LinkedIn is life.

It’s solidarity for hustlers like you.

And it’s a better place to spend 5 minutes than Instagram on a weekday.

I love it – you love it. But, only 5% of people on Linkedin post on a regular basis, that’s why engagement rates are through the roof.

Why do you think they don’t post? I don’t want to be one of those people that isn’t passionate about what I do, and/or can’t get up the nerve.

Push through the discomfort of not being perfect with me with these 25 Linkedin Hacks for Better Engagement.

Fill out all of the elements of your profile – including examples of your company’s work/case studies.
Optimize your headline for engagement with a “‘You’ focused value proposition” that incorporates benefit-driven language rather than just self-promotion.
Post regularly, at least a couple of times a week to increase recognition.
Make a schedule to make posting easier and more consistent. “I post Tuesday, Wed, and Thursday mornings at 8 am – for the best engagement” or whatever you come up with as your strategy, so when the time comes you know to post, ensuring it’s more about what than “if”.
Have post series’ like “Monday Motivational Post.” Tracy has “Wacker Wednesday” and we’ve been doing a Tuesday “Marketing News” video series. People like consistency and rhythm. They don’t care or respect ‘announcements’ as much as they do rhythmic series, and consistent value.
Tag people as it makes sense. Don’t be a dipshit about it though. You know who you are. Come on man.
Don’t be ashamed to ask for comments in your post. They get more out of your content when other people are chiming in too, and everyone knows it. Relax and ask.
Always respond to every comment. This algorithmically increases the chances of your followers seeing the original post. The more you can encourage conversation on your post, the better.
Don’t be afraid to add the first comment, especially when asking a question in your post. Answer your own damn question if you have to. What is this… Instagram? Do we all have to look super cool all the time? I don’t.
Ask questions. The shorter the answer people have to give the better. Yes or no questions, questions people don’t have to think about that long… universal questions where most people have some kind of opinion. Pineapple on Pizza anyone?
Have a “hot take” or contradictory stance – ”I don’t believe cheese belongs on pizza at all,” ”I believe bloating branding exercises are just an excuse for marketing companies to sell fluff”. Whatever you can do to incite a riot (that you actually believe in), it can be a lot of fun. Just be ready for some haterz.
Post videos with subtitles (Kapwing is one option for this). Video for one is super engaging, and we get 1k+ views for many of our videos on Linkedin. But embedding the subtitles, or creating an SRT file and uploading with your video (Descript is a great option for this), gets more people going because we often are interacting with Linkedin while we’re taking a leak – or are otherwise supposed to be doing something else.
Comment on other people’s posts. A good rule of thumb is every time you post, try to go interact with 3-5 other people’s posts as well. Don’t just be a needy, greedy little thing—be a giver.
Add as many relevant people as possible, even if you’ve never met them in person. Maybe this is the spicy hot take of this article—please comment below and roast me for it if you disagree. I think you should max out your connection requests 2-3 times a week. Competitors teams for your long-term recruitment efforts, title + industry of the ideal customers you serve, and everyone who works at the types of businesses in town that send referrals. Don’t be stingy—share the love.
Make sure your headshot is zoomed in, matches your brand, and is smiling with no clutter. Check out the best headshot according to science, and maybe even A/B test with photo-feeler. Smile with teeth, dark-colored suit/light-colored button-down, jawline with shadow, head and shoulders, squinch, asymmetrical, unobstructed eyes).
Optimize your posts for the text at the beginning to grab people’s attention, and make them want to click ‘read more’ / open up the post.
Branded cover photo—optimize your cover photo to add your company’s value proposition and trust factors.
Use Linkedin Insights Tag (see what companies viewed your profile) on your website and check it regularly for companies that you should be connecting with.
Be part of a ‘mob’ – a Linkedin Group, or use your company’s slack to get everyone on your team involved. Ask people to be on a hair-trigger and get the algorithm on your side. If you follow me on Linkedin, now you know that ‘secret’ but hey – if it works, it’s hard to knock it!
Have great referral partners and other awesome people in your broader ‘tribe’? I often get people where I’ve done them a favor or referred them a lot of business or something – and they ask what they can do for me. We’re having the conversation on Linkedin – so I just simply ask them “Engage!” It would mean a lot to me if you’d comment and like I ever put on mine or our company page 🙂 It’s not a huge ask but it often works!
Identify 5-10 Hashtags that make sense in your industry/niche and use them on a regular basis. 1 out of every 10 times I do this, after 3-5 days Linkedin will notify me my post is ‘trending’ in #marketing or whatever, and the engagement will go up from there. It’s not THAT powerful, but sometimes it’s awesome (as long as it doesn’t detract from your post). Use 3 hashtags that relate to the topic of the post at the end.
Accept every connection request that ever comes through unless they are painfully scammy seeming. Even people that pitch me right away – I don’t get super offended, I just get over it – and often they are liking and interacting with my content down the road, increasing the algorithmic presence. Muhahahaha!
Create roundups and tag people that contributed. Find 10 influencers in your niche that promote stuff heavily on Linkedin, and get them all fired up about some original data that you’ve put together, and ask them for their “hot take” on it. Work on something juicy, original, and engaging for a month, get them involved and anticipating it coming out, and ask them to ‘signal boost.’ Then boom – when it comes out, go ham. Don’t be ashamed you made something epic – get the whole town involved. This is why I’ve been making less… but better content lately. It just feels better to launch the piece of content, know it has value, have a built-in promotion strategy – and then actually have the energy and excitement to promote it to high hell.
Be involved in other people’s content that they are doing. Accept every video/podcast/expert roundup / or event request that you can in your sweet spot/niche and make it your goal to show up all over your town and Linkedin feeds in your region. We made it a goal to ‘scare the shit’ out of our competitors by going so hard on Linkedin it weirded people out this past summer—and I have good reason to believe it worked.
If you’re going to do it, go weirdly hard. There’s just a lot of compounding benefits to going harder than most in a particular channel. When you make a commitment to a social channel, try to be the best in class on that channel. If that’s not Linkedin for you, then maybe don’t ‘dip your toes’ for that long. Because really, you won’t get much out of it. But if you’ve determined your ideal customers, referral partners, and possible teammates are all over Linkedin, there has never been a better time (besides 6 months ago- ahhh the good old days) to go hot and heavy on Linkedin.