Welcome to a new episode of LinkedInformed. It’s been a very slow week for news about LinkedIn so I thought I would take the opportunity to focus on the subject of content and specifically the type of posts that typically attract comments and likes and therefore have greater reach.

But first……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Very little but I did love this video from a friend of the show and LinkedIn ads expert AJ Wilcox.

A great explanation so in summary;

• Advertising should be at the top of your funnel. Clicks should go to a well-designed landing page that converts into leads. You are highly unlikely to get sales directly from a LinkedIn ad!
• Advertising is not cheap. You need to have a LTV (Lifetime customer value) of c$15000 which is roughly £11-12,000 for it to be worth it.
• You need to be spending $3-5k (£2300-3800) on a campaign to see any ROI.

If you ever need advice on LinkedIn ads, reach out directly to AJ on LinkedIn

New LinkedIn Feature

Setting Up Meetings Just Got Easier with New Features in LinkedIn Messenger

This looks like a great idea, it’s just a shame it’s only on Android for now!

Scary stuff and very relevant to our campaign to fight against automation on LinkedIn. Thanks to all those who offered their support to the campaign, we will be in touch soon with further information.

People are drawn to automation because everyone loves to save time but these tools only provide short term wins and long term damage. See the bigger picture and cut out automation from your LinkedIn workflow.

Five Types of Posts That Engage

I want to post 2-3 times a weekbut I’m really stuck for ideas on what to post and I inevitably revert to content that doesn’t seem to enagage with my followers

This was a comment I recently heard from a client recently. It was an honest appraisal of their situation and a refreshing change from the normal excuses I hear for lack of good content on LinkedIn.

So I decided to help by suggesting ‘types’ of posts. Rather than focus on the specific subject matter, I found it helped to focus on broader descriptions of types of posts….the specific content ideas seemed to naturally flow from that.

So here are five of the suggested ‘post types’ we discussed.

Observational and debatable

This is where you post about the observations you have made. They can be very specific to your target audience, more generic or even unrelated to business but something that many people will have come across.

These topics have always been great conversational topics, on or offline. Here is an example from John Espirian;

Tips and tricks

These posts do really well, especially if you give away your best ideas for free. When I first started posting tips I used to keep my most ‘sexy stuff’ back for paying customers but then I realised that it was those tips that would actually make people think ‘Hang on, this guy really knows his stuff!’

I love this example because it provides tips and is very relatable. I also think it is a great example of a document post. Well done to Pam, this post ticks just about every box!

Just very helpful

This is similar to above but this is not your tips but someone else’s. You are not trying to help the tipster (although you should always give them credit) but you are posting about it because you know it will be really useful to your target audience.

I see many people doing this via sharing posts and links on LinkedIn but as you know, that is a hopeless way to help people because very few people will see it (shares and links fail to engage). The right way to do this is to create an original post with the information to help your audience and clearly quote (ideally @mention) the original source.

The best example I could find is this one from the infamous Oleg! It’s not business related but his audience is very broad. I would have preferred a business example but I really couldn’t find any! Please let me know if you have seen a good example.

A personal story

Stories are always very powerful and often a great way of posting the first type (observational). The master of storytelling on LinkedIn is Jonathan Pollard, here is one example of his masterpieces;

Something cool

People really engage with video or image posts of something different. This could be a workplace event or an innovative idea of product. The one that always sticks in my mind is this legendary video post;

That one has been posted by many different people over the years but it still gets great engagement!

Of course, no matter what type of post it is you still need to follow the rules of posting, the most important one being

Every post should be designed to start a conversation

So there you have it. Those ideas may help you if you are stuck for ideas.

Let me know if you see any good examples of these types as they may well make great posts of the week!

That’s it for now, I will be back again soon.

Have a fantastic week.