Let’s talk repurposing content on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an extremely popular social media and content platform. I’m seeing more and more people using it and getting results from it too.
In fact, Gary Vaynerchuk declared 2019 as LinkedIn’s year . Let’s not forget it’s not long ago that he was telling anyone who would listen that Snapchat was the platform to be on and anyone who’s anyone would be on there and…well…that didn’t happen! But, this time, I think the man is right!
Are you on LinkedIn?
Are you creating, promoting and repurposing content on LinkedIn?
Do you want to know what’s working and not working?
I invited LinkedIn expert Sam Rathling for a chat about all things LinkedIn and it was a fantastic discussion! Keep reading to find out more!
Meet Sam Rathling, LinkedIn Expert
Sam Rathling is a LinkedIn Expert. As the CEO & Founder of Linked Inbound, she inspires business owners and sales professionals to generate massive results from LinkedIn.
Sam is the UK’s leading expert on LinkedIn, and is on a mission to generate over £1billion in sales for her clients. Considered an expert on inbound lead generation, she runs the fastest growing LinkedIn Consultancy in the UK. Sam speaks internationally and is one of the most sought after experts on the subject of LinkedIn lead generation.
I was delighted to interview Sam and we had a great, in-depth conversation about LinkedIn, and as always, I wanted to discover repurposing opportunities using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn: Why the resurge?
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform. It used to be a place for employers to post jobs, and job seekers to post CVs, and not much else. It’s where we went to update our career history when we were in the market for a job. And if we were recruiting, it’s where we’d go to not only advertise a position but also find out more about a candidate.
In fact, I remember only really logging onto LinkedIn once in a blue moon. It was usually when I’d met someone and was keen to find out more about what they did for a living / their career history.
Today it has evolved into something much more than that. It is a thriving social media and content platform, still with a professional, business and employment focus.
People use LinkedIn to:
- Post status updates
- Interact and engage
- Build professional / business relationships, but it’s not boring or stuffy
Sam explained that she chose to specialize in LinkedIn because she views it as the hottest social media platform.
Other social media platforms, like Facebook, are making it hard for businesses to gain any traction without spending a lot of money. LinkedIn still has decent organic reach (for now!).
Essentially, things that used to work years ago on Facebook, that fall flat on their face today, work on LinkedIn. Hence the resurge in interest and usage of LinkedIn. Also, since 2003 when it launched, LinkedIn has gone through lots of changes.
The platform became owned by Microsoft in 2016 and that brought about many changes, for example, with the addition of video content and soon live video (by the time you read this live video will probably already be….erm….live!).
Social Selling is critical on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the place to focus on social selling, which is the art of selling without selling.
However, there are a lot of people who approach LinkedIn in the wrong way whereby they focus on advertising and pushy sales techniques. This is simply not going to work. Instead, the focus should be on attracting the right clients to you by creating value-add content.
If you connect with people and then immediately start trying to sell to them in their inbox you’re doing it all wrong. Also, if your posts are all salesy you’re doing it all wrong.
You can get leads and business on LinkedIn, but in a non-salesly, less overt way.
Content on LinkedIn
If you are already creating long-form content elsewhere, for example, videos, a podcast, a blog, livestreams, then when deciding what you should post on LinkedIn the good news is you will be able to repurpose your content in many ways.
Firstly, get your profile set-up correctly…
- On your LinkedIn profile description make sure that you mention that you have a podcast, blog, video show… etc. Also, add a call to action for people to check it out with guidance on how (don’t assume they will know)
- In your profile you can add links to your contact information so it’s a good idea to add a link to where people can go to consume your content . E.g. if you have a podcast add a link to the main location that you’d like people to go to listen to it
- You can add media files to your profile as well, so you can add images and videos to your profile. This is an opportunity to add images related to your content for example, if you have a podcast you could add your podcast artwork, quotes from your show, reviews from your subscribers, audiograms (snippets of audio from your show paired with an image) or video clips. Here are the media files I have at the bottom of my LinkedIn page:
Posting status updates
LinkedIn (like other social media platforms) makes its money by keeping people on the platform, so you fall out of favor if you do things that take people off the platform.
When you post an update, don’t post links to your website or YouTube or any external site in the post itself. Instead, post the link in the first comments. If you don’t do this, and you post links to external sites, you will get hardly any views on that post.
When posting a video, upload the video directly. If you put a link to YouTube you will reach hardly anyone.
You get up to 1300 characters for your update, so you can create a pretty lengthy post.
LinkedIn love posts that are like mini blog posts. Even if you are posting a video or a graphic, if you accompany it with a long piece of copy, you will get more reach for your post.
It comes back to keeping people on the platform.
In fact, this is where blog repurposing could work well, why not repurpose your short blog posts as LinkedIn updates — put the whole post in the update or cut it down. In addition, link to the full blog post in the first comment.
TOP TIP #1
The first 3 lines of text are always shown in the feed followed by ‘see more’. So, a good way to get people to click on ‘see more’ is to consider the first three lines as a teaser for the post. Don’t give away the answer or your point straight away. The more people who click on ‘see more’, the more popular your post will appear to the algorithm. Subsequently, the more people will see your post…(again…similar to Facebook!). It is all a popularity contest.
Video is king
Sam explained that the best form of content to post on LinkedIn is video.
Your video should be uploaded to the platform, with captions/subtitles on the video for those who don’t have their sound on when watching. In addition, it should be accompanied with a long text post (that has no external links!). This would be the optimal post on LinkedIn.
Videos on LinkedIn can be up to 10 minutes long, but according to Sam the optimal duration is actually as short at 10–60 seconds.
