I am joined again by John Espirian this week. Here is a link to last weeks episode: https://hankhoffmeierllc4630.live-website.com/hmbt-262-winning-the-linkedin-lottery-part-1
He is the relentlessly helpful technical copywriter, all-round LinkedIn nerd and author of Content DNA.
John writes web pages, blog posts, case studies and LinkedIn profiles for B2B clients.
Find John at espirian.co.uk or follow him on LinkedIn.
In the last episode, we discussed important items that you need to update on your LinkedIn profile.
I asked John some strategic questions about using LinkedIn. The first was about using hashtags in posts. Hashtags will help increase visibility of your content. The optimal number of hashtags is between 3 and 9. Mix highly followed hashtags as well as combine them with personal brand hashtags.
Next, should we tag people in posts? John says to be careful with “tag walls”. Make sure the content is relevant to who you are tagging. Do not tag simply to tag to try to obtain engagement. If you tag people and they do not respond, you can be dinged by LinkedIn’s algorithm.
What John recommends is taking the link to a post and send it in messages instead rather than tagging them in a post.
Here is a breakdown of social media users, as per John: 1% of users are creators, 10% are contributors and about 90% will be silent and not really engaged. Basically, many people are content stalkers and receive value from your content, but may not show any signals.
Keep posting, because people see it, they just might not always engage. Be to good to ignore.
Another myth buster is that links posted in the first comment perform better than posting it in the body. As per John, posting the link in the body will not have negative consequences. It used to be popular to post in the first comment, but does not really help much now.
Pro tip: Post your content without the link, wait a few moments, then edit the post and add the link. Your content will actually get a boost!
Next, we talk about posting similar content on LinkedIn and on your blog. Will Google punish you if you post the same content on LInkedIn that you posted on your site? This is a myth.
Best practice would be to post on your blog and then use Google Console to index the page. Once it is indexed, you can post your content somewhere else safely. Google will know that what you posted first is the original.
Another recommendation is to tweak the headline and also add a note at the bottom of the LinkedIn article that tells readers where the article first appeared.
The big value in LinkedIn is that you can treat it like a golf course. Conversations turn into customers. Talk to people on the course, and talk to people in your stream and in messages on LinkedIn.
Make sure to use audio messages to send personalized memos. It is a great way to stand out and show people you care about the conversation you are having with them.
This was the point where I asked John to hold me accountable to updating my headline and about me section on LinkedIn. I encourage you to find an accountability parter on this. If you missed it, we spoke about updating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile in last weeks episode. Also, make sure to find John’s magic word in his about section!
Connect with John!
John’s Website: https://espirian.co.uk/blog
LinkedIn: https://espirian.co.uk/blog
Book: Content DNA: https://www.amazon.com/Content-DNA-consistency-congruence-everywhere/dp/1916206239
Link to last weeks episode: https://hankhoffmeierllc4630.live-website.com/hmbt-262-winning-the-linkedin-lottery-part-1
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