How to build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn | Creator Masterclass

Summary

In this informative video, Heinrich from Firm Learning outlines strategies for building a personal brand and influence on LinkedIn. He discusses the importance of LinkedIn for professionals, including recruiting, corporate communication, and lead generation. Heinrich shares insights on the platform's algorithm, tips for profile optimization, and crafting a content strategy. He emphasizes the value of creating engaging posts with a clear niche, using hooks, and encouraging interaction to increase visibility and grow your audience.

Takeaways

• 😀 Building a personal brand on LinkedIn can significantly influence your career and professional growth.
• 🚀 LinkedIn is an ideal platform for young professionals to establish influence and reach a broader audience compared to other social media platforms.
• 🔍 Understanding the LinkedIn algorithm is crucial for increasing post visibility and going viral.
• 🎨 Profile optimization, including using a background picture and a compelling tagline, enhances personal branding.
• 📈 Creator mode on LinkedIn offers additional features that can help grow your audience and engagement.
• 📝 Crafting content with a clear niche and consistent value delivery is key to building a loyal following.
• 🔑 The anatomy of a successful post includes a hook to grab attention, a body that provides value, and a call to action to engage readers.
• 🤔 Including a survey in posts can boost engagement and increase the likelihood of post visibility in the future.
• 🏗️ The 'build in public' strategy allows sharing insights and progress of personal or business projects to create trust and interest.
• ❌ Overuse of self-promotion and sharing external links in posts can reduce reach and engagement on LinkedIn.
• 🔄 Regularly posting and engaging with the community are essential for maintaining and growing your presence on LinkedIn.

Q & A

What is the main topic of the video by Heinrich from Firm Learning?

The main topic of the video is about building a personal brand and influence on LinkedIn, providing insights on why it's important and how to do it effectively.

Why should young professionals consider building a personal brand on LinkedIn according to Heinrich?

Young professionals should consider building a personal brand on LinkedIn because it can lead to significant opportunities for personal growth, financial gains, and career advancement.

What are the three reasons Heinrich suggests senior leaders might be interested in LinkedIn?

The three reasons are employee recruiting, corporate communications, and lead generation, as LinkedIn can be instrumental in these areas.

How does Heinrich describe the LinkedIn algorithm's approach to showing posts to users?

Heinrich describes the LinkedIn algorithm as initially showing a post to a fraction of the audience to gauge engagement. If the post performs well, it gets shown to a broader audience, and this process continues until the algorithm determines the post is no longer engaging.

What are some positive signals that the LinkedIn algorithm considers when evaluating a post's reach?

Positive signals include time spent on the post, sharing, commenting, sending a post to others, following the profile after reading the post, and liking the post or other comments.

What are some negative signals for the LinkedIn algorithm mentioned by Heinrich?

Negative signals include hiding posts, unfollowing after reading a post, muting posts, and reporting a post, all of which indicate disinterest or dissatisfaction.

Why does Heinrich recommend using a background picture on LinkedIn profiles?

Heinrich recommends using a background picture because it gives the profile character and helps in branding oneself, conveying key messages, and setting expectations for what followers can expect.

What is the significance of the tagline on a LinkedIn profile according to the video?

The tagline is significant because it is displayed below the name and is seen across many places on the platform, providing a concise and punchy first impression of the individual's background and interests.

What does Heinrich suggest about the use of hashtags on LinkedIn profiles?

Heinrich suggests using hashtags to help the algorithm understand the niches and topics one is focusing on, which can improve search results and reach.

Why does Heinrich advise against putting external links directly in LinkedIn posts?

Heinrich advises against it because posts with external links tend to receive significantly less reach, as LinkedIn prefers to keep users on its platform rather than directing them away.

What is the 'build in public' strategy mentioned by Heinrich, and how can it benefit someone's LinkedIn presence?

The 'build in public' strategy involves sharing insights about one's business or projects regularly, allowing followers to see the progress and learnings. This can create trust, attract potential employees and customers, and generate new leads.

What mistake does Heinrich warn against when it comes to sharing other people's posts on LinkedIn?

Heinrich warns that sharing other people's posts mainly helps the reach of the other post rather than one's own profile, suggesting that creating original content is more beneficial for personal reach and growth.

How does Heinrich suggest dealing with external resources when creating LinkedIn posts to avoid reach penalties?

