Are you publishing long-form content (articles) on LinkedIn yet? The ability to publish was recently made available to everyone with an English-language profile and it’s something that LinkedIn are heavily pushing.
LinkedIn members are increasingly creating content, and the platform recently surpassed one million total long-form posts and 50,000 posts per week. Through the publishing platform, Pulse, and SlideShare, LinkedIn seeks to make the world’s professional knowledge available online.
That’s all well and good, but how do you cut through the noise and make sure your posts get seen, shared, commented on? OkDork and Search Wilderness looked at the 3,000 most successful LinkedIn publishing posts and were able to collect some interesting data. Our friend Melanie Dorado put these stats into an infographic.
10 tips to master LinkedIn publishing:
- The optimal title length is between 40 and 49 characters, if you go any longer than this you risk LinkedIn cutting the title off in some places on the platform. Also, any shorter than this and you may be missing out on important keywords.
- Your posts should have 8 images, posts with exactly 8 images performed 2.4 times better than those with 7 or less. For image inspiration, have a look at Liz Ryan’s published posts which all have beautiful illustrations.
- Forget about video and other multimedia. The more video and multimedia posts tend to have, the less views they get according to the data. I wonder why this might be, surely LinkedIn would want to highlight people that put a SlideShare embed in their articles? SlideShare is of course owned by LinkedIn.
- Use 5 sub-headers for optimal views, posts with 5 headings that divide its sections performed best with 9 headings coming in as a close second. This makes total sense as it makes a post easier on the eye and skimmable.
- The optimal length is 1,900-2,000 words. Posts with between 1,900 and 2,000 words performed 50% better than the next best word count (1,800 words) and at least 100% better of any word counts beneath it. This is very interesting, as most bloggers would say shorter posts tend to perform better but it could indicate that the audience on LinkedIn wants well-researched information.
- Stay neutral. By having a neutral sentiment, you tend to perform 70% better than those with either positive or negative sentiments. This goes contrary to what bloggers would say again and indicates LinkedIn members are not on the platform to read strong opinions, rather to get better informed.
- An 11 year-old should be able to read it. Posts on LinkedIn with a Flesch-Kindkaid Readability Score of 80-89 performed best, considered “Easy” and requiring the education level of an 11 year old. This again is slightly contrary as people who want to consume well-researched content should also be wanting high-quality writing?
- “Likes” are the most significant driver of success. Getting that thumbs up on your LinkedIn posts has a strong correlation with higher overall views. Yes, you might get comments and shares but apparently likes is what you want. Every time someone likes your post, it goes into their feed for their connections to see.
- Publish your LinkedIn posts on Thursdays. It’s the end of the week, but not too late so that people have switched off. Most traffic on the Undercover Recruiter LinkedIn page will happen Tuesday through Thursday so this sounds right.
- Questions don’t make great titles. Go for statements instead of questions, people have their own questions and can tap those into Google instead.
RELATED: RECRUITERS: Use LinkedIn Publisher, Even if You Don’t Have it!
