95. How do you get engagement on LinkedIn?
Have you ever felt lost before posting on LinkedIn? 😖 Never fear: This Brand Therapy episode will help! Hosts Phil and Lauren have a discussion about drumming up engagement on your LinkedIn through updates. With live examples of effective posts, these two chat about storytelling, post length, post types, and more. By the end of the episode, you'll have a formula to follow that'll help your LinkedIn get more engagement than ever before.
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Episode Transcription
Phil
This episode of Brand Therapy is sponsored by Himalaya Botanique toothpaste. I tried it myself and I am a fan. Sometimes using natural toothpaste can feel like a trade-off. Sure, it’s great to ditch the SLS and artificial flavors, but brushing with a natural toothpaste can feel flat and bland, leaving your mouth with an ‘unclean’ feeling. I’ve tried many toothpastes that either taste like baking soda, or I feel don’t really work. Himalaya Botanique, our sponsor for today’s episode, is a toothpaste that’s free from fluoride, SLS, and artificial colors and flavors, but unlike other similar toothpastes, they don’t compromise on flavor or performance. Himalaya toothpaste is always bursting with foam and flavor! I tried it. I love it.
Interested in trying it for yourself? Get 20% off Himalaya Botanique toothpaste on Amazon with discount code THERAPY20. Check out the show notes for more details on this episode’s sponsorship with Himalaya Botanique. Now, onto the show.
Hello there. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And we are so happy you're here today. Today we are talking along the theme of what we've been talking about this month, LinkedIn. And yes, a month of LinkedIn. It's kind of what it's been, you know, the last few months, I would say yeah, more than a month I've gone all in on Instagram, Instagram, Instagram has been the topic, particularly over on my YouTube channel.
And we decided to switch things up and choose a new platform for us to explore. It was really along the lines of diving in on a platform that we wanted to improve and update ourselves too. If you caught our last solo episode, we actually went in and updated my LinkedIn profile. If you want to see those changes, you totally can. Phil Pallen. Over on LinkedIn.
Today, though we're talking about kind of it's like we're graduating to the next level, aren't we?
Lauren
Yeah, this is when you get to put pen to paper?
Phil
Yes, as we always say they say we say that. We say that all the time.
Lauren
I try to make it like a thing.
Phil
Yeah, we're putting pen to paper. And what does that mean? We're going to talk about what to post on LinkedIn. How do we even begin this? Because actually, even though I post on LinkedIn, I feel perplexed and intimidated by this. And I usually end up messaging you in a day as being like, What do I do? What do I post? What do we you know, why should we post? Because there's just something about LinkedIn that makes you second guess what you should post?
Lauren:
Why is that? Let's unpack that for a bit why do you second guess is it? Are you unclear of who your audiences or trying to appeal to too many people? What do you think's going on?
Phil
I think because people think of LinkedIn as a professional network, it's less freeing, or it's less you think twice about what you're gonna post? Is this business enough? Even though LinkedIn is graduated from those days, I'd say LinkedIn now we say is a lot like Facebook. Right, back in the day.
Lauren
Yes. So maybe you feel like there's less creative opportunities. It's also not visual. Phil: It's not visual. Yeah. It's also strictly professional. So there are things that it would be inappropriate to talk about on LinkedIn.
Lauren
Yeah, possibly. But I guess an argument can be made for both sides there. Phil: Mm hmm. So I have some examples that I'm going to share. And we'll read them for the podcast listener. I also have examples of my own posts that have done really well. Wouldn't you say the most important thing, though, before we analyze what works well, and what doesn't, is to acknowledge that you don't actually know until you try.
Lauren
Yes exactly. I mean, the principle is ultimately the same from any social media platform, you don't know what's going to stick until you try with your audience. There's a quote that I always use with clients it is lame, and I'm so repetitive with it, but without data, you're just another person with an opinion, you don't know, my favorite. It's so powerful, a real one, two punch, data.
But I really think especially LinkedIn, of all social media channels, I feel this applies more than most because on Instagram, there's always going to be an image you cannot post your feed without an image. And with LinkedIn, I think it's awesome just because you can be seen by so many more people than Facebook, so there's a lot more room for experimenting, because you can really, really see how people react because you're getting more impressions than you would anywhere else.
Phil
That's true. If you can figure out what your audience responds to on this platform, you can keep doing it, or do variations of it. I think we'll actually pull up a few examples that I can share, of people that I keep an eye on, on this platform. There are many. But there are a few examples, I thought that speak to the types of content that do really well on LinkedIn.
