Digital marketing agencies are quickly realising the potential of LinkedIn’s publishing platform, Pulse, and how it can increase the reach of key figures within your business.
But well-written content’s only part of the equation when getting eyes on your Pulse posts – there’s also a whole range of tweaks you can undertake to optimise your content and make sure it rises to the top.
Paul Shapiro undertook an analysis of what common factors the top posts on Pulse had. Here’s seven insights that can be gleaned from his work to help you improve your LinkedIn reach.
1. Make your posts visual
Have at least one image in your post. But the magic number of images to embed within the text is in fact 8 – posts with 8 images completely outshone most other image number options. One of these images should be at the top of the post as a compelling header.
2. Don’t add video or multimedia
It’s somewhat counterintuitive to leave out video – especially given its exponential rise on other platforms – but the best performing Pulse posts don’t have any sort of multimedia. Be cautious about adding multimedia unless it’s absolutely integral to your post.
3. Use listicles and instruction headlines
The star headlines at the moment are listicles and ‘how to’ headlines. For an example of a listicle, simply take a look at the headline of this blog post.
How-to posts simply start with that – for example, ‘How to improve your LinkedIn reach,’ could work equally well as a title for this blog.
Don’t write headlines that include a question – these don’t do well in a LinkedIn audience according to the data.
4. Put headings in your posts
Make your posts easy to read. People like things to be divided up into logical sections they can order in their brain, and navigate with ease. Posts with 5 headings through the text get a markedly higher number of post views compared with any other number of headings.
5. LinkedIn is for long-form
The highest performing posts are over 1,900 words long – and it’s actually an upwards curve, so that the longer your post (approaching 2,000), the higher the view count.
It’s not always realistic or possible to write 2,000 words on a topic, but you want to keep in mind that the more you write, the better your content will do.
6. Make it easy to read
Posts that are easy to read get the most views. If you’re not sure how easy or challenging your post is to read, you can plug it into this Readability Score tool – very useful (and fun).
7. Post on a Thursday
Thursday outshines any other day of the week when it comes to people reading Pulse. The next-best option is Sunday, so planning a content strategy around these two publishing days would be wise.
