Wouldn't it be so cool if you could drive engagement and qualified traffic to grow your business and brand from LinkedIn?
You can!
This article will show you how to get tons of likes on your LinkedIn updates and further grow your reach with LinkedIn Pulse.
Doing so requires one crucial thing. You must:
(Image source: me attempting to use Photoshop)
1. Build a large LinkedIn network
Smart marketers must build a large LinkedIn network.
The LinkedIn news feed algorithm isn't a black box. It's more like an open box. It's about as basic as boiling water.
Updates that you "like" will be shared with your LinkedIn network. If your connections "like" your status updates, their connections will see that update.
So if you have 20,000 connections on LinkedIn, then it's so much more likely that (a) more of your connections will click "Like" on your updates and (b) that their connections will also click "like" on your updates.
LinkedIn's algorithm is about as stupid-simple as it gets — it shows your updates to all of your connections.
There's no way to search for updates on LinkedIn — not even with advanced search. Nobody will see your updates unless they are connected to you.
When more people see your updates, it increases the odds that more people will like that update.
More connections. More likes. Simple.
Add connections and the results will multiply over time. Quality connections are key here. Only connect with people you know and want to know — don't just try to connect with random people, recruiters, or those really annoying sales spammers.
If you add 10x more connections, then you're 10x more likely to get that engagement.
How do you expand your LinkedIn network? You can definitely help yourself by optimizing the heck out of your LinkedIn profile and writing irresistible LinkedIn connection requests.
But having tons of connections is only half the battle.
2. Post high-engagement updates to LinkedIn
The second half of the battle is posting interesting updates more often. And by often, I mean 1 to 3 times a day.
But our battle begins not on LinkedIn. It begins on Twitter.
Here's how this pyramid scheme works. (Don't worry, it's totally legal!)
You can try out lots of different updates on Twitter. Let's say you post 20 tweets a day.
Some of your tweets will get tons of engagement (clicks, replies, retweets, likes). Some will do moderately well. Others will die of loneliness (hopefully not too many!).
We want to focus on the winners.
Think of this as your personal "LinkedIn Update Hunger Games."
You audition the different updates on Twitter. Each tweet is one of your "tributes."
Your best stuff is transported from Twitter to LinkedIn. Only your "victors" get the heroes' welcome at The Capitol.
Using Twitter analytics, you pick your victors — the top 5 or 10 percent top-performing Twitter updates. The tweets people liked, retweeted, or replied to.
Use your top stuff from Twitter as a guide for your LinkedIn updates. After all, it's highly likely that the same content that did well on Twitter will also get lots of likes on LinkedIn.
3. Hacking LinkedIn Pulse
Now let's turn our attention to Pulse, LinkedIn's content app and news feed curation service.
You can blog on LinkedIn and easily get a few thousands views. According to LinkedIn's latest available figures, more than a million people have published posts on LinkedIn's platform; more than 130,000 posts are published every week; and the average post reaches LinkedIn members in 21 industries and nine countries.
Sometimes LinkedIn articles perform fantastically well, transforming from average to a unicorn. We're talking 50,000, 100,000, or even millions of views.
Wish you could get that many views? You can!
How do you do it?
First, you must get your content featured on a Pulse channel. Pulse has several Channels (i.e., topics) that have millions of followers — some of the most popular include Leadership & Management, Big Ideas & Innovation, Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Marketing & Advertising.
If you only have 500 or 1,000 followers on LinkedIn, Pulse is the outlet that can expose you to a massive audience.
So how do you get your blog post featured on a Channel?
Algorithmically
You need to do old-school SEO on your post. LinkedIn Pulse categorizes your content based on an analysis of the text of your article. This is like SEO from 15 years ago, when all you had to do was put the keyword in the title and all throughout the article! Crazy simple.
Ask an editor to feature your story
You can tweet them @LinkedInPulse and ask them to feature your article in a specific channel.
Getting featured on a Channel is awesome. But it isn't enough.
Hitting it big on LinkedIn Pulse is similar on Digg or Reddit. Just because you submit something doesn't mean you're automatically going to get tons of traffic. You need to be one of the top two or three featured stories to get the lion's share.
The same is true on LinkedIn. You'll experience the biggest wins after you get to the top of a Pulse Channel.
How do you get to the top? One tactic that can work brilliantly is using Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin promoted posts to quickly drive lots of traffic to your LinkedIn article.
One key factor of LinkedIn Pulse's algorithm is the amount of traffic and engagement an article has seen in the last several minutes. You don't have to drive traffic forever. You just need a catalyst — something that gives your article a little push to get it to the top.
Once your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter ads help your article get to the top, it will be self-sustaining for a while as people go to the Channel and check out what's trending – make sure it's your post!
The winning LinkedIn formula
So, there you have it. The way to get tons of likes on LinkedIn is the combination of high engagement content plus lots of connections. Then, take it a step further by optimizing for LinkedIn Pulse to expose yourself an even larger audience.
A long time ago, I used to treat LinkedIn separately. But I've since grown and found several reasons to treat LinkedIn more like Twitter. Key among them: More people will engage with you, share your best content, and visit your website.
