How does the LinkedIn algorithm work?

Posted on 20-09-2019 by Erin Reynel

Many people forget LinkedIn when they consider their social media marketing plan. But LinkedIn is the BEST place for B2B social media marketing. To know how to make the most use of your LinkedIn, though, you need to understand the site’s algorithm… and we’re here to help with that!

The social media lowdown: how the LinkedIn algorithm works

In the past, LinkedIn’s algorithm would rarely show your content unless you were already a superstar celeb or business person. That’s because LinkedIn defaulted to only showing top posts, which meant you’d see posts from people like Richard Branson, but not from people you actually knew. Until recently, it wasn’t very social!

While LinkedIn got the message this year. Now the algorithm sorts content based off two factors:

1. Personal connection

Just because you follow someone on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you actually know them. In the past, LinkedIn promoted users whose posts were getting the most attention. Today, it tries to prioritize users you actually know personally. This gives individuals and small businesses a better chance of being noticed.

2. Shared interests

LinkedIn now wants to make sure you’re seeing content that is relevant to your interests. Because of that, the algorithm factors in what your contacts are liking, as well as what they post. It even considers what companies, products, and key words are mentioned in the posts themselves.

Killing it on social media: make LinkedIn’s algorithm work for you

A lot of people don’t understand how to make LinkedIn work for them, so they underutilize the platform. So how do you make this social media platform and its new algorithm serve you?

1. Build your network

You want to increase your network, but through natural fits. Start by making sure you have everyone you know who is on LinkedIn. Then make posts, create groups, and join conversations. If you connect with someone, add them. Oh, and make sure your profile is public so people can easily find and add you!

2. Know when to post

Like any social media platform, LinkedIn has good times and bad times to post. The best times to post are:

7:45 AM
10:45 AM
12:45 PM
5:45 PM

B2B brands should be posting on Wednesday and Tuesday, while B2C brands should post Monday and Wednesday.

3. Promote what you post

There are a few ways to do this. You can tag relevant companies and use hashtags. You also want to select a few keywords for each post. Still not getting the response you want? Cross-promote your posts on your other social media sites!

4. Stay relevant

You want to post about things your audience cares about, when they care about them. Watch for what topics are getting attention from your followers and engage in similar conversations. Try to also include images or videos in your posts as these have a high appeal on LinkedIn.

5. Keep it niche

You want to be relevant but not broad. Broad conversations tend to not actually say much. They also leave you competing with larger brands. Instead, go niche. Speak to what your audience can only get from you and convey that with specific hashtags instead of broad ones.

6. Be personal

Being genuine is important on LinkedIn. Be personal and capture your unique expertise, background, or experiences in your posts. If you’re posting as a brand, go for an open, accessible tone that will still feel personal.

7. Foster engagement

Posts with engagement are promoted more by the LinkedIn algorithm. So get people talking! The best way to do that? Have genuine, in-depth conversations. That’s what the folks on LinkedIn are usually looking for.

8. Use your analytics

Once something is working, you want to keep it going. But in order to do that, you have to know why it worked. You can only do that by looking at your analytics. Make sure you stay on top of what’s happening with them so you can make adjustments as needed to your social media.

The easy guide to optimizing ALL your content for SEO

Posted on 16-02-2016 by Erin Reynel

Having great content or blogs on your website is just a piece of the puzzle when it comes to making gains in your search ranking, or SEO. In order to really work for your, you need to rock it when it comes to optimizing content for SEO.

This absolutely genius blog on Search Engine Journal by the incredible Nathan Chan does a perfect job of breaking down exactly how to optimize your content for search. Read their blog, or read on for a Coles Notes version of how it’s done.

And, don’t forget to read further into how to structure each blog to truly get the most out of your blog content’s SEO with this blog by the team here at Legendary Social Media.

How to optimize content for SEO

Choose one keyword per blog

You’ll want to have a solid list of keywords your business’ website is targeting. Then, create a content strategy to identify which blogs should target which keywords. Choose one keyword per blog, and optimize its content for SEO, relating to that keyword. For more information, read our blog about how to structure each blog post.