And maybe that first example, that first example is what I would probably consider, a big announcement or a big update, not let's not call announcement, let's call it update. And this is where I don't actually have my own example in this case, but I think of our friend, Catherine Gladwyn, who we had on the podcast.
Lauren
Mm hmm. She's a rock star on LinkedIn, truly. And I would consider this to be more of a story post, more of a long form text post. Yes, there is an image there, but I think that the engagement would have been just as high even if the photo of her daughter wasn't there.
Phil
So let's talk about what we're what we're seeing. So Catherine Gladwyn, recently posted a few days ago, the text goes like this, I won't read it all. But it goes like this, ‘this one, with the little arrow emoji just got in.’ Just got a first from Oxford University, it's my daughter, Chloe. And then she put the checkmark, emoji. ‘Single parent household for all her schooling life, state school, pour in quotes, post code address. She's beat quite a few odds that the statistics show to achieve all she has. And it's a lesson for everyone, I think.’
Really, I mean, it's written so well. And then the photo really helps. It's a photo of Chloe at Oxford University. This has, at the time that I'm looking at this over 500 likes 81 comments, and it continues to go up. I see you liked it. Lauren: I loved it.
Phil
You loved it. And this, I mean, this content does so well on LinkedIn, any kind of big update, or you said story. Can you expand on that idea?
Lauren
Yeah, so just by story, I think that there's a narrative here that shows someone overcoming a challenge. And you don't necessarily need to win to tell a story like in this case, Chloe did win, obviously, and Catherine won sort of by default, because she's Chloe's mom. But let's say Chloe didn't get into Oxford. And Catherine had posted a similar posts that said, that showed the odds that were against Chloe, and how she didn't get into Oxford, but chin up, because you tried and you can't give up on yourself. That's also a story in itself.
So I think the key is to really set the stage with where you came from, or what the situation was, and where you are now, and most importantly, what we can all learn from that.
Phil
I like that. And actually, to clarify and build on what I said, we shouldn't just wait for big updates to be posting on social media. It's not just things that are happening. Now. It could be things that have happened in the past that you're reflecting on, maybe you've got a good image to go with it.
Let's look at one more example of Andrea Mora who's a friend of mine, she's a student in a few of my courses. I love this post that she did two weeks ago, she put ‘surprise, I'm now a full time business owner, I'm so excited to take this big leap. It may not seem like a big milestone, but if you would have met me a year ago, damn, I never thought I'd be out in the world during a pandemic, in a recession, pursuing my own creative endeavors.’ It is great, a little photo of her on her laptop, 86 likes 27 comments and counting, lots of words of encouragement. You know, update, life update, storytelling, actually.
Lauren
Of course, because she's saying she's again, setting the stage, if you would have met me a year ago, versus now where I'm a full time business owner that is showing a trajectory of a protagonist in their own story. I think that's setting the stage. If he has just said, surprise, I'm now a full time business owner.,ve gotten some encouragement, but it's really that context of how she got to where she is now that makes the post special.
Phil
Big moments, but they don't have to just be like huge moments like getting into university, it can be any kind of reflection on your career. Let's brainstorm something that I haven't posted before, but something I could post based on something we're doing in the business. I'm going to brainstorm, what is something that we've done this year? Let's say it has to be this year.
Lauren
Okay. So this year, gross income is up 50%.
Phil
It is thank you clients.
Lauren
With while your team is actually smaller.
Phil
Yes. Okay, that makes it better. Because if it's just about money, I would feel like I was bragging. And I wouldn't want to talk about that. But no, but actually, here's to maybe build on that. I, now that I'm back, working my way up the mountain can admit that I was down at the bottom of the mountain a few years ago. I could tell a great story about taking one giant client on servicing them becoming the business I said I would never become, which is dependent on one hand to feed you, and that client eventually disappeared. Yeah. All while I was dealing with lots of personal issues, including a divorce. And I mean, I didn't really lose anything. But there were some turbulent moments. I could do a post about this. And I could attack it from a few different ways. I could probably get a few posts out of this. So let's write something how would you position this?
Lauren
I would position it as, okay, given the time of uncertainty that a lot of businesses are in right now, I would say something like: “ Maybe today's been horrible, maybe this week hasn't been so good, heck, maybe it's been a really tough year, all you need to know is to keep going. I don't mean to preach. And I know that we all have work to do, but I will tell you that a few years ago, I was in a really tough place. I lost my biggest client, I was in the middle of a divorce, I was trying to figure out who I was and what my place on this planet was, and it was hard, and I had no idea how things will would have turned out. Flash forward, 3 years later, my team is smaller, and I love everyone that I work with. We've got fantastic clients who are beyond supportive. And as an added unexpected bonus, my income is 50% higher than last year.” And then some sort of final words of encouragement.
