of a billion business professionals on their platform, LinkedIn is the place to find new clients who need your writing services.
According to Omnicore Agency, LinkedIn is the top B2B content marketer for organic social marketing. If LinkedIn isn’t part of your marketing strategy, it should be.
But, with 756 million people on the platform, can potential clients even find you?
Fortunately, private companies regularly test LinkedIn’s algorithms. What their findings reveal can help improve your visibility on LinkedIn.
Publish posts on LinkedIn without external links.
When you click an external link, you’re whisked off one website onto another. LinkedIn would rather you stay on their platform. Your presence and attention are one of the ways they make money.
To that end, the LinkedIn algorithm makes posts with external links less visible.
This is a problem for professional writers like you and me.
For example, you may want a potential client to visit your website at some point. When they do, you can share more information about how you can help them. And, it increases the possibility they’ll take the conversation to the next level.
But, if LinkedIn makes posts with external links less visible, is it ever a good idea to direct potential clients to your website?
Not only is it possible, but as an AWAI-trained copywriter, you almost have an unfair advantage.
You can use your writing skills to create a compelling call-to-action (CTA).
Even though LinkedIn suppresses posts with external links, they do make exceptions.
You can create a post that ends with a call-to-action inviting your readers to request more information in the comments. When they do, you can respond with an external link directing them to the information you promised. LinkedIn considers this helpful information, and makes the post more visible as a result.
(Did you spot a bonus here? When potential clients see your skill for writing compelling CTAs, they may be interested in talking with you about their next project.)
Maybe you’re wondering, why not save people the trouble of asking for the link, and paste it in a comment of your own right away?
Commenting on your own post with an external link reduces your visibility.
At one time, this method did work. But, LinkedIn’s algorithm caught on and adjusted for it.
Even so, there’s another way to get your external links on LinkedIn, with their blessing.
Use the newsletter feature.
LinkedIn has a newsletter feature. To access it, you’ll need to turn on Creator Mode in your profile. You can do that under the Resources heading. Just click the Off button, and LinkedIn will give you the option to turn it On.
As of this writing, LinkedIn doesn’t have a problem publishing a newsletter containing external links.
You can include multiple links leading to various sources: your blog archives, writing samples, testimonials, special reports, e-books… whatever you feel is appropriate for your audience.
Publishing external links in a newsletter doesn’t negatively affect the visibility of your LinkedIn posts. It’s a great way to let thousands of potential clients discover more about you and your services.
Again, you get an additional bonus. Potential clients will see your ability to write professional newsletters, which could open the door to new work.
Another way to increase the visibility of LinkedIn posts is using hashtags. Nothing new here, right?
Well, here are a couple of tips you may not know.
Use the optimum number of hashtags.
According to LinkedIn, there’s no limit to the number of hashtags you can use. But, studies reveal your posts are most visible if you use between three and five hashtags.
Fewer than three tags, and your reach will be limited. More than five hashtags, and the organic search results get muddy.
Take care choosing the hashtags you’ll use. Make sure they’re relevant to your audience. LinkedIn publishes a current listing of the most popular hashtags you can use to find the most searched and followed tags for your niche.
But, numbers and popularity aren’t the only considerations.
Be sure to include one personal hashtag in your post.
A personal hashtag allows a brand, or a person, to be followed or searchable on LinkedIn. For example, if Digital Copywriter published this article on LinkedIn, they’d want to include one personal tag like #DigitalCopyWriter.
Anyone searching for or following that hashtag would find this article and other content published under it.
Here’s a tip that may seem familiar… but with a twist.
Reply to all the comments on your posts.
We mentioned earlier LinkedIn loves engagement. When they see people commenting on your post, your visibility increases.
To increase your visibility even more, and boost your organic network, make sure you reply to every comment made on your post.
But, replying with a short word of thanks, just to put a tick in the reply box and plow through to the next comment, doesn’t trick LinkedIn.
You’ll want to reply with a meaningful response, add a fresh point, or add bonus information to your post’s topic.
LinkedIn has a powerful AI which identifies valuable contributions to their platform. Replying to comments with additional information helps LinkedIn identify you as a thought leader. And, that comes with increased visibility of your LinkedIn posts.
Here’s a similar tip that might be new to you.
Reply to comments within 24 to 48 hours of receiving them.
Make sure you have notifications turned on in your LinkedIn settings. When you get a comment notification, it’s time to reply.
LinkedIn encourages lively, real-time engagement. When you reply to a comment within 48 hours, they’ll make your post visible to more people than if you waited to respond.
Depending on how much activity your posts generate, answering every comment within 48 hours might be unrealistic. If that’s the case, reply to as many as you can, and go for consistency. LinkedIn appreciates consistent engagement over bingeing behavior.
If you’ve gotten in the habit of bingeing replies, letting large amounts of time pass, and bingeing more replies, you have an opportunity to strengthen your Social Selling Index (SSI) using this tip.
Speaking of Social Selling Index… you might be wondering what that is.
Boosting your Social Selling Index increases your LinkedIn visibility.
Social Selling Index is a global social media term, but it can be misleading. In fact, LinkedIn discourages social selling or salesy behavior. Instead, they want to see social serving behavior: helping others with knowledgeable, thought-leading, and educational information.
According to their rules, your SSI score ranks how well your behavior and profile appear on LinkedIn. If you have a paid LinkedIn account, you can view your SSI score. Just log into your LinkedIn account and open a new tab at https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi.
You’ll find various scores and percentages according to your industry and overall score.
The lower your overall score, the less visible you are on LinkedIn’s platform. The higher your score, the more visible you are on LinkedIn.
You want a minimum overall score of 70 to 75. Below 70 doesn’t make your content invisible, but you aren’t far from it.
A score between 75 and 80 gives you decent visibility.
A score of 80 and up makes your content far more visible on the platform, including your ranking in search results when people look for quality connections.
Some other ways you can increase your SSI score include filling out your profile to 100%, displaying a professional-looking photo on your profile, and posting reactions and relevant comments in response to other people’s posts.
Make quality connections.
Reaching 500+ connections on LinkedIn is often seen as a connection goal. It indicates your value on the platform. But, racing to that benchmark at the expense of connection quality can negatively affect your status on the platform.
For instance, it’s tempting to send and accept connection invites to people from all walks of life. But, connecting with people on LinkedIn with a broad-brush approach can reduce your visibility. It also reduces your search ranking results.
Ninety-five percent of your connections on LinkedIn should be with your reading audience.
Can you see why picking a niche becomes even more important? When you produce posts of interest to your niche audience, they’ll read and comment… and that helps your visibility.
But, the quality of connection invites isn’t just your consideration. The people you invite will also look at your profile. They’ll consider your value based on the quality of your other connections. They’ll look at your profile before accepting or ignoring your invite.
If they see a mixture of irrelevant connections on your profile, it’s less likely they’ll connect with you. If your connections are relevant to them, they’ll likely accept your invitation.
These are just a few of the many ways to optimize your LinkedIn posts for better visibility. I encourage you to dig deeper and keep up on what has a positive effect on the visibility of your LinkedIn posts. Because, the more visible you are to your target audience, the more likely you are to have work come your way!
