LinkedIn Organic Reach: How To Nail It?

In the digital economy, attention is currency, and content is attention at scale. This is how you win the social media game, and LinkedIn is no different.

However, LinkedIn has evolved greatly over the last few years. It is therefore very important to keep up with what is happening on LinkedIn in 2022.

On LinkedIn, people want to be educated, entertained, or inspired.

Not only do you need high-quality content but also great formatting.

Create a unique perspective or blend in with the crowd. For real.

In 19 years, where is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn was launched nine months before Facebook on May 5th, 2003. Among the major social networks, it is the oldest.

Over 810 million people use LinkedIn worldwide. There are approximately 185 million active users in the US. The US is its largest market.

4 out of 5 people on LinkedIn “drive business decisions”.

There are 77 job applications submitted every second on LinkedIn

Thus, LinkedIn is the best platform for targeting businesses, despite its low user base compared to Facebook and Instagram.

There are 58 million companies on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is Incentivizing Reach for Keeping Users on Its Platform

My LinkedIn profile has been filled with content for several years now. During the last year, I have barely posted any links in the posts.

It’s no secret that LinkedIn doesn’t like posts with links.

For comparison, here are 4 of my recent posts -

If you notice those screenshots, both of the first two posts got lesser impressions than the other two posts.

In the second post (in screenshot 2), I shared an external link from a company. I have relatively high engagement due to my 15K+ connections. There were 53 reactions and 5 comments. However, the total impressions were 1337.

Compared to my third post (in screenshot 3), I have only 13 reactions and 8 comments, but 1861 impressions. What’s the secret?

There was no external link in the third post.

The fourth post (in screenshot 4) also had a lot of impressions (~ 4712).

The bottom line is that a post that does not contain links will earn more organic visibility than a post that does.

Does LinkedIn Posts with Images Perform Better?

Imagery might seem to be a great way to grab attention on social media, but my experience has been the opposite.

Again, don’t take my word for it, look at the results by yourself.

Posts with images performed way worse than posts with simple text. I have done this experiment several times now, and video and images perform worse than plain text posts.

Occasionally, there have been outliers, but they represent less than 2% of all posts.

I haven’t seen a clear winner between video and image posts, both perform similarly.

B2B Brands Doing It Right + A Few More Findings

Before I share a few of the brands who have adopted their LinkedIn content strategy to what is working in 2022, there are some really interesting findings that you must keep in mind while posting on LinkedIn:

1. The tone of posts has shifted from a business-like tone to a more casual conversational tone. People are tired of one-way, formal communication. Content that feels like you’re talking with a friend or colleague is what they prefer. I’d say that’s a winner!
2. Keep the language simple. A post written at the level of a 5th grader performs much better than one filled with business jargons.
3. If you want to share a link, leave it in the comments instead of putting it in the post.
4. Use LinkedIn mentions in your posts, they still work like a charm and help you get attention from their immediate network.

I have noticed that these brands are following exactly everything I have mentioned in this post, and are doing an excellent job.

If you are looking for inspiration on Company pages, check out a few of my favorites:

Cognism — Sales Intelligence Platform

Chili Piper — ​​Meeting Lifecycle Automation Platform

Outreach — Sales Execution Platform

Gong — Revenue Intelligence Platform

Takeaways

Here is the recap on how you should gain more organic visibility on LinkedIn for your content:

1. Over 810 million people use LinkedIn worldwide. There are approximately 185 million active users in the US. The US is its largest market. 4 out of 5 people on LinkedIn “drive business decisions”. Thus, LinkedIn is the best platform for targeting businesses.
2. LinkedIn posts should not contain any links. LinkedIn dislikes posts that contain links.
3. Posts with images or video performed way worse than posts with simple text.
4. Between video and image posts, both perform similarly, no clear winner.
5. Content that feels like you’re talking with a friend or colleague is what works on LinkedIn. Mind your tone!
6. Keep the language simple. A post written at the level of a 5th grader performs much better than one filled with business jargons.
7. If you want to share a link, leave it in the comments instead of putting it in the post.
8. Use LinkedIn mentions in your posts, they still work like a charm.

That’s it. Hope it was useful. Cheers!