Phil
And my living expenses are also lower. And I'm living remotely, which is what I always wanted anyways.
Lauren
And I think I would sort of sign it off, if you're going through a tough time I'm with you, just keep putting one foot after the other, you will get through this. And if you want some extra encouragement, send me a DM I'd be happy to help. That's that's what I would write.
Phil
I hate when you tag those on at the end.
Lauren
Sorry.
Phil
I mean, I love it because they're engaging. But you have this terrible habit by the way.
Lauren
Okay, it's not terrible, the best practice.
Phil
But that post is awesome. And what we're going to do is we're going to post that word for word on LinkedIn, I'm going to transcribe it, thank you Otter, and we're going to post it and we're going to see how it goes.
But you, okay, I call it terrible, you call it best practice, you invite so much engagement that I end up spending my days replying to emails.
Lauren
I know, and I'll be like, what? This assignment? Where is this? And you're writing back to the 300 people, my inbox, so funny.
Phil
By the way, we hit a huge milestone. Today on our email marketing, this could be another post somehow, on LinkedIn.
See, just kind of open the floodgates, once you have one example. So what I'm going to recommend to people, I thought it would be fun for you to actually sit in while we workshop this, although I don't really do anything, I just say, oh, add this, oh, add this.
Lauren
No, you get the ball rolling, of course.
Phil
Um, but you know, whether it's just you brainstorming this, you could even take this example and use your own. Maybe it jogged a few ideas, a few memories, try it out and let us know.
So we talked about storytelling, you talked about, like big moments could also be small moments. But really, the key there is to tell stories, what else do we have?
Lauren
So I think there's also something to be said about the format of the posts that you're publishing. And also the length of the posts that you're publishing. These examples are all long form text, they're all longer stories. But I think that it's important to also see how short text does.
So an example of that would be just posting a quote that you love, or posting a sentence. I know that you often say that. I'm trying to think of what you say like a what, what's the difference between like a hobby and a brand? What's the thing is your catchphrase?
Phil
Oh, well, I have a few catchphrases. Yeah, but the one This one might be something you love on its own as a hobby, something you do for others or something you love paired with something others need. That's the formula for a brand or a business. Two terms are used interchangeably.
Lauren
So you could post that I would just keep it at that's a brand and not even mention business for LinkedIn, Clarity. You could post that and that's an example of text. So that might be a little more challenging because it's kind of one off sound bites, but what you can do is at work or even if you're having a career related discussion with anyone, just be conscious of the sentences you're saying even record yourself, and then pick out those little sound bites. And that would be short text for LinkedIn too.
Phil
Great. Love it. What about something like a tip or a hack?
Lauren
Depends on how long it is, I would consider the tip for the hack to be a short or a long update just based on how many steps there are.
Phil
Great. And let's talk about this a little further. Because when I looked back prior to this little exercise, when I looked back at our top performing posts, those were usually tips usually hacks, and longer. That's what I love about LinkedIn is that I don’t have to fuss like Instagram with getting the image perfect. This one got 61 likes 16 comments, and it was this I have a trick for making Monday's enjoyable. And no, it's not finding the job of your dreams. Although that does help. My concept is simple. No meetings or calls on Mondays, zero. I made this a hard rule for 2020, and it's completely oops typo. It's completely transformed my week.
Lauren
Oh, we have a typo. Oh my gosh.
Phil
Instead of Sunday, scary’s and scrambling to prep for calls, I prioritize my tasks, make headway on looming projects and get energized for the week. I'm now one of those people who loves Mondays, and the post goes on. A tip. Very simple.
Lauren
And did you see you scroll down a little look at how many people it reached, 3600 people?
Phil
Yes.
Lauren
That's also really important to look at is it's not just about the engagement at all. In fact, it's about engagement in proportion to the amount of views that your post got. So don't feel like if you've got 10 likes on a post, that doesn't mean that it's a failure. If you got 10 likes on a post and 10,000 people saw it, maybe reconsider your strategy. But if you got 10 likes on a post and 100 people saw it, that's a 10% engagement rate. That's pretty good. So that gives you kind of a baseline or a benchmark for comparing other posts.