You can also add a few related keywords to each main keyword. For example, if you want to optimize for “Vancouver realtor”, you may also want to include the phrases “Vancouver real estate” and “Vancouver homes for sale” in your content.

Optimize your file and photo names

Rather than naming your blog’s image “blog pic1.jpg”, add some keywords to the file name. Go with “vancouver-realtor-real-estate-blog.jpg” instead. Also, don’t forget to add alt text to each file or photo you use in your blog with the same keyword you’re optimizing for.

Categories, tags and topics are opportunities to optimize content for SEO

Google looks at the names of the categories and tags you add to your blog posts when it ranks your site. Ensure your categories, tags and/or topics use the keywords you’re targeting, and keep them relevant to the post.

Optimizing content for SEO on social media

Using keywords strategically shouldn’t end when you push the “publish” button on your blog. When you share that blog on social media, keep using those keywords in the description for the post. Since Google looks at your business’ social profiles when it ranks your site, ensuring you’ve optimized with keywords everywhere possible will only do you big favours in the end.

Legendary Social Media tip: Which social sites are most important?

Google looks at almost all social media sites that link to your website when it ranks you, but it tends to look at some sites more than others. Google+ and YouTube are your best bets for sharing your content for SEO wins, since they’re owned by Google see page. But Google also prioritizes LinkedIn and Facebook heavily. After that comes Twitter. Sharing your content on all of these platforms is a great idea for SEO, as long as it’s worthwhile for your business – you should only share content to networks where you’ll actually interact with the people who care about the content you publish.

Have questions about optimizing content for SEO? Write them below or send us an email!

10 reasons a la carte social media packages aren’t worth it

Posted on 13-01-2016 by Erin Reynel

You’ve probably shopped around for social media managers for your business and come across quite a few with ridiculously appealing prices. Something in the realm of $200/month for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram management. For an extra $50, they’ll set up each of those platforms for you. And for another $20 a month, you can add Pinterest and LinkedIn.

It sounds too good to be true. And it is.

Every couple of months, someone brings me a proposal from a social media management company in Vancouver that offers seemingly great deals just like this and asks what’s the deal.

Our team has had tons of discussions about how companies manage this and even made some covert calls to find out more details.

Here are 10 reasons why cheap, a la cartel social media packages aren’t worth the money they’re charging.

Copy-and-paste messaging is ineffective.

You don’t use the same words or tell the same stories to your best friends as you do to your boss. The subtle and less subtle ways we communicate with the different types of people in our lives are amplified and become even more important with the public nature of social media. Posting the same content with the same content on casual Facebook and professional LinkedIn can make your business look amateur. Plus, studies show that hashtags and @ handles in your Facebook posts, ellipses and truncated content in Twitter feeds and Instagram photos posted directly to Facebook lower your chances of grabbing the attention of your audience. Why pay for posts that are essentially useless to you?
They ignore the social part of social media.

By their nature, social platforms are meant for having conversations and building trust and relationships. In real life, would you ever walk up to someone you wanted to be friends with, spout off a stat or a joke, and walk away? Why would you let a company do that for you on social media? Instead, your brand should be starting conversations, asking questions and posting content that entices people to engage with you and get to know your brand.
They don’t encourage people to engage with your business.

Because of the way that they “post it and leave it”, these companies aren’t giving your customers reasons to talk with you. Why have a one-sided conversation? On the other hand, two-way conversations build trust between your brand and your customers, and trust leads to sales.
You run the risk of looking unprofessional.

Spelling errors, poor grammar and tasteless jokes are suicide for businesses on social media. Working with an untrained, unprofessional social media manager is risky behaviour. We recommend hiring a social media marketing firm with a strong background in writing, business and social media best practices.
Beware the hidden costs.

Your business doesn’t stay the same every day. You’ll want to tell people about special events, sales, promotions and news. Don’t get stuck with social media packages that charge you extra for anything outside what they think is the norm. Instead, work with a firm that is as flexible as you are and wants to see your business succeed.
You get what you pay for.

Need we elaborate? Too many times, I’ve met people who have taken the cheap route with their social marketing and regretted the dollars they wasted. Your business deserves better!
You pay for work you don’t need and miss out on work you do need.