Heinrich suggests placing the external link in the comments rather than in the original post and mentioning in the post to check the comments for the link, as this can bypass the reach penalty imposed by LinkedIn for external links.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Building a Personal Brand on LinkedIn

Heinrich, the creator of Firm Learning, introduces the topic of building a personal brand and influence on LinkedIn, emphasizing its importance for young professionals. He outlines the video's agenda, which includes discussing the benefits of LinkedIn for personal branding, the workings of the LinkedIn algorithm, profile optimization tips, and content strategy. Heinrich justifies his expertise by sharing his experience in growing the Firm Learning platform across various social media, particularly on LinkedIn.

05:03

🔍 Understanding LinkedIn's Reach Advantage

This paragraph delves into the benefits of using LinkedIn for personal branding, especially its reach compared to other platforms like Facebook. Heinrich explains how LinkedIn's algorithm favors personal profiles over company pages and illustrates this with the example of Volkswagen. He also discusses LinkedIn's strategic push towards becoming an influencer and creator platform, presenting it as an opportunity for those starting now to gain early influence.

10:05

🤖 Decoding the LinkedIn Algorithm

Heinrich shares insights into how the LinkedIn algorithm works, using his own profile data to demonstrate the variance in post views. He explains the process of how posts are shown to an initial audience and then expanded based on engagement signals. He also discusses the positive and negative signals that influence post visibility and encourages viewers to interact with the video to improve its reach.

15:05

🛠️ Profile Optimization for Creators

The speaker provides tips for optimizing a LinkedIn profile to increase personal branding as a creator. He advises using a background picture, crafting a concise tagline, leveraging hashtags, and utilizing the featured section to highlight signature content. Additionally, he recommends turning on creator mode to access additional features and change the main call to action from 'connect' to 'follow' to lower the barrier for new audience members.

20:07

📈 Crafting a Content Strategy for Virality

Heinrich discusses strategies for creating content that can go viral on LinkedIn, starting with defining a niche. He outlines the anatomy of a successful post, emphasizing the importance of a hook to capture attention, a body that delivers value, and a call to action to encourage engagement. He also highlights the positive impact of attaching media to posts and provides tips on writing hooks that prompt users to read more.

25:08

📊 Boosting Engagement with Surveys and the Build in Public Strategy

This section explores tactics for increasing post engagement, such as creating surveys which can significantly boost interaction. Heinrich also introduces the 'build in public' strategy, where individuals share their progress and insights on building a company or project, fostering trust and interest among the audience. He provides an example and cautions against overuse of surveys and self-promotion.

⚠️ Avoiding Common LinkedIn Content Mistakes

Heinrich addresses common mistakes in LinkedIn content strategy, referencing Gary Vaynerchuk's 'Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook' concept. He advises a balance between value-adding 'jabs' and occasional self-promotional 'right hooks'. He also warns against sharing too many external links or relying solely on sharing others' content, as these actions can reduce post reach and personal branding effectiveness.

✅ Final Thoughts and Call to Action

In the concluding paragraph, Heinrich invites viewers to share their LinkedIn strategies and tips in the comments section. He encourages viewers to like, subscribe, and follow for more content, expressing gratitude to the Firm Learning community for their support. He signs off as the creator of Firm Learning, promising to return with more insights soon.

Keywords

💡Personal Brand

A personal brand refers to the image or identity that an individual projects in their professional life. In the context of the video, building a personal brand on LinkedIn is emphasized as crucial for young professionals to establish influence and recognition. The speaker mentions that having a strong personal brand can lead to benefits such as employee recruiting, corporate communications, and lead generation.

💡LinkedIn Algorithm

The LinkedIn algorithm is the set of rules that determines how content is displayed in users' feeds on the platform. The video discusses how understanding this algorithm can help users increase the visibility of their posts. The speaker explains that the algorithm initially shows a post to a small fraction of the audience and then expands its reach based on engagement metrics like time spent on the post, shares, comments, and likes.

💡Profile Optimization

Profile optimization refers to the process of enhancing a LinkedIn profile to make it more appealing and effective in conveying the user's professional identity. The video suggests using a background picture, a concise tagline, relevant hashtags, and a featured section to showcase key content. These elements are crucial for attracting followers and demonstrating authority in one's niche.

