HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU, ON LINKEDIN IN 2020 (October 7, 2020)

If your LinkedIn article only got six or seven likes (including the one from your mum), and maybe a hundred views, don’t take it personally — it’s not because you’re boring. Most likely it’s not what you have to say, but how you’re saying it.

Search marketer and data scientist Paul Shapiro researched 3,000 successful LinkedIn articles to find out what makes them work.

“The most successful blogs were pitched at the reading age of intelligent 11-year-olds, so time to throw the jargon overboard,” he says.

Structure

He offers these tips for structuring your LinkedIn article for success:

1. Make your titles between 40 and 49 characters long.
2. Make your posts on LinkedIn visual. Add 8 images.
3. Use “How-to” and List-Style headlines.
4. People like to read long-form content on LinkedIn — 1,900 to 2,000 words long.
5. Make your content neither positive nor negative. Keep it neutral and all about stating the facts.
6. Promote your LinkedIn publisher post on other social networks.

Emotion

Structure is all well and fine, but a key ingredient to grabbing attention is a headline that uses an emotional word, particularly — for good measure — if it is also timely.

For example, a headline by the Otago Daily Times managed to do both at once: “‘Over it’: Covid-weary Kiwis more anxious, angry”.

Looking at that headline you can see it is clearly loaded with emotion, while the reference to Covid tells us this is ‘here and now’ — a newsworthy touchpoint will add relevance to your headline.

A more business-like headline example may be: “5 ways to beat the cashflow blues this Christmas” — again emotion and timeliness work together.

Finally, educate, don’t sell.

Nobody spends five minutes reading a print advertisement, and very few people are likely to share it. Offer good relevant information that educates and informs your audience.