LinkedIn is constantly evolving to serve its more than 400 million members. So evolve your LinkedIn marketing strategy accordingly in 2016. Start building more connections and raising your visibility!
At least - you didn't share us math problems to be solved or "find the word" puzzles!
I found that most of them are highly addictive to LinkedIn members.
I think it make more sense with out complicated math ;) :P
My sincere congratulations. Sometimes I'm amazed at the things that descrubro on this website.
Just thinking about broadening my outreach on LinkedIn - and I see the new article! Love it!
I am, however, not sure about how willing the LinkedIn Pulse profile is to answer ME and my request in particular in the sea of tweets, but, hey, we can give it a shot! Thanks for your insights.
P.S. Reply to those PM-s. :-)
I'm always thinking about giving more game to my linkedin account, but as usually, I make the mistake of focusing on the other platforms where you can reach clients (facebook, twitter...) Your point is good, thanks for the post!
it's kind of cool in that linkedin organic reach never went away like it did on facebook. posting stuff on linkedin today is like posting to facebook 5 years ago back in the golden era of organic social media!
same here!
Thanks for sharing an excellent post! I have seen success with growing my network simply by engaging with other users. My linkedin feed had been a ghost town of like less industry relevant posts, so by simply interacting with my connections posts, I remain visible.
Do you have any tips on pulse content creation? I tend to have writers blok due to my ideas not feeling earth shattering. Any tips on the types of content that have worked well for you?
i draw ideas from looking at what was doing well (a) on my social media using facebook/twitter analytics and other tools like nuzzel (b) news scan of the web using tools like buzzsumo.
Great post Larry! I always struggle with the idea of being an open networker vs keeping my network closed. I have 2K+ connections on linkedin but they are all clients/coworkers (former of both). I see Linkedin a great distribution opportunity as well as a networking tool so it's hard to strike a balance between the two.
i'm not suggesting being a Linkedin Open Networker. those guys are kooky. i'm suggesting that you reach out to people who you would like to know but don't yet know. and accept interesting looking connections from like minded folks, and that there are huge tangible benefits from having opened it up a bit.
Good point. I think one of the difficulties with Linkedin is that they don't have a great UI/UX regarding keeping track of your connections and the relationships so as your connections grow it becomes more difficult to manage who you know vs who you wanted to know.
It's interesting though as on the back end, for example when dealing in recommendations they require you now to select a drop down of specific relationship choices such as:" You managed <name> directly", "You were senior to <name> but didn't mange directly", etc. If they implement more of this throuout their application Linkedin will be able to map relationships more effectively. The real question is how much they will expose to the users.
Pulse is amazing, but seems it's only available in English.
Wow here I am thinking I am pretty up to date with LinkedIn and social media in general, and its a first that I hear about LInkedIn Pulse, am I the only one? How long has it been out? :/
Pulse was their "content hack" and i think back in 2012 there are rumors about it. In 2013 only invited authors can publishing there and in 2014 it's open for everyone.
Pulse is one of the most popular features on LinkedIn. :) It's been there a long time now.
Incredible. Social media is a great platform to acquire traffic and LinkedIn is for professional people.To get traffic from LinkedIn, you touch the every corner of it. Thanks.
Always thought of making more use of Linkedin and I will give it a shot after reading your article. I guess its just a matter of effort :-) Thanks for sharing
the more you do on linkedin, the better it will get. engagement generates more engagement. like if you do a pulse article, you'll generate connection requests, etc. good luck!
I tested few things myself and come to know the power of Linkedin Groups to boost my blog traffic in 2 weeks. Before that I tried Pulse for several weeks but the outcomes are not as good as they are from groups. I also noticed that people on Linkedin like to engage more with technical posts like mine here Web Design Trends 2016 rather than Marketing post on same group (I also shared same Digital Marketing Strategies 2016 on other Linkedin Digital Marketing Groups but the results are not so good).
like a lot of other channels, pulse greatly rewards the winners. it's like powerball. gigantic prizes if you hit jackpot. and lots of (much, much) smaller prizes if you don't win. my experience with groups is that it more reliably produces OK outcomes but the jackpot (the theoretical best possible outcome) is small. if that makes any sense. heh.
I agree that getting higher engagement via pulse is a resourceful way but groups are good to start with(according to me). I shared same post on Pulse before sharing it on a Group. There may be something that I am missing. Hoping to learn more about Linkedin Pulse.
Completely agree with you Lee. Sometimes, for unique niche products or a website,LinkedIn helps more than other social media platforms.
Hm, very interesting. I have to admit that the only time I really work on developing my Linkedin account and network is when I'm looking for a job. I'll have to try your suggestions and see if I canm do more with it.
yeah i think that's pretty common usage. i'm just saying that the network is really easy to use to generate engagement since they never killed off organic reach like facebook did, and it's not all that noisy compared to twitter, etc.