💡Content Strategy

A content strategy is a plan for creating, publishing, and managing content that aligns with an individual's or organization's goals. In the video, the speaker advises on developing a niche and creating content that delivers value to the audience. The strategy involves a mix of 'jabs' (value-driven content) and 'right hooks' (commercial messages), ensuring that the content is engaging and relevant to the audience's interests.

💡Engagement

Engagement in the context of social media refers to the interactions users have with content, such as likes, comments, shares, and time spent viewing. The video highlights the importance of engagement in influencing the LinkedIn algorithm, suggesting that higher engagement can lead to wider content distribution. Examples given include encouraging comments or likes to boost a post's visibility.

💡Niche

A niche in the context of content creation is a specific area of interest or expertise that an individual or brand focuses on. The video emphasizes the importance of identifying and developing a niche to attract a targeted audience. The speaker suggests that having a clear niche helps in creating content that resonates with the audience and builds authority in a specific field.

💡Hook

A hook in content writing is an opening statement or phrase designed to attract the reader's attention and encourage them to continue reading. The video discusses the importance of starting a LinkedIn post with a hook to increase time spent on the post, which is a key metric for the LinkedIn algorithm. The speaker provides examples of how to craft hooks that spark interest and prompt users to click 'see more'.

💡Call to Action (CTA)

A call to action (CTA) is a prompt that encourages readers or viewers to take a specific action, such as following a profile, commenting, or sharing content. In the video, the speaker advises including a CTA at the end of posts to increase engagement and guide the audience towards desired actions, which can also improve the post's performance in the LinkedIn algorithm.

💡Creator Mode

Creator mode on LinkedIn is a feature that provides additional tools and options for users who aim to create and share content more effectively. The video mentions that turning on creator mode allows users to add hashtags to their profile and changes the main call to action from 'connect' to 'follow', which can help increase the reach and engagement of their content.

💡Surveys

Surveys in the context of social media are interactive posts that allow users to participate by selecting options or providing feedback. The video discusses using surveys as a strategy to boost engagement on LinkedIn. The speaker provides an example of a survey that received significant participation, illustrating how such posts can increase visibility and interaction with the audience.

💡External Links

External links are URLs that direct users to content outside of the platform where they are posted. The video warns against including external links in LinkedIn posts, as it can negatively impact the reach of the content due to LinkedIn's preference for keeping users within the platform. The speaker suggests placing links in the comments instead of the post itself to mitigate this issue.

Highlights

Heinrich emphasizes the importance of building a personal brand and influence on LinkedIn for young professionals.

LinkedIn is identified as an ideal platform for personal branding due to its current algorithm favoring reach over company pages.

Three main benefits for senior leaders on LinkedIn are recruiting, corporate communications, and lead generation.

Heinrich shares his personal experience with growing the Firm Learning platform on LinkedIn.

The potential reach on LinkedIn is highlighted, with posts often seen by multiples of a user's followers.

A comparison is made between LinkedIn and Facebook, showing LinkedIn's superior organic reach for posts.

Heinrich's own LinkedIn data is used to demonstrate the significant reach and engagement potential on the platform.

The LinkedIn algorithm is explained, focusing on how it uses engagement signals to determine post distribution.

Positive and negative signals that affect the LinkedIn algorithm are detailed.

Profile optimization tips are given, including the use of a background picture and a strong tagline.

The benefits of turning on creator mode on LinkedIn are discussed, including access to additional features.

Content strategy advice is provided, focusing on the importance of a niche and consistent value delivery.

The anatomy of a successful LinkedIn post is broken down, from the hook to the call to action.

The impact of post attachments on performance in the LinkedIn algorithm is noted, with recommendations to include images.

Strategies for boosting engagement, such as creating surveys, are suggested as a way to increase post visibility.

The 'build in public' strategy is introduced as a means for sharing business insights and building trust with an audience.

Common mistakes on LinkedIn are discussed, including overuse of self-promotion and sharing posts with external links.

Heinrich invites viewers to share their own LinkedIn strategies and tips in the comments.

Transcripts

- Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to a new coffee break

here on my channel Firm Learning.

My name is Heinrich, and I'm Firm Learning,

I want to help you to become successful

in the first years of your career.

And today, I want to talk about

how to build a personal brand,

how to build an influence on LinkedIn.

I will first talk about why you,

as a young professional, should do that,

and why LinkedIn is the perfect platform for it

at this point in time.

I will second spill the tea on how the LinkedIn

algorithm works

to help you go viral.

