LinkedIn Shares – you’re doing it all wrong
You might think that telling you not to share something on social media will mean the death of your content
After all this was the very same person that asked you “Are You Demoting Your friends Social Media Posts?” by not sharing them
We’ll break this down further later in the blog, but in short
Twitter Retweets – Good
Facebook Shares – Good
Instagram Story Shares – Good
LinkedIn Shares – Not Good
How can you react a LinkedIn Post?
Different users react and use LinkedIn in different ways
95% of people on LinkedIn are lurkers and simply watch, but don’t interact
But here are the different ways you can interact on LinkedIn
Like (with LinkedIn reactions of Like, Celebrate, Support, Love, Insightful, Curious)
Comment
Share
Send (Direct Message to your contacts)
And course click a Link
2 of the common methods that people use to interact though are
– Liking, but never commenting
– Sharing their company page and clients posts
You’ll soon find out why that’s not necessarily the best thing to do
What’s my worst performing post on LinkedIn and how many people did it reach?
For many of you this blog will go against your very thinking, so I want to share with you a recent test we did
Well, my worst post ever was a recent one in the past month
It was a share of a other users post that I had been tagged in
I rarely use the share button because I’m aware of how few people a shared post will reach, but it was a new client we’d been booked to speak for an I felt compelled to share it
Every so often I test to see if the algorithms have changed
And the algorithms hadn’t changed – it reached just 9 people
To put that in perspective: I have 8000+ connections and my average posts reach 2000+ people
9 people was an absolute failure
This is not an anomaly – every time you share another persons post on LinkedIn you’ll find it doesn’t perform
Why don’t LinkedIn Shares work?
You’ve probably heard of the LinkedIn algorithm and how certain posts gain more traction than others
Duplicate content such as LinkedIn shares don’t perform well in the algorithm
We’ve all done it one time
Shared a post from a friend of ours looking for a job or good news from a company / client we we work with
It’s human nature to want to support others
But if you want to put that to the test look at
– the post views of the last post your shared from someone else
vs
– the post views of one of your last text based posts
That will give you the answer
You can also understand LinkedIn’s hesitancy to give shares a prominent place in the feed. People don’t want to see duplicate content all the time, which would happen due to the nature of networking groups and managers asking their employees to share
Just to clarify – are you talking about shares of a blog like this or shares of a post?
I’m talking about shares of someone else LinkedIn posts
Sharing other people’s content such as this blog or a link from the BBC / traditional media is different
LinkedIn does slightly demote links within the algorithm, but you’ll still reach more people on a link share than clicking share on someone’s post
What do I do if my manager asks me to share our company page updates?
We’ve actually written a whole blog on this called Employee Advocacy: What It Really Is Vs What Your Boss Thinks It Is
You’ve had the email from marketing or your boss that barks at you to share the LinkedIn Company Page updates or post the latest blog link on Twitter
And that’s the beginning and end of what your boss often sees as Employee Advocacy
An order barked as you with no explanation, no strategy and no measurement afterwards
What employee advocacy actually is is this …
Employees sharing what they do within the company in a way that shows passion for their role and the company itself
When multiple people do this, it builds the businesses brand as well as the individuals personal brand
It is not just clicking the share button on company updates
There’s a full break down here of the steps needed
If you don’t share other people’s posts on LinkedIn, what else can you do to help them?
A like will help more than share and doesn’t take a huge amount of time
But if you really want to help one of your contacts and help yourself at the same time
Meaningful Comments are the strongest signal to LinkedIn to that people are interested in the post
Naturally if you put a meaningful comment on a post as well it strengthens your relationship with the original poster and also gets your profile in front of a new audience
It’s a win win
So to clarify in order of most important to least important interaction it’s?
Comment
Like
Share
So how do I reach more people if sharing doesn’t work?
Content Content Content
You need to put your audience at the heart of what you do
You shouldn’t approach LinkedIn with how do I sell myself today
You need to produce valuable content that engages your audience
You can look at our profile here and look at the types of posts we do
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amccann/
Or you can look at our blog The Anatomy Of A Perfect LinkedIn Post here
How do you want us to share this blog then?
Email / send the link on LinkedIn DM to your manager / colleagues / networking group
Start a discussion about it
Consider changing the way you use LinkedIn
NEED HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA?
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Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