The nature of a la carte social media packages is that you don’t get to pick and choose the services you need most, and skip the ones you don’t. Don’t pay for Pinterest marketing if your customers aren’t on Pinterest. Working with a social media marketing firm that understands what your business needs and helps focus your efforts and dollars on those areas is always working in your best interest.
They’re not there when you need them.

On a pair of occasions, I’ve phoned one of these cheap social media package shops to inquire about their services. Both took 3 days to return my call. What if you were paying them and they posted content that embarrassed your company or didn’t align with your values? Would it be OK for that content to stay out there for 3 days? Not likely.
You’ll be in bed with the Walmart of social media.

These low cost shops are all about quantity over quality. They post quickly without much thought to long term strategy and how each post represents your brand. They often use scheduling software, meaning they spend just a few minutes posting your business’ content for the week, then they forget about you. For them, it’s all about what’s fast and easy, rather than what’s going to get you the best results.
Personalized service? Not a chance.

It’s always more fun ad more rewarding to work with someone you respect, who’s intelligent, connected and personable. That’s why your customers choose your business over others – they can relate to you! The same goes for the agency that represents your brand online – they should understand you and be able to tailor their service specifically to what you need. They should call to see how you’re doing and check in on your business.

Have questions? Comments? Post them below or email us!

What are LinkedIn Company Pages and how can you use them to get noticed?

Posted on 20-10-2015 by Erin Reynel

This blog post is part of our Lessons from SMSS15 series. Legendary Social Media is taking part in Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit 2015, which is the world’s largest online social media marketing conference. This blog series covers the points and ideas we’ve taken from the course that we’ve deemed to be eye-opening and highly useful for other marketers and for small- and medium-sized businesses. To discuss any of the ideas in these blogs or other ideas about social marketing, please don’t hesitate to contact us here.

Awareness of LinkedIn as a tool for B2B marketing is growing, but the social media platform is still underutilized. In our last blog, we explained how to get noticed by your target audience on LinkedIn if you’re a B2B business, but today we’re going over another aspect of LinkedIn that also acts as a B2B marketing tool: Company Pages.

How to make a LinkedIn Company Page

Sign in to your LinkedIn profile. Move your cursor to where it says Interests near the top, then click Companies.
On the right, it says Create a Company Page. Click the yellow Create button.
Enter your email and check the box that says you’re an official representative of the company you’re listing, then check your inbox for the confirmation email to arrive.
You’ll be prompted to log back in to LinkedIn, and you’ll be taken to the page to create a Company Page.

What to do with your LinkedIn Company Pages

Once you’ve created your page, the next screen that pops up shows a link to Company Page Best Practices, and also gives you a tour of how to manage your page. Here are best practices as per the LinkedIn master, Viveka von Rosen:

Use the header image space to promote specials, deals and areas of expertise (you can create great headers with Canva)
Address your reader in the first few words of your company description by identifying their pain points and letting the reader know how you can help them.
The “specialties” section is ideal real estate for keywords (words people would search to find your company)
Don’t put “self-employed” as your type of business, even if you are. Prefer privately held or some other option.
Include a call to action in your company description. Encourage people to follow your LinkedIn page, or connect with you on other social media.
Post updates every day, or every few days, depending what works for your audience.
You can target these posts to specific people and groups you’re part of. The more focused the post is to the audience you send it to, the better engagement you’ll get.
You can pay to advertise your company posts to a specific audience, but simply targeting the audience you want to see the post might get you better results.
The post types that work best are:
- Best ofs
- Influencer posts (von Rosen’s advice is to interview an influencer, publish a post about the interview and tag that influencer in the post. If this happens to you, I’ll give you a hero cookie.)
- Visual or video posts
- Posts from your personal profile on LinkedIn that have your Company Page tagged.

Thinking of marketing your B2B business on LinkedIn, but not sure how to get started? Contact us for a free consultation on how to get noticed on LinkedIn today!