I will third, give you some tangible tips

on profile optimization to become a creator.

And last but not least,

I will share some tips on how to build a content strategy

that will work towards your goals.

But before I just wanna spend a couple of seconds talking

about why I'm actually justified

to even talk about this topic.

So for those of you who don't know me,

I started my social platform Firm Learning

in early 2020, started mainly on YouTube,

but then also growing on other platforms

such as Instagram and TikTok.

And LinkedIn for sure has been a priority for me.

At the moment, I'm posting quite regularly

about three to five times per week.

And this enabled me to grow quite rapidly

over the last months.

And I will teach you in this video,

the very strategy that I used,

and the insights that I collected on the way while doing it.

So let's start by talking about why might be a good idea

for yourself to build a personal brand

and an influence on LinkedIn.

And let's first assume the position of someone

who is already a senior leader in an organization,

maybe a C-level executive working somewhere.

Why might you be interested in LinkedIn?

I think there are three reasons for that.

First, employee recruiting.

So if an employee wants to find a new job,

that person would likely look up the firm on LinkedIn.

And of course, if you publish regular content,

that will be very instrumental for potential candidates

decide whether your firm is the firm to join or not.

Second, is corporate communications.

I would claim that for most companies out there,

if their leadership would post on LinkedIn compared

to an internal channels, for instance, a corporate intranet,

likely they would be able to reach

more of their internal staff on LinkedIn,

likely their posts would be seen more.

So do think that LinkedIn is a crucial tool

for corporate communication as well.

And the last but not least, of course, also lead generation.

There are lots of examples,

how people are able to create customers,

attract business by using LinkedIn in the right way.

This is a significant opportunity,

and I will teach you how you can do this today.

But even if you're a young professional,

not necessarily in such a leadership position yet,

if you use LinkedIn, you can build your personal brand,

you can build an influence.

And with that, you have all the benefits of being a creator.

The benefits of being a creator in this day and age

have been widely described elsewhere.

Let's just say that the opportunities for yourself,

both in terms of personal growth,

but also in terms of financial or career opportunities

are very, very significant.

So why should you focus on LinkedIn?

If you want to build a professional brand at the moment,

and there are many things I could talk about,

let me focus on reach for the purpose of this video.

At the moment, even if you are still a small account,

you have the opportunity to reach

a significant amount of people on LinkedIn.

And this might change over the next years,

maybe, maybe not, but at the moment,

that's for sure the case.

Let's compare that to another platform,

for instance, Facebook.

So let's say you have a Facebook

profile with 1,000 followers.

Well, if you release a post without boosting it with ads,

likely only a fraction of these followers will see that.

Let's just say roughly 5%.

So for 1,000 followers, maybe your posts on average,

will get about 50 views,

just the fraction of your audience.

This is very different right now on LinkedIn.

If you have thousand followers,

you can expect that your posts will be seen by 2,000 people.

You can expect that a multiple of your followers,

will regularly see your content.

And this is of course a very great

and significant opportunity.

And there are only very few platforms at the moment

out there that will give you a comparable reach.

Let us substantiate this with some action numbers

and for data, I prepared some data from my own account.

I was that I also used for my Firm Learning work.

This was data point until the end of the first half

of this year.

At that point in time, I had about 18,000 followers.

And if I just took the median post of all the posts

that I created, the median post got about 30,000 views,

which is roughly two times the followers

that I had at that time.

But there was also post that received 188,000 views

at that point in time.

So this is 10X, the followers that I had.

So this illustrates the opportunities that are out there.

And I will talk more about how to write exactly

these types of posts in a moment.

The second question that I often get is

whether I should post on my company page,

if you have one or on your personal profile,

but if you're just an individual, chances are higher

you only have your personal profile available anyways.

But the good news is that LinkedIn favors personal profiles

over a company pages when it comes to reach.

And of course, the reasons for that are,

I'd say rather obvious, of course,

LinkedIn would love that the companies

rather pay ads, pay ad money to boost their posts.

Whereas that's not that much of an option

for personal individuals, but he just as an example,

the case of Volkswagen.

So Volkswagen, the company Volkswagen

has about 1.2 million followers,

and they just picked a post of them

that just got a couple of hundred likes.

And if you contrast that to Herbert Diess

one he recently was the managing director of Volkswagen,

even though he had less than 300,000 views,

his posts regularly get over a thousand likes.

