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LinkedIn Shares – you’re doing it all wrong

You might think that telling you not to share something on social media will mean the death of your content

After all this was the very same person that asked you “Are You Demoting Your friends Social Media Posts?” by not sharing them

We’ll break this down further later in the blog, but in short

Twitter Retweets – Good
Facebook Shares – Good
Instagram Story Shares – Good
LinkedIn Shares – Not Good


How can you react a LinkedIn Post?

Different users react and use LinkedIn in different ways

95% of people on LinkedIn are lurkers and simply watch, but don’t interact

But here are the different ways you can interact on LinkedIn

Like (with LinkedIn reactions of Like, Celebrate, Support, Love, Insightful, Curious)
Comment
Share
Send (Direct Message to your contacts)

And course click a Link

2 of the common methods that people use to interact though are
– Liking, but never commenting
– Sharing their company page and clients posts

You’ll soon find out why that’s not necessarily the best thing to do

What’s my worst performing post on LinkedIn and how many people did it reach?
For many of you this blog will go against your very thinking, so I want to share with you a recent test we did

Well, my worst post ever was a recent one in the past month

It was a share of a other users post that I had been tagged in

I rarely use the share button because I’m aware of how few people a shared post will reach, but it was a new client we’d been booked to speak for an I felt compelled to share it

Every so often I test to see if the algorithms have changed

And the algorithms hadn’t changed – it reached just 9 people

To put that in perspective: I have 8000+ connections and my average posts reach 2000+ people

9 people was an absolute failure

This is not an anomaly – every time you share another persons post on LinkedIn you’ll find it doesn’t perform

Why don’t LinkedIn Shares work?
You’ve probably heard of the LinkedIn algorithm and how certain posts gain more traction than others

Duplicate content such as LinkedIn shares don’t perform well in the algorithm

We’ve all done it one time

Shared a post from a friend of ours looking for a job or good news from a company / client we we work with

It’s human nature to want to support others

But if you want to put that to the test look at

– the post views of the last post your shared from someone else
vs
– the post views of one of your last text based posts

That will give you the answer

You can also understand LinkedIn’s hesitancy to give shares a prominent place in the feed. People don’t want to see duplicate content all the time, which would happen due to the nature of networking groups and managers asking their employees to share

Just to clarify – are you talking about shares of a blog like this or shares of a post?
I’m talking about shares of someone else LinkedIn posts

Sharing other people’s content such as this blog or a link from the BBC / traditional media is different

LinkedIn does slightly demote links within the algorithm, but you’ll still reach more people on a link share than clicking share on someone’s post

What do I do if my manager asks me to share our company page updates?
We’ve actually written a whole blog on this called Employee Advocacy: What It Really Is Vs What Your Boss Thinks It Is

You’ve had the email from marketing or your boss that barks at you to share the LinkedIn Company Page updates or post the latest blog link on Twitter

And that’s the beginning and end of what your boss often sees as Employee Advocacy

An order barked as you with no explanation, no strategy and no measurement afterwards

What employee advocacy actually is is this …

Employees sharing what they do within the company in a way that shows passion for their role and the company itself

When multiple people do this, it builds the businesses brand as well as the individuals personal brand

It is not just clicking the share button on company updates

There’s a full break down here of the steps needed

If you don’t share other people’s posts on LinkedIn, what else can you do to help them?

A like will help more than share and doesn’t take a huge amount of time

But if you really want to help one of your contacts and help yourself at the same time

Meaningful Comments are the strongest signal to LinkedIn to that people are interested in the post

Naturally if you put a meaningful comment on a post as well it strengthens your relationship with the original poster and also gets your profile in front of a new audience

It’s a win win

So to clarify in order of most important to least important interaction it’s?

Comment
Like
Share

So how do I reach more people if sharing doesn’t work?
Content Content Content

You need to put your audience at the heart of what you do

You shouldn’t approach LinkedIn with how do I sell myself today

You need to produce valuable content that engages your audience

You can look at our profile here and look at the types of posts we do

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amccann/

Or you can look at our blog The Anatomy Of A Perfect LinkedIn Post here

How do you want us to share this blog then?
Email / send the link on LinkedIn DM to your manager / colleagues / networking group

Start a discussion about it

Consider changing the way you use LinkedIn

NEED HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA?
Chat to us about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation

We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you

Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services

We offer Social Media Training on
* Twitter
* Facebook
* LinkedIn
* Instagram
* Blogging

We can do this
* 121
* Corporate Workshops
* Group Workshops
* Face to Face or Via Zoom / Skype

Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk

Alex McCann

Author Alex McCann

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