Phil
I have one more example. This wouldn't fall under a tip or a hack. But this would be something that kind of like a business reflection, but also humor. Humor has done very well for us. So this is 99 likes 30 comments, 4500 views. And it goes like this, ‘say yes to opportunities’. By the way, I should say before I read the rest of this post, notice how we've developed like a style. We have like a bit of a headline and an emoji.
Lauren
Yeah, we have found that that works really well on LinkedIn. So you might want to try that as well. Either the hook or the emoji or both. You can then it forces people to click read more. And that counts as a click, which is a form of engagement on LinkedIn. So the more you can get people to click down and expand the better.
Phil
What do you know another best practice?
Lauren
Full of them today? Don't forget to tell people to dm you.
Phil
Yeah, so the post goes like this. But don't DM me please, enough people already do that. It goes like this, I got my first podcast sponsor. This one's about a podcast. It's a scrotum cleansing wash called ballsy. Not a joke. Some people might say no, I don't want to be publicly associated with testicles. But oh, no, not me. I can't believe we wrote this. Opportunities, multiply. This one sponsorship is proof that I'm worthy of sponsoring and who knows where that could lead next. Let your imagination run wild. Okay, now you can laugh about balls. Hashtag podcast, hashtag content marketing. Hashtag sponsorship.
Lauren
There you go. 4500 views of the posts, 99 likes, 30 comments. Pretty awesome.
Phil
Pretty awesome. Humor has its role within our brand.
Lauren
Yeah, I think being authentic too right.
Phil
And don't try to be funny. If you're not funny. Be nice. If you're nice. Humor happens to be you know, kind of playful sarcasm and balls.
Lauren
Honestly, I don't think it's necessarily about humor. I think it's more about honesty, and not being worried about what other people think that's how I interpret that post.
Phil
I remember being a little scared to post it. To be honest. I was like, I can't believe I'm putting of all places I'm putting this on LinkedIn.
Lauren
Yeah, it took balls to post that.
Phil
So to round off this discussion, do we have any other tips? This has been kind of cool, because we've let people in on our little workshopping, live workshopping, we didn't prepare for.
Lauren
You always do this to me.
Phil
Put you on the spot?
Lauren
So I think the greatest recommendation I could make is to alternate the types of posts that you're publishing on LinkedIn. So do short text, long text, an image or a link, and a question. Go through those four different types and then vary up your topics vary up what you're saying, and really like every month, look back and look at the engagement rate. See how many people engaged out of the amount of people who actually saw the post, you will get a percentage when you divide engagement by the impressions.
And then from there, you can start figuring out what did really, really well, what didn't do well, and start testing even more and getting clarity over what your audience actually wants from you.
Phil
Great idea. Great idea. As you can see, I don't have much to contribute, because you write most of the posts on LinkedIn.
Lauren
I love LinkedIn.
Phil
But I think you would say it's a little bit different than writing content for other social media platforms.
Lauren
Yeah, I think there's a much higher quality factor, which is probably why it's so intimidating. But I like that, that you can't just post the joke or I mean, I guess you could you could do anything. But posting a meme isn't necessarily going to spark a conversation on LinkedIn in the same way that it would on Instagram. And I like that drawing from personal experience and learning moments is gonna hit a bit better on LinkedIn.
Phil
Yes, that works really well for us. I think a lot of our listeners are small businesses, individual personal brands, or even startups, etc. So, you know, some of these things that we've been trying have worked well, for us, we've shared some of those, we would love for you to also experiment. That's the main thing is that we can't tell you what to post and guarantee that it's going to be successful. Everyone's audience is slightly different types.
Hopefully, you've got a few of those from our conversation today. But the whole thing is to try different things. Don’t be too upset or hard on yourself if one thing falls flat. I have lots of posts that haven't done well.
I remember talking to Catherine Gladwyn, what was that episode, 81 with Catherine. And we had talked about engagement on LinkedIn. If you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend it, she's hilarious.
We showed one of her top performing recent posts, but she also had said, I have some that don't do that. The more you do it, the more you fail, the more you succeed. The more you learn about your audience, you know what they want, you make decisions around that, which I think is really good advice.
So get experimenting and let us know how it goes.
You know where we can continue the conversation, #brandtherapy I'm @philpallen.
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore.
Phil
And if you enjoy this episode, or any episode that you've joined us for, we would love for you to take a few seconds right now before you forget, and go over to the iTunes Store leave us review, five star, five star. That helps other people discover this podcast that we work very hard to make.
Think that covers that happy posting, happy posting, let us know how it goes. We'll continue the conversation and we'll see you back here for another episode of Brand Therapy.
Lauren
See you then.