And of course there's some variants among these posts,

but this is the general picture

that you see almost everywhere.

Personal profiles definitely get more reach

than company profiles on LinkedIn.

So I definitely would encourage you

to use your personal profile as well.

And last but not least,

it seems very clear to me that the development of LinkedIn

into an influencer and creator platform

is a key strategic objective of LinkedIn.

They're actively pushing it.

You can see it with all the initiatives that the company

is coming up with.

For instance, the top voices award that now

they award on a yearly basis.

If you ever felt like you wanted to build an influence

on Instagram, on YouTube or any of these other platforms,

but you were just too late.

Now it's your opportunity with LinkedIn.

Because if you start now,

you will definitely be still early in the development

of LinkedIn as a creator platform,

the opportunities are out there, you just need to grab them.

So let's next talk about the LinkedIn algorithm

and why should you even care about how

the LinkedIn algorithm works

But in here again, I just looked at some

of my own personal data on my Heinrich Rusche profile.

This is again the data from the first half year

of this year.

And it just ordered all the posts by the views

that they received.

And you can see that there's quite a significant variance.

On the left hand side,

there are some posts that got less than 10,000 views.

Again, let me remind you I had about 18,000 followers

at that point in time.

But then on the right hand side,

I had a handful of posts that exceeded 100,000 views

and my most successful post measured in views received,

as I just also told you earlier about 188,000 views,

and of course views matters because

if people don't see your content.

You cannot really spread the messages

that you want to spread.

You cannot really work towards the goals and objectives

that you set for yourself in the beginning.

And of course, if people don't find your posts,

they also cannot find your profile.

And therefore you also cannot grow your follower base

and your audience.

So let's look at how the LinkedIn algorithm works

behind the scenes.

And this is very similar to almost all the other

social media platform algorithms work as well.

And I can imagine this to work is that at the beginning,

if you post something LinkedIn in the first minutes, hours,

and so on,

will show this post to a fraction of your audience,

to a fraction of your followers,

or to a fraction of the people

who usually enjoy the content that you create.

And then they observe what happens.

Are these people spending time on the post?

Are they engaging with the post? Are they leaving a comment?

So they have all these types of indicators

that let the algorithm come to the conclusion,

whether this is a good post or not.

And so if this post performed well

in this very close group of your most engaged followers,

then LinkedIn will likely show this post

to an extended group of your followers

to almost every one of your followers.

And will look again, how is it performing?

Is this performing well or not?

And again, if even with this extended group,

LinkedIn comes to the conclusion that yes,

it's a good post then likely it will show this post

to even more people.

Often also not even your followers anymore,

but maybe people who LinkedIn believes

to have similar interests than the people who follow you,

people who are similar to your followers.

And then again, regard interest, are they interested?

Are they engaging? Are they enjoying the post?

And then based on that step by step,

LinkedIn will show the post to even more people

up until the point where LinkedIn

just doesn't find any pockets of people anymore,

where the LinkedIn algorithm would be confident

that these people would enjoy your post as well.

And of course, sometimes there are these unicorn posts

where the algorithm comes to the conclusion

that actually more or less everyone would enjoy it,

more or less everyone likes it.

And then sometimes you have these super viral posts

that are seen by hundred thousands,

if not millions of people.

It's of course, very difficult to predict

to write something like this,

but occasionally this might happen to you.

So what exactly are these signals that the algorithm

takes into consideration?

And what's here important for me to say

is though that I don't have any inside knowledge

behind the same knowledge of how the algorithm works.

The algorithm is first of all secret.

And second, it constantly changes.

What these are, are just some common assumptions

where people test the things,

and this is what you will find on many places

on the internet that this is how it works,

but it's definitely fair for yourself

to run your own experiment,

to see what really benefits your specific account.

So let's talk about some positive signals.

First,

one of the most important things is time on post.

One of the key metrics that all of these platforms

are optimizing is to keep people,

keep users on the platform for as long as possible.

Because of course the longer people spend on the platform,

the more ads can be shown to these people.

And this is usually one of the biggest monetization levers

that the platforms have.

So time on post is key,

but then of course, sharing a post is a positive as well.

Because if you share a post to your network,

you are saying that, "Hey, this post is great.

It's important.

It's worth seeing and worth reading."

Next, commenting.

