This past week, I interviewed Richard van der Blom. For the last five years, Richard and his team spent months studying the LinkedIn algorithm and producing a comprehensive report on their findings. This year's report analyzed over 1.5 million posts, from 34,000 individual profiles, and over 26,000 company pages, spanning over 50 countries and 25 languages. Their research team, together with AuthoredUp, devoted over 1,100 hours to this project.
In preparation for that interview, I poured through the entire 124-page report (it's beefy). A lot of the data prompted follow-up questions from me that I'll leave for the interview, but I wanted to share a few takeaways that I think can improve your LinkedIn performance right away.
1. Ask more questions
From the research, ending your post with a question can lead to an increase in engagement of 20% to 40%. That's a massive lift.
And it makes sense! When you explicitly ask (or invite) someone to share their opinion, they're more likely to do so. I like to simply start a new line and ask, "Thoughts?"
2. Polls are back
Polls used to be big (too big – overused) so they went out of style. But, according to the research, polls are back in the algorithm's good graces. I tested it with a poll last week:
This is only one data point – so take it with a grain of salt. But impressions were 2-4x my average and the poll received a massive 534 votes. That's far more people visibly engaging with the post than I typically receive in Reactions or Comments.
And a sneaky benefit – the person who hosts the poll can see who voted for what. So if your poll qualifies people as potential customers or clients, this is an insightful conversation starter.
3. Give and you shall receive
I've long known that I'm not spending enough time engaging with my feed – but one line from the report quantified the value of comments AND made it seem achievable:
"Our experience with over 200 clients demonstrates that consistently posting 10 quality comments daily for a month can lead to a significant increase in profile views (40%), engagement on one's content (25%), and follower/connection growth (20%)."
So if you post 10 quality comments daily for a month, you should see a significant difference. There are some unstated assumptions here that I want to call out:
- The largest benefit (probably) goes to the early commenters
- To maximize added visibility, you'll want to engage with accounts who are seeing conversation in their comment section
That said, there's a long-term, outsized benefit to supporting smaller creators. Your comment will be more meaningful to them and help build a stronger relationship with the original poster (OP). So define your own strategy, but shoot for 10+ comments/day.
4. Use LinkedIn saved search
I've long struggled to maintain a consistent practice of commenting on LinkedIn. I tried turning on the bell notification, but then my Notifications panel was messy. I tried keeping a spreadsheet, but then I'd spend time going to profiles that hadn't even posted recently.
But then my friend Cat Mulvihill (a Labmate) shared this demo on creating Saved Searches.
Now, I use my Saved Search as a Bookmark and visit that a couple of times per day. It makes it very easy to curate WHO I want to engage with (and stay on top of it).
Give it a shot! Here's a Saved Search you can use as a starting point.
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