Best Practices for Sharing and Engaging on LinkedIn

5 Takeaways from the PRSA Nashville Luncheon

Last month, several Pierce PR team members attended the Public Relation Society of America Nashville Chapter’s in-person luncheon! Knight Stivender, a local PRSA member and marketing analytics guru discussed the importance of LinkedIn. More than 61 million senior-level executives are active users and 40 million people use LinkedIn as a primary tool to grow their network and explore job opportunities. As the world’s largest business platform, LinkedIn is an excellent brand building platform for thought leaders and businesses alike.

Continue reading for the five biggest takeaways account coordinators Carson Brown and Blair Poirier and how these tips and tricks can improve your LinkedIn strategy. 

1. Leverage banner images

Is your company hiring? Are you participating in a month-long celebration or volunteer drive? Communicate it in your banner image! LinkedIn banners are a *first impression* for visitors who come to your page. While it should include brand elements, it should also tell visitors what you value, celebrate or plan to announce. Below is an example of how Dollar General called attention to its celebration of Employee Appreciation Day.

2. Place external links in the comments of your post

If you want to increase engagement and reach on LinkedIn, this tip is for you. When posting to the platform, it makes sense to include the external link to the website you are referring to in the body of the post, right? Instead of pasting the URL in the post, try pasting it as the first comment. LinkedIn will often penalize posts that send users off the platform but with this simple *trick* you might start to see increased impressions.

Posting external links in the comments requires a bit more time and energy since you won’t use the link preview the platform generates. But, you can create a separate graphic to ensure that the post is still visually engaging and easy to read!

Tip: Apply the same strategy to video content. Try uploading a video natively rather than linking to YouTube.

3. Optimize SEO keywords to improve Google ranking

LinkedIn has a 98/100 domain authority score, making it one of the 5 top sites regularly indexed by Google. What does this mean? SEO is everything. Users should consistently optimize every aspect of the platform with keyword-rich content to increase their Google ranking and increase the likelihood of future engagements. Users can accomplish this by using alternative text when uploading images and including targeted keywords in post copy and profile descriptions such as the summary, profile header and experience sections.

4. Post at strategic times

Since LinkedIn is a professional platform and people are often working during the 9-5 hours, try posting before or after the traditional workday. Most users are active early in the morning and after work and will be more likely to engage at those times. However, different content types perform better at different times. For example, if you are hiring, post during the hours of 11-1 pm when people are on their lunch breaks.

There isn’t a set answer for the perfect day, hour, or minute to post, but experimenting with your strategy can help you reach new audiences and grow your following.

5. Cheat the 30-60 second rule

So you’ve shared an interesting post with valuable insight and a dynamic graphic, but you don’t get any traction. Why? Some of the most insightful posts can be overlooked on the platform due to the 30-60 second rule. This is an algorithm setting that penalizes and deprioritizes posts that aren’t engaged with by someone other than the author within the first minute. 

One way to ensure that the content you’ve spent time creating gets worthy recognition is to use the “notify employees” button when posting. If you’re an admin on a company page,  you’re able to send push notifications to team members once every 24 hours. This will increase the likelihood of engagement and encourage colleagues to interact with relevant, company content.

 Carson Brown and Blair Poirier are Account Coordinators at Pierce Public Relations.