If the video is educational and high value-add, then 60 seconds could be too short so it’s fine to go over that. But, aim to stay below 5 minutes.
People are busy and they don’t really go to LinkedIn for long-form content, so you need to grab attention, and keep it.
Repurposing video content on LinkedIn
When it comes to repurposing content on LinkedIn, if you are repurposing video content then a great idea is to cut down longer videos into shorter ‘teaser’ videos. Find a clip from your video that can stand-alone and will grab attention. Make sure to share it on LinkedIn and provide the link to the full video in the comments. I talk all about repurposing videos here.
Some people may never watch your longer video, but get value from your shorter clip.
Or, film a completely separate short video, letting people know about your longer form video. Be sure to explain why anyone would want to watch it and what value they will get out of it. For example, explain the problem, and the solution that you’re offering in the video.
This separate short video notifying people of your content can be created for all kinds of content. A new blog post or a new podcast episode could all be supported by you taking to camera and filming a less than one minute video letting people know all about it. Something that I often call a content video trailer and I talk all about this here.
LinkedIn articles
Articles are great for credibility building. However, they don’t get a lot of readership. LinkedIn used to send out notifications when you published a new article but they don’t anymore because so many get published these days.
So creating articles is a good idea but don’t go all in on articles.
A great thing about creating articles is they don’t need to be from scratch, just for LinkedIn. Repurposing comes in handy once again!
Remember, you can repurpose your blog posts into LinkedIn articles
You need to allow a few weeks or longer between posting on your site and posting on LinkedIn, in fact Sam suggested as long as 3 months. This is so that the original article on your website gets ranked as ‘the original’ by the search engines.s
At the end of your article it’s useful to put ‘This article originally appeared at LINK’. Tweaking your article, changing the headline etc all helps too. I talk more about this in this post.
A great thing about articles is that when you publish an article it will appear on your LinkedIn profile — it always shows the most recent article that you published. New people landing on your profile will see this which is great for your credibility.
Articles also help with your Social Selling Index which is a score that LinkedIn gives you out of 100. It helps to establish your brand on the platform and your status.
Another great thing about articles is that you can send people to other locations in an article e.g. you can write an article all about a podcast episode directing people to listen to it. Remember, in status updates we stay clear of external links, leaving them in the first comment only!
TOP TIP #2
Write your bio at the bottom of your article with information about where the reader can find you and links to things like lead magnets.
Engagement is critical
With LinkedIn, as with most social media platforms to be fair, it’s less about the type of content you post and more about the engagement your content gets.
LinkedIn loves comments!
A great way to get engagement is to ask a question. Invite people to comment and then engage with them when they comment. Ask questions back as well, e.g. ‘thanks for your comments, what did you learn the most from …’ or ‘thanks for your comments, is this something that you do too…’….etc. Get a conversation going in the comments field.
When you post content, the first hour after posting your content is critical. If positive vibes get sent to the algorithm in that first hour, you’ll reap the benefits for days or weeks.
A happy algorithm means more reach. So don’t post content on LinkedIn when you are not going to be free to respond to comments.
Tagging people
Many people tag others in their posts as a way to drive more engagement and comments. Only tag people if it’s relevant to them. Ask permission first if you don’t know them so well or if it is clearly just appropriate to ask e.g. an attendee of your course or a client. For example, someone you recently met at an event and you want to tag them in a post about a conversation you had, or get their thoughts on something. Whatever it may be, if in doubt just ask them if it’s okay.
Don’t tag people just in the hope that if you tag someone with a large following or influence it’ll help your post. Unsolicited tagging is annoying and should be avoided!
If this happens to you, Sam gave a tip!
TOP TIP #3
You can un-tag yourself from a post — in the top right hand corner of the post you can choose to un-mention yourself.
Frequency
I asked Sam about how frequently you should post on LinkedIn and I was quite surprised that she advised to post on LinkedIn every day. That seems like quite a lot doesn’t it? But, in fact, once a day is good practice. Gary Vaynerchuk would say 10 times a day but you have to be realistic!
Sam did further qualify this advice though by explaining that it depends on how much you want to dominate the platform.
As with all platforms it’s more about quality than quantity. But, unlike other social media platforms, posts have a longer lifespan on LinkedIn.
They can last for a few weeks as long as people are still engaging with them. It’s not unusual for a post to pop into your feed that someone posted three weeks ago. So that’s why quality is important.
Business pages vs personal profile
Sam explained that unless you are a big brand, like Amazon or Apple, you do not need to use a business page. You’re far better focusing on your personal profile.
Even more so, if you focus on personal branding and clients are buying into you as the business owner or head of the business. Therefore you really should be using your personal profile. It’s hard to get traction and followers on a business page anyway. People buy from people, so there is little to gain from a business page. But, there’s a lot to gain from posting great content consistently from your personal profile.
How to grow an audience and following on LinkedIn
An Inbound approach
Firstly, an inbound approach, which means people finding you. They will find you when you have the right keywords on your profile to get found. You’ll also get found by putting out great content consistently.
Building a targeted network
Secondly, proactively build your network of people in your target market. Search and find people, whether in your local area, by their job role, profession…
Figure out your target market and they will be on LinkedIn, whether you are b2b or b2c. Whatever you do….everyone you want to connect with is on LinkedIn!
There are advanced features for searching for the right people.
Connect with Sam
To connect with Sam obviously you can go to LinkedIn! Sam invites you to connect with her and pop a message in her inbox letting her know that you read this article and what you took away from it.
Also, you can head to Sam’s website where you can grab a copy of Sam’s ebook with 107 tips!
Thanks for reading!
Say Hello on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and LinkedIn.
Originally published at https://www.content10x.com.
