Don’t Assume Anything. Check Your LinkedIn Analytics

Today, I have 3 important things to share with you:

1: All reactions are not equal

2: Saves and dwell time

3: Things AI cannot generate

Make yourself comfortable, let’s get into it.

All Reactions Are Not Equal

Most people think that just because a post gets a lot of reactions, then it is going viral. Not true. And I can prove this to you.

Here is one of my posts. Notice the impression count:

And now, take a look at this next one:

Ordinarily, you would assume that the post with 26 reactions would have more impressions. But no. A post with 7 reactions has more impressions.

So, don’t be fooled by high reaction count on LinkedIn. Especially when you are looking at big personal brands. Most people are just reacting to the post because they like the person.

Many people react on posts because they want to be associated with the idea of the post. Not necessarily because they see the post as something that will help them.

Also, it matters who is reacting.

I have learned of posts with 200 reactions getting 51k impressions. Meanwhile, a post with 20 reactions is getting the same number of impressions.

This is why you shouldn’t blindly chase virality. Instead, your goal should be posts that position you as an expert in your niche. Stay in your niche and follow the viral content framework.

So, what really determines how much impressions a post gets? If it is not reaction count, then what is moving the needle? I have a hypothesis on this.

Saves And Dwell Time

There are a couple of things that swing in the favor of helping a post get lots of impressions. Remember the fundamental goal here is to get reach (within a niche).

Some LinkedIn gurus have suggested it to be saves.

This means that when people see your post and they save it for later, the algorithm think it is very good and shows it to more people. Unfortunately, there is no way for you to know how many saves your LinkedIn post got.

You won’t find that on LinkedIn analytics. So, is it a mystery? Not quite.

You have to understand that asking people to save your post doesn’t make them save it. The way to guarantee saves is to make a post worth saving.

I think this is why my listicles posts perform the most exceptional. If you don’t know what a listicles post is, then go read this previous newsletter article.

But there is one metric that is even more subtle than saves. And that is dwell time.

If you can still use some fancy third-party integration to know the number of saves your LinkedIn post got, there is almost no way for you to know what the dwell time is.

Dwell time means how much time the average user stayed on your post. It is often measured in seconds. Of course, LinkedIn wants posts that makes people stop scrolling and wait. The algorithm loves such posts.

And in many cases, these are the posts that gets saved too.

If you want to optimize your LinkedIn to improve any metric, my suggestion would be to improve dwell time. And the way to do that would be to say things that AI cannot generate.

What does that mean?

Things AI Cannot Generate

AI is affecting the content creation across all platforms. Sometimes for good, other times not good. AI has greatly lowered the barrier to make content.

But people (as consumers of information) have also raised their tastes. Generic content by AI has a stench to it that is increasingly becoming abhorrent.

My recommendation with AI is always to use it as an editor. Write your crappy first draft yourself. Feed it into AI and let AI format it into Grade 5 readability. Then, do the final walk-through yourself.

Always avoid generic advice in posts. You are not Gary Vee. However, you should default to storytelling if you are ever at a loss of what to post. Use one of the 100 authentic list of ideas created on this newsletter.

Asides from storytelling, well-researched posts work very well. When I make a listicle, it performs. But when the listicle is something I sat down to deeply research from experimenting and testing, it goes viral almost every single time.

When you help the user or reader uncover something profound and you state it in a simple manner on a LinkedIn post, the chances of it going viral are high (especially when it is in a niche you have been very active on).

One more thing here is that you should always, always say one thing per post. Only one idea per post. Don’t try to say too many things. You post should be centered around one point. And that point should be obvious from the first two lines.

Do deep research. Tell relevant stories. And always stick to just one point per post. This is how you come up with things that AI cannot generate.

P.S. If you are ready to take LinkedIn seriously but don’t know where to start, book a consultation with me here