Hi Larry,
Thanks for your post! Asking an editor to feature your story on Pulse sounds like a good idea. However, what about other languages than English? I write in Dutch, since I live in the Netherlands and that is where my target audience is. Do LinkedIn editors review Dutch posts or posts in other languages as well? Any ideas on this?
Thanks again.
Best regards,
Guido
Pulse is a really good way to broaden your network and increase readership. I've had some good results from curating content from my website and posting it on Pulse. .
[Link removed by editor.]
Linked In is the one of the best social networking platform for professionals or even for fresher’s who have started their career as one can stay updated with latest trends happening in the industry.
Awesome article! I love the concept of using Twitter to help with LinkedIn. We've do a lot of Twitter posts, so this should be a breeze to integrate. Also the hack for LinkedIn Pulse is great! Always wondered what the algo was there. My thoughts... you could also use paid ads at Reddit, Stumble Upon, etc to boost views quickly.
Great post, Larry! I love LinkedIn and I was thinking this post might be similar to other LinkedIn posts where you are told to engage in groups and conversations. But since it was on Moz and and you were the author, I thought to jump in.
The hacks are great and I will try to use them and experiment more. One question, do you think you should ask LinkedinPulse on twitter for featuring your articles every time you publish one on LinkedIn?
Nice work Kim. I'm very keen to get into LinkedIn Pulse and see how I can do. Have you had any luck getting Pulse articles indexed and ranked in Google for extra exposure?
This is the first post on LinkedIn that I've actually found useful and unique. Thanks so much for this Larry. It really is an eye opener.
wow thanks. that's very nice of you to say considering how many articles there are out there on linkedin.. :)
Great article with actionable tips. The LinkedIn Pulse information is VERY helpful.
I just heard about TopLinked today. What are your thoughts about TopLinked to gain more LinkedIn connections? Is this just about quantity vs. quality?
i have not used toplink but there is (a) a limit on total number of connections and (b) a limit on how many connection requests you can make - therefore i would try to make lots of valuable connections to make them count.
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wow i like it .
thank u for good information
LinkedIn Plus is really a fantastic feature for posts with thousands of viewers already available to expand your buisness. It's been too long since most of enterpreneures are using it
especially if you can get your post picked up by linkedin pulse. those pulse boards have millions of followers!
Thanks, really useful article, I'm going to try the pulse advice. What are your thoughts on recommendations? Is it worth bothering people and asking them to leave recommendation on a linkedin page? It seems like a nice asset but the process of "begging" kind of ruins it,
you absolutely should be trying to get more recommendations and endorsements. the more credible your profile looks, the more likely people will accept your connection requests.
Thanks Larry for this really interesting insider article. I just wonder if anybody knows if Pulse publications are only in english.
Hi Georg, I've the same question, since I'm from Spain. Hope someone could give us an answer!
Awesome post Larry. Linkedin simplified for many of us here. Could you also let us know, whether everything you have mentioned above is applicable if you actually do not have that many followers in twitter but got decent level of linkedin connections.
it will work for small numbers of linkedin connections!
Super basic question, but how do you know how many connections you have? I only know that I have 500+, but I don't know how to tell how many it actually is! Is the exact number listed somewhere in Linkedin?
Thanks!
I don't know in the English version, but in the Spanish version, you can count and add all your contacts in the contact list, and so the number of contact of anyone just by clicking on their contact entry.
I did not realize this could be possible with LinkedIn. My question is, is it better to separate my current LinkedIn account with my profile in the company I work and create another one with my website? I do not want to add contacts as this role...
usually people only have one personal account. though it's ok to create different linkedin company pages. however, linkedin company pages are quite limited in terms of what they support. for example, you can't add connections (they have to add you). and you can't publish anything on pulse.
Great post, Larry!
Do you recommend posting content exclusively on LinkedIn, or do you also post the same piece on your website or blog as well?
i only republish stuff on linkedin. there's no point in doing a linkedin exclusive. just link back to the original source and u should be OK for SEO duplicate content issues. also, i'll generally wait a while. sometimes 1-3 months, so it's spaced out a bit. it's similar to twitter how it's ok to tweet stuff more than once but u should space them out a bit.
Awesome. You're the man, Larry.
Nice post Larry, In short we can say you just need to have a large LinkedIn network and a little push from other social channels to get featured on LinkedIn pulse and once you hit the jackpot you are going to get some crazy load of audience and a lot of exposure.
Yeah. this one did over 50k views! https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140620205126-14611789-has-google-gone-too-far?trk=mp-reader-card - it really changed my opinion of what is possible on pulse.
Pulse is a fantastic platform for reading the worlds best business oriented articles, and I can certainly see its use from an SEO point of view.
Quite interesting idea but I don't want to have over 20k conection on my private profile. If you're talking about additional it's okay but I don't think it's worth of so much work.
there are a few hacks to make it easier. check this out: https://marketingland.com/secret-formula-irresistib... -- for example, i get people to send me requests. all i do is process the requests. i also write irresistable connection requests that get accepted 75% of the time.
it's worth the effort!
Great post, unknown as to reap the full potential to Linkedin, thank you very much friend
thanks for reading!
Thank you very much.