So LinkedIn wants to be the platform

where people engage with each other,

have conversations about topics,

and comments definitely work towards this goal.

It's a key metric of engagement.

Next, sending a post, you can send a post to other users,

to other people.

This is a positive sign, of course as well,

because thereby you indicate

that it's worth sending and sharing.

Of course,

if people follow your profile after they read your post,

this speaks towards the post as well.

And of course, liking a post also liking other comments

will increase engagement in the same way.

And then of course there are negative signals as well.

So of course, a big negative signals already

of these positive don't exist and out there.

But then surely if people hide the posts,

or tell the platform

that they don't want to see content like this.

This is very negative.

If they unfollow you after they read something from you,

if they mute the post from you/

Also, if they report the post that you created,

these of course, negative signals from the algorithm.

And if so far you received any value from this video,

please hit the like button for the algorithm,

and also follow or subscribe to stay up to date

on all my content.

I will talk more about this going forward.

So would love you to stay on board here.

Next, let's talk about some little tips,

that you can do to improve your profile.

Especially with the goal of becoming a creator.

And first of all,

I would encourage you to use a background picture.

Many profiles still don't use background pictures,

but if someone visits your profile the first time,

for instance, after having seen a post on their feed,

the background picture

is what really gives your profile character.

And you can use it to directly brand yourself,

make sure that the key messages are transported,

and make sure that people directly understand

what you are all about,

what they can expect if they follow you.

Next is the tagline.

So the tagline is the line

that is this displayed below your name.

The tagline is very important

because it's shown across many places on the platform.

So usually whenever you write a post, below your name,

there will also be the tagline present.

So this gives the first impression, what is your background?

What are you all about?

Why should people be interested in yourself?

So make it as concise and as punchy as possible,

and avoid using too many words.

Next are hashtags.

So if you turn on the creator mode,

I will show you what this is in a moment.

You have the opportunity to add hashtags

like this on your profile.

This again helps the algorithm to understand what the niches

that you're talking about, what topics you are focusing on.

This is also called your authority

and will also help the LinkedIn search to place you

in the appropriate search results.

For this last panel, least make use of the featured section.

So LinkedIn provides you with a section

where you can hand select certain posts

that you feel like very well represent

what's going on on your page, what you're doing,

what you're writing about,

the signature pieces of content

that you created in the past.

Make use of that.

Because again,

this is the ideal place to give the first impression

to people who are new to your personal brand,

are new to your profile,

to understand what you are all about.

Let's now also talk about the creator mode on your profile.

You should find the option to turn on the creator mode.

This will give you access to some additional features

that are very relevant to creators.

So I would definitely recommend you to do that.

For instance, you have access to these hashtags

that I showed you a moment ago.

And another thing that automatically happens

if you turn on the creator mode,

is that the main call to action on your profile

changes from connect to follow.

So usually on standard profiles,

people see the connect button

so people can connect with the person,

but then of course the other person needs

to accept this connection request this way.

Follow means that the people

want to see your content, want to see your posts,

but the other person doesn't need to approve that.

So the hurdles are lower.

People are not afraid that maybe you won't accept them.

So if you change the call to action to Follow,

this will enable and encourage more people to follow you.

And therefore for you to grow your audience,

of course, people can still connect with you,

but this will not be the main call to action

displayed on your profile anymore.

Let's now talk about the content strategy.

And in this section, I want to talk about some tips,

some advice,

some little tactics and hacks that you can use

to really create the best possible content

for the platform and maximize your chances

to eventually create some content pieces

that will also go viral and thereby blow up your account.

And what's important in the very beginning

is that you should think about a niche,

a topic that you want to stand for.

So if people think about you,

what do they want to have in mind?

What are the key topics that you want

to associate yourself with?

So this is called your niche

and this should be rather specific.

You don't necessarily, from the very first day,

need to have a very tangible first niche in mind.

I think it's also fair just to start

with more generic content and then over time

converge towards a niche.

But in the medium term,

you should develop this for yourself,

because think about it,

if you follow someone, why are you following a profile?

Because you want to read more of this type of content,

but if the content of a person is all over the place

changes all the time,

why should someone follow you?

So think about your niche first and then from your niche

you can then derive the content pieces

that you want to create.

And let's now start by talking about the anatomy

of a successful post on LinkedIn.

And let's start with the hook.

The post should always start with the hook.