LinkedIn marketing tips: What to post to get noticed and get engagement

Posted on 16-10-2015 by Erin Reynel

This blog post is part of our Lessons from SMSS15 series. Legendary Social Media is taking part in Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit, which is the world’s largest online social media marketing conference. This blog series covers the points and ideas we’ve taken from the course that we’ve deemed to be eye-opening and highly useful for other marketers and for small- and medium-sized businesses. To discuss any of the ideas in these blogs or other ideas about social marketing, please don’t hesitate to contact us here.

Marketing on LinkedIn is either an art or a science, or maybe both. As a marketing tool, LinkedIn works well for B2B companies, but not for B2C. And as we learned in our last blog post, based on the swath of useful information from LinkedIn experts Melonie Dodaro and Stephanie Sammons during SMSS15, the way to get noticed by other businesses is to produce original, engaging, helpful content that solves their specific problems.

Today, we delve deeper into LinkedIn marketing to talk more in detail about how to produce that content: What it should include and what exactly to write about.

What to write about

Universally helpful business-type themes, such as professional development, career moves, leadership and marketing.
Trends related to your own business’ niche.
Trends in your target clients’ industry or industries.
Personal insights and lessons learned. This is where your storytelling skills should come in!
News that affects your target audience, with personal and professional insights and analyses.
Posts that rehash, with your own insights and analyses added in, articles coming from LinkedIn influencers.
Story or post ideas that come from LinkedIn influencers.
Story or post ideas from LinkedIn Pulse. (We definitely recommend checking out that pulse page! It’s full of great suggestions of who and what to watch on LinkedIn.)

What to include in your posts

A primary image, ideally one you created on your own (try Canva).
Subheads for easier scanning and readability.
Tags (this is a new feature; LinkedIn allows you to add up to three pre-set tags to a post).
A call-to-action, such as a clickable image at the end, a link to your website or download page, or an invitation to call or connect.
An amazing headline that your readers can’t help but click.

Extra tips for publishing posts on LinkedIn

Share your posts a few times over a few weeks, and share them to specific connections who might be interested.
Repurpose your website’s blog articles as LinkedIn posts, but don’t publish them on LinkedIn until a week or so after it was first published, as LinkedIn posts tend to gain traction quicker and can take away from your website’s traffic driven by the post’s headline.

Need help with producing tons of useful, topical and researched content for your target audience? Legendary Social Media in Vancouver has roots in journalism, which means we’re great at research and writing. And our social media savvy can help you manage your LinkedIn account to get you noticed. Interested? Send us an email.

Stuck on how to market your B2B business? Here are 4 essential ways to make it happen

Posted on 16-10-2015 by Erin Reynel

B2B marketing is a massive challenge. You, like Legendary Social Media, need to get your business in the face of other businesses – but how to do that? B2C marketing techniques like Facebook and Twitter aren’t as effective, anecdotally speaking, so what’s the answer?

According to most experts, the answer is LinkedIn. It’s something we at Legendary Social Media are still struggling with (not because it’s difficult, but LinkedIn can be so boring that spending time on it is like watching paint dry) Find Out More.

However, the facts don’t lie. And those facts show that LinkedIn is, in fact, the most effective B2B marketing tool out there right now.

How should you use LinkedIn to market to other businesses? It all starts with producing original, useful, high-quality content on topics that your target audience would find interesting, according to the two LinkedIn gurus who presented their findings during SMSS15, Melonie Dodaro and Stephanie Sammons.

Here are 4 tips to help you do just that.

If you’re marketing to oil and gas, for example, produce and share articles that oil and gas companies would be interested in, and speak their language by using terms specific to that industry.
Create downloadable guides for that industry and write posts that direct people to download your guide. Make sure your content is well-branded so they know who produced it!
Learn your audience’s specific problems, and come up with ways to solve them. This one is critical. Do some research by joining LinkedIn groups that your audience is part of and search for the questions and discussions happening there. Once you’ve identified your audience’s pain points, formulate solutions and produce content targeted to solving those problems.
Speaking of LinkedIn groups, joining groups where your target audience is active is a great way to get noticed. Respond to questions and stay active in discussions. Be helpful. You’ll not only show your audience that you’re an expert, but you may even be top of mind should a business need your services in the near future.

Tag: linkedin

request your custom quote.

vancouver's boutique
marketing agency.