10 advanced LinkedIn hacks you should know
For many professionals, LinkedIn is a great tool used for personal branding, recruitment, and sales. I have put together 10 hacks that will enhance your LinkedIn game.
The base of your work on LinkedIn starts with a great profile. If you haven't updated yours in a while, I recommend reading my post: 8 things that characterize the great LinkedIn profile. That being said, I have separated the 10 hacks into three main categories:
Profile hacks
Network and Feed hacks
Posting hacks
Profile hacks
1. Don’t promote your competitors
Have you ever visited someone's profile and noticed the section "People also Viewed" in the right-hand column? These recommendations are people with similar competencies to you, and they are - for obvious reasons - not something you want to promote on your own profile. By turning this setting off, you will keep viewers engaged in your profile, rather than clicking on to another profile.
To change it, go to the "Me" tab in the top row navigation and select "Settings & Privacy" under your account settings. Under Privacy, go to "Viewers of this profile also viewed" an turn it off.
2. View your Social Selling Score
If you work with sales, LinkedIn has an assessment tool, which can measure your Social Selling Score. According to LinkedIn, the benefit of having a high social selling score is that you create 45% more opportunities than peers with a lower social selling index, while 78% of social sellers outsell peers who don't use social media.
Here's mine:
The score is a measurement of how you are using LinkedIn as a platform, and your rating will improve when you engage in discussions, post content or connect with new people. While the measurement isn't used as a benchmark for candidates - unless you work with social media - it is an interesting way to have insight into how well you are engaging on LinkedIn.
You can view your own social selling score here.
Network and feed hacks
3. Exploring new topics
Often people just scroll through their LinkedIn feed without knowing that the social network can be used as a search engine. Your feed will typically show the most trending stories of that particular day, but if you want to be more proactive, you can use the search field to explore topics within your interest - coming directly from other LinkedIn members, groups or companies. Just use the hashtag function and search for topics of your interest. If the hashtag finds your interest, you can follow it as shown below.
4. Personalize invitations to connect
The default connection message on LinkedIn is very flat and impersonal. If you have a relation to the people you want to connect with on LinkedIn, I highly recommend personalizing the invitation to connect, as it will increase the likelihood of the other part wanting to connect and conversate.
Here is how to write a personal invitation. When you have found someone you want to connect with, click "Connect" then "Add a note". A section will appear, where you'll be able to write a personalized message before sending the invitation.
In the message, you could mention how you met or similar. Here's an example (in Danish).
5. Find the right people in your network
When you have spent a lot of time building up your network, it might be hard to keep up to date with other people‘s careers. So if you want to find someone specific in your network, use the filter option to locate them.
Click "My Network" in the top row navigation and "Connections" at the top-left corner. Here you can search for their name, but say you where to look for people to invite to an event about Search Engine Marketing, then you would have to be even more specific. Choose "Search with Filters" and then "All Filters" for the below window to appear.
Use filters such as level of connection, location, current and past company, industry, education, and job position to find the right people in your network.
Posting hacks
6. When to post content
LinkedIn differs from most other social platforms, as it is used especially during business hours. With a primary demographic group of professionals, salespeople and recruiters, there are certainly better times to post than others. When people are getting ready for work at the start of their day, in afternoon breaks or when they are commuting to their home, they are in the right mindset, which means that you can create more engagement.
According to Hubspot, most people use LinkedIn in the middle of the week, because that is when they are most productive. The best time to post is therefore between 3 PM - 5 PM on Wednesdays. Tuesdays between 8 AM - 10 AM and Thursdays around 1 PM - 3 PM are equally good posting times, while Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are less good, as people tend to take a break from the platform.
7. How often you should post
Opinions vary when it comes to the frequency of posts on LinkedIn. If you have enough content why not post several times a day?
This, however, can not be recommended for two reasons:
LinkedIn’s algorithm favors content of more members, rather than content from 2-3 heavy-users, so your 2nd and 3rd post will not have the same effect.
Even if you just post once a day (which is a lot in my opinion), you risk losing relevance and people will unfollow you, as it can be viewed as spammy.
I would recommend posting content maximum 3-4 times a week as an individual. If this seems like a barrier, you can work with different approaches to your content: Maybe you can put more effort into a written piece, spend more time doing video or just segment your posts to specific audiences?
8. Comments over likes
As a social platform, LinkedIn’s feed algorithm favors discussions. Although likes and shares from the right people might be great for your reach, comments are the best way to boost your organic reach. LinkedIn has stated that they want their platform to be a way of interacting with our networks, so ask questions to spike discussion rather than empty news.
Pro tip: In my blog post about 3 content strategies for lead generation, I talk about how free content can be a great way to create leads via organic reach. The example below shows this point (and the point about comments being favored more than likes).
So if you have valuable content, make sure to activate it properly to create new leads on LinkedIn.
9. The use of hashtags
According to new research by the social selling consultancy Just Connecting, hashtags have an impact on the algorithm too. They found that without hashtags, you have 50% less impact in your feed while using too many hashtags (above 6) will negatively impact views and therefore engagement. Their recommendation is 3 hashtags, as this has the highest average of engagements per post.
10. Invest more time in your employees than your company page
If you manage a company page on LinkedIn, you probably know how to engage a community on an ongoing basis. But what if you could generate more relevance for your target audience and a higher reach at a lower cost?
It is not something that sounds too good to be true, because you can. The key is your employees. Make them your brand ambassadors and generate a much higher reach, as well as internal engagement, with Employee Advocacy. Read how to get started here.
I hope you have found these tips helpful.