So these are often one or two sentences

that just spark interest, create interest.

Let people want to read more about the post.

Let's remember the time on post

is one of the most important indicators

for the LinkedIn algorithm.

So you want to excite people.

You want to motivate people to read all the post,

because this is what will get your time on post.

After the hook, there's the body,

and in this body in the main part of your post,

you should always focus on communicating value,

on communicating some insights,

things that other people can take away,

can learn from what you're writing about.

This is at least the rule of thumb.

You might occasionally deviate from that,

but the majority of your posts should be based

on this framework.

What many people do wrong,

is that the write posts completely self-centered,

just about themselves, about their business,

all the great things that they did in the past.

That's boring.

People don't want to read them,

make it about the value that you can deliver

to the other person.

Next around the end of the post

end with the call to action.

So ask people to do something.

Here's also fair to vary these call to actions over time.

Maybe encourage people to leave a comment,

'cause this, of course, sparks engagement,

or you can encourage people to follow your page,

if they want to read more

about this specific type of content, right?

So leave a call to action,

encourage people to do something, because again,

this will also favor you in the algorithm.

Now I don't want to talk about hashtags too much here

in this video.

I trust you're familiar with them from other platforms.

The last thing that I wanna talk about is that

it's quite striking that at least at the moment

in the LinkedIn algorithm posts that have an attachment.

So some type of picture, for instance,

or a slideshow or video or anything like that,

they tend to perform significantly better

in the LinkedIn algorithm.

So I just looked at my top 10 best performing posts

and eight of these top 10 best performing posts

had some type of picture attached to them.

So in general,

I would recommend you to always use a picture.

If you struggle to come up with a picture

that really meets the message of the post,

what many people do

is just include a random picture of themselves.

And they just attach such a picture of themselves

to the post.

I tried this out myself and I can just only say it works.

It significantly improves the reach of your content.

So let's now deep dive on the hook.

So on the first sentences that you leave on your post.

Here, what you need to understand

that after a couple of lines

there is the so-called fold.

So LinkedIn only shows the beginning of the post

and after a couple of lines, then it just says,

"see more" and people need to click on "see more"

to see the remainder of the post.

So here what's important is that you're able to place

the full hook before the fold,

make sure the full hook is seen before

then this fold arrives.

And the good thing is that where this fold is placed

is predictable.

And it depends on whether

there is an attachment to the post or not.

And if you follow the recommendation

that I just gave you a moment ago,

you will almost always have such an attachment

attached to the post.

And if this is the case,

then this fold appears after three lines of content.

You see this year in the left example, three lines,

and then the fold appears.

And if there's no attachment,

this fold appears after five lines.

So here the example to the right,

you see four lines of text,

but then there's also an empty line,

an empty line, this counts as well.

So after five lines, then there will be the fold.

So of course with your hook,

you want to encourage people to click on "see more."

So maybe you are ending with a question in the hook

that then you are answering in the remainder of the post,

or maybe you make a rather controversial statement

that then you explain in the remainder of the post.

So encourage people to click on "see more,"

because of course, just the fact alone that people click

on "see more" is in itself already

a positive sign to the algorithm

that people find this post interesting,

and they want to learn more about it.

Let's now talk about another little hack

that you can do in your content strategy

to boost the reach of your post.

And this is occasionally creating posts

that really focus on boosting engagement,

focus on getting as much engagement as possible.

And one type of post that is very suited to do that

are surveys.

So you, in this example,

you can see that I created a survey,

it got about 40,000 impressions or 40,000 views.

And there were about 2,000 people

who participated in the survey

who clicked on an option in the survey.

So 2,000 people is quite a lot for post of myself.

So you can often see that surveys

get quite a lot of engagement like this.

And the good thing is if a person interacted

with your content in this way,

even though this person did not necessarily follow you,

then this person is more likely to, in the future,

see posts that you created, that you wrote,

because LinkedIn now thinks that,

"Hey, this person might be interested in your content."

So I would not encourage you

to always only create posts like this.

'Cause the truth is also

only because someone participated in a survey,

doesn't necessarily mean that that person

is really interested in your content.

Doesn't necessarily mean that another person

will go to your profile and follow you.

But occasional posts like this can help

to increase your engagement,

increase your views in the medium term.

Just one word of caution.

