Use These LinkedIn Strategy Tips for More Visibility as a Professional Speaker
Leveraging social media for more visibility is a challenge. Not only are you competing against others who also want their message seen, you are competing against algorithms that reward and punish certain behaviors you might not even be aware of.
LinkedIn is a popular platform for professional speakers, but many beginning speakers (and even well-established ones) find that they only average a handful of likes and comments before all engagement stops. What gives?
Today, we’re sharing some valuable LinkedIn strategy tips to increase your visibility and get more engagement. Many of these tips come from well-known LinkedIn strategy expert, Richard Bliss. Richard and his company help executives and salespeople master the language of social media to get their message in front of their ideal customers and prospects. And recently, he helped the community of NSA hack the LinkedIn algorithm in a Build a Better Business Webinar.
Keep reading to discover his most actionable tips for getting your name and content in front of more people on LinkedIn.
Redo How You “Share” Content
Content is king, it’s what gets people reading. But conversation is queen — it’s what gets people talking. And that’s what you want if you’re looking for engagement on LinkedIn.
One way to get more visibility and engagement with your content is by ensuring that you’re starting conversations. To the LinkedIn algorithm, that is the most valuable action you can take.
According to Richard Bliss, when you hit the “share” button at the bottom of someone else’s LinkedIn post — no matter how juicy and informative and valuable that post may be — LinkedIn will view your “share” as duplicate content.
That means that content is then hidden from 99% of your connections. You might as well have done nothing at all.
Instead of hitting the “share” button,” try commenting instead as a way to generate traction.
Rework How You Comment
When you comment instead of hitting the “share” button, LinkedIn views that action as you starting a conversation. So, it promotes it by taking your comment and showing it to your network.
If you comment in the right way, you can get even more visibility from comments. Here are some practical LinkedIn strategy tips to follow:
- Acknowledge the author by tagging the person you are responding to.
- Restate the issue they brought up.
- Provide your insight and thank them.
This tactic works because this way when LinkedIn shows your audience your comment, they don’t even need to see the original post to get value. They can see everything they need to in your comment — who you’re talking to, the context of the conversation, and why they should be paying attention.
In addition, the more you comment, the more likely LinkedIn is going to reward you by placing more of your original posts and content in front of more people.
If you want to start commenting more, there are three groups you should focus on: your immediate network, anyone posting content in the arena of what you speak on, and finally, any random, non-career-related interests that you have.
Diversifying your comments in this way will open up the opportunity to connect to a wider audience.
Rethink How You Post
Aside from commenting, posting is the primary way you should share original content on LinkedIn. And like commenting, there is a right way to post in order to get the LinkedIn algorithm on your side.
Some LinkedIn strategy tips for more visibility include utilizing posts rather than articles (we’ll get to articles in just a moment). But whenever you have immediate, valuable content, you should post about it.
The recommended cadence for posting is a few times a week. If you are getting some really great traction, then consider posting daily, but no more than once a day.
What should you post and when? The best LinkedIn strategy is to mix it up. Images, native video, linking to your articles (I promise, we’ll get to articles soon!) are all great. The point is, LinkedIn rewards variety and punishes what it perceives as automated content.
Another tip is to create and use your own micro hashtag with any relevant posts. Since the majority of your content sharing is going to be via posting, a micro hashtag is a way of virtually curating your own content.
Retool How You Write Articles
And finally, this brings us to LinkedIn articles! Yes, you should write them, but you shouldn’t depend on them for visibility. They get very little promotion on LinkedIn. So, you shouldn’t write articles on anything trending “in the moment” with the hopes you’ll generate a viral post through organic traffic. No matter how many connections you may have, you will not get support from the LinkedIn algorithm!
Instead, in order to use articles as part of a robust LinkedIn strategy, you should write them to be evergreen content.
Evergreen means you can come back to it two or three years later and it’s still relevant. Yes, it might need a couple updates, but the bones of the article should be something you can reference whenever you need to.
And you reference these articles in the conversations you are starting via your posts and your comments. This is a huge way to add value to the LinkedIn platform and increase visibility.
In Closing…
Want to hear even more LinkedIn strategies from Richard Bliss for public speakers? Check out this Speakernomics episode which was recorded as part of a special crossover episode with our monthly webinar, Build a Better Business. The episode goes into more detail about how to create valuable content for a LinkedIn strategy that works.
And for NSA members, please log into your NSA OnDemand account to watch the entire recording, which includes nearly an hour more of in-depth instruction on how to hack the LinkedIn algorithm!
