Sharing personal updates on LinkedIn is a bit of a controversial area for some. Definitely, LinkedIn’s not Facebook – you don’t want to be sharing all your personal news, thoughts and updates on a platform that’s primarily focussed on professional interactions. But there is a way to share relevant personal updates with your LinkedIn network – and those posts, in my experience, can perform better than your regular ‘all business’ updates.
I’ll explain what I mean in this post, but first, before I get to what type of content and posts I’ve seen generate great response, I need to explain how the world’s largest platform for professionals decides on which of your posts to promote – or put aside.
How LinkedIn’s News Feed Works
If you’re an engineering or analytics enthusiast, feel free to take a deep dive into LinkedIn’s own explanation of how the platform chooses to display (or remove) the millions of posts made on its members’ news feeds each day.
Here’s how it works – according to LinkedIn, once you post a status update, article, video or any other piece of content on the platform, the system instantly analyzes it and decides if it’s obvious spam, a violation of its terms of service or other red flag type content.
Next, assuming you pass LinkedIn’s internal “smell test,” your content will be shown to a segment – but not all – of your 1st degree connections and followers on the platform.
At this point, the rubber truly meets the road with your status update or post – it all has to do with how fast, and how much the people who do see your post engage with it via likes, comments, shares, etc.
LinkedIn calls this “velocity,” and it’s critical to getting your post from a few dozen views to a few thousand.
So What Type of Content Generates Best Response on LinkedIn?
In my experience, sharing details of my personal views, and stories of people telling me to (expletive) off, seem to work best.
Allow me to explain.
In my time studying, utilizing and researching LinkedIn, I’ve discovered that people are often too professional on the platform.
What I mean is this: In real life, when you meet a prospective customer for coffee or lunch, you act like a human being – you crack jokes, you share your story (both professional and personal) and you build a personal, 1-on-1 relationship.
How many people do you encounter on LinkedIn who send you invites or messages that have something personal in them, something that helps you get to know, like and trust the other person?
My entire strategy for selling on LinkedIn is simple – you find, connect and engage with your ideal prospects on the platform, and you do it in a way that’s authentic, relational and as close to “real life” selling as possible.
Once you’ve built enough value, trust and familiarity into a 1-on-1 relationship with a prospect you meet via LinkedIn, selling your products and services becomes a natural extension of that exchange.
And as far as generating response, it’s not my LinkedIn lead generation tips, webinar invites or “how to” articles that have seen the highest engagement and interaction on the site. Rather, it’s me being human.
One example was sharing about why, as someone who endured a lot of abuse and dysfunction as a child, I need to keep working on my battles with depression and self-hatred if I want to be more successful in business.
This post where I shared a photo of myself as a young boy and my thoughts on how income improvement follows self-improvement generated huge response, with more than 3,000 views, nearly 50 likes and almost 30 comments:
As a comparison, most of my posts on LinkedIn might generate a few hundred views and a handful of likes or comments.
Talking Religion and Politics on LinkedIn
I also sometimes share about a personal passion of mine – being a huge fan of Jesus Christ. However, I’m careful to never share my thoughts on Jesus in a religious, pious or self-righteous fashion.
Rather, I always try to lead with my own real-life struggles and shortcomings as context for that type of content. As a result, I’ve noticed people don’t really get angry with me for admitting how broken I am, how in need of grace and forgiveness I find myself most days, how I find motivation and inspiration in Jesus, etc.
As an example, this post about how Christians need to love more and judge less generated nearly 4,500 views, 60+ likes and more than a dozen comments:
Now, this is a personal passion of mine, and for you it might be stories about sailing, or playing a sport, or taking your kids on a vacation, or something else that helps people get to know, like and trust you.
It certainly doesn’t have to be as potentially divisive as talking religion or politics at the LinkedIn dinner table, but the content you create and share does need to be authentic and personal.
What People Want Online
More than ever – and especially in the digital space – your potential clients and customers are craving authenticity and transparency, they’re looking for someone they can get to know, like and trust, who shares similar experiences and challenges to their own.
One of the best examples of this was sharing a screenshot of an angry reply I received after inviting someone on my email list to a free webinar.
This post of the angry “[EXPLETIVE] OFF!” email reply (he even wrote back in 72 point font), plus the business lessons learned, has been one of my best performing LinkedIn posts ever – to date, it has more than 16,500 views, 100+ likes and more than 30 comments:
Be Real
The lesson is simple – LinkedIn’s looking for content that gets its members engaged, and that does so fast.
People on the world’s largest platform for professionals are not expecting (and often are pleasantly surprised by) personal content – but as noted, I’m not saying you should start sharing vacation photos and dog pictures 10 times a day.
Instead, you need to find the sweet spot of mixing in real, authentic and personal stories or experiences, through which you can incorporate business and/or life lessons.
Letting your guard down and being human once in a while on LinkedIn lets others know you’re approachable, trustworthy and just like them.
At the end of the day we’re all still human, right?