How to increase your LinkedIn engagement by 666%

LinkedIn has been devilishly nice to me.

Over the last 7 days, I've managed to get 58,000 impressions on just 3 posts.

As a result, I've received over 642 profile views, 153 connection requests, 108 website hits, 33 people wanting to use my product, and several people asking me for a job.

All at the cost of 30 minutes of my time...

If I were to pay for this via LinkedIn Ads, it would have cost anywhere from $100-600 given how targeted I was able to be.

But I'm cheap, so I rather just figure out how to do this for free and share my learnings with each of you for $5 each read. ;-)

Step 1: Know your audience on LinkedIn

This is generic advice, yes.

You already know that your connections consist of friends, family, coworkers (past & present), and some random people.

Or, if you're weird like me, you find enjoyment in adding someone with the same name just to creep them out. Sorry, Wes. <3

So, in theory, you should have a pretty good idea of what your audience likes.

WRONG!

Take it from someone who posted upwards of 100 posts in 2016, I can tell you that the majority of them weren't seen by many people, except my mom.

Which brings me to my next point....

Step 2: Test out your audience

If you really want to understand how to get more engagement on LinkedIn, you need to start testing more.

Over the next month, post once a day and see what sticks.

What you'll probably find out is that the majority of things you thought would work actually don't.

So start noting which ones work. Brilliant!

After a month of posting, you'll probably come to this next conclusion on your own. 

Step 3: Be an eyesore

LinkedIn is a bit of an oddball for social media.

The majority of its power users fall into these four categories:

1. Sales
2. HR
3. Job hunters
4. Company page admins

If you start to pay attention to your timeline, you'll notice that the majority of the content comes from these four categories.

Here's why your timeline is pretty boring:

1. Most sales people just share whatever content their company publishes and like posts on how cold-calling is NOT DEAD.
2. HR uses it to share jobs and interesting applications.
3. Job hunters use it to broadcast that they're looking for opportunities and LOVE HR.
4. Company page admins barely put any thought into LinkedIn and just use it as another syndication platform.

Obviously, these are HUGE generalizations, but it goes to show that a lot of the content has a motive or is generic.

So, if you want to be an eyesore, you need to do one thing.

BE DIFFERENT.

Ha, brilliant advice, Wes.

This means sharing content that you actually care about and including your take on it.

People, regardless of if they know you or not, want to know what you have to say if you present it in an engaging way.

They want to relate and identify with others like them. LinkedIn is a community after all...

I know for myself when I first hit over 40,000 views on one of my posts I started realizing the power of this.

Sharing your fears and feelings on LinkedIn stands out like an eyesore.

The percentage of people that actually do this is so small that you're easily able to cut through the BS.

If you want to put your posts in the top 1% of all LinkedIn posts, JUST DO IT.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

On to the last point...

Step 4: Build an audience

There's a lot of interesting people online.

Me included, I think.

So if you notice someone who's doing something interesting, don't be shy to take a genuine interest in them.

Just last week I noticed Heather Arthur, the Director of Rogers Communication, viewed my profile, so I looked at hers and noticed something interesting. She was a Master Facilitator of Lead Without a Title Inc which is an organization that specializes in turning normal people (like us) into incredible leaders.

My message to her was simple.

After two messages, I had a meeting with someone that manages over 1,400 people to discuss something she was passionate about later that week.

As a result, she ended up being able to help me understand how to build my team at Traffic Is Currency.

Conclusion

If you haven't already noticed, none of the stuff I've been blabbing on about is revolutionary.

You probably just kept reading until the end because I added some humor and made a couple solid arguments.

But here's the thing... none of this stuff is hard to do.

The reason most people don't do it is because they're scared of showing their opinion and views on topics for fear that people will judge them.

This will never change, but it does get easier.

The only way to get better at it is to practice.

So I challenge you to share what you really think when posting your next update.

May the 666% engagement rate be with you. <3

Also, if you liked this post, I write one actionable blog post (just like it) once a month on Traffic Is Currency. If you want to get notified the next time I publish a post, you can subscribe here.

I promise I'll eat just one snack to celebrate every new subscriber. You have my word. <3