In the past, also earlier this year,

LinkedIn was quite swamped with posts

where people were doing surveys, not with the survey tool,

which I think is also rather new in LinkedIn,

but rather by abusing the different types of like buttons,

you could participate in the survey

by clicking the like button

or the insightful like button

or the laugh like button and so on.

And using that as a survey.

And by that, of course getting lots of engagement.

So recently I've not really seen any of these types of posts

anymore on my timeline.

So I think here, this is an example

of how LinkedIn adjusted the algorithm

to not publish these types of posts,

which is why at the moment,

I would not recommend you to create this type of content.

So let's now talk about another strategy for your content.

And this is the build in public strategy.

Maybe you've already heard about it.

There was quite a lot of buzz around it.

And the main idea is this,

especially suitable for maybe entrepreneurs

or anyone in leadership position that you just talk about

what you're building, about the company,

the organization that you're building,

and just regularly share some insights on that.

Maybe once per week,

you share your biggest learnings of the last week

or the biggest achievements, what you learn from them.

Maybe also some failures, what you learn from that.

So this is just a strategy where you can really

lift the curtains, let people in,

into your business and provide value down the road.

This can of course help to create trust

with potential employees, with potential customers.

This is a great strategy to create new leads.

I'm just show you here an example of a gentleman.

So for full disclosure, I don't know this gentleman.

I also don't want to endorse any of his content

or his activities.

I just thought this was a nice example of where someone

is doing exactly that.

There are many other examples out there.

So let's now talk about some typical mistakes

that many people are doing.

And here I'm now referencing this book from the great

Gary Vaynerchuk, "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook."

Maybe some of you have seen it.

And the big notion of this book is that

if you want to be successful in social media,

in the world out there,

rather focus on the jabs and be rather measured

in your use of right hooks.

And in this picture, the jab is a piece of content posts

that focuses on delivering value for the audience.

Whereas the right hook is the message,

but you have some type of commercial interest.

Maybe you want someone to become a customer of yourself.

And as the title already says, jab, jab, jab, right hook,

right? So for every right hook for every commercial message,

make sure that there's a good number

of really value creating messages before that,

or to say differently,

your profile should not look like a big advertisement.

And this is frankly what I sometimes see.

People also do wrong with this built in public strategy

where they just talk about how great the organization is,

how great their company is.

This is not what people want to read all of the time.

In your content, focus on delivering value for others.

And if you do that consistently,

then people will very much understand

if you occasionally also place this right hook

with your own commercial interest.

Let's now talk about sharing other posts,

and in principle, there's nothing wrong with that.

You just need to be aware that how the system,

the algorithm works is that if you share another post,

that mainly helps the reach of the other post.

So the other post with an often be shown to more people,

potentially also to more people in your audience.

Build a post that you yourself create.

By sharing another post,

potentially also with some comments,

this post in itself will often only get

a fraction of the views than such a post.

What usually get so sharing other posts is great

for the post that you're sharing,

but often doesn't help you.

If you want to create a post yourself,

that gets lots of reach, lots of use.

So depending on your goals,

you might still want to share the other post to support it,

or you just decide to create a new post by yourself

that picks up some of the main messages

and then has higher chances to get the reach.

Let's now also talk about linking external resources,

for instance, adding a link to another website to your post.

And here, the truth is also that this is very bad

for the reach of your post.

I've recently seen an analysis of another person

with a conclusion,

the post with external links receive on average,

only 1/6 of the reach of a post without external links.

And the reason for that I think is also quite obvious.

Of course, LinkedIn likes to keep people on the platform.

LinkedIn, doesn't like to lead people from the platform,

which is why they're punishing posts

that have these external links.

So my advice would be that if you do want to link

to an external page,

don't put the link in the original post,

but rather put the link in the comments

and then you can write on the post something like,

"Oh, okay. Link to the page and the comments."

And this will then to some extent,

bypass this reach penalty

that LinkedIn otherwise would put on your post.

But now I would love to hear from you.

Do you have any other LinkedIn strategies and tips to share,

leave a comment here in the comments section.

I'd love to get all your insights or learn from you as well.

Again, if you enjoyed it or took any value from it,

please hit the like button for the algorithm,

and also subscribe and follow

to stay up to date on all the content.

Big, big thanks to all the members of Firm Learning as well.

Thank you for your support.

My name is Heinrich

I'm the creator of Firm Learning.

Talk to you again soon.