I Learned a Humbling Lesson on LinkedIn

I have 3 important things to share with you this week:

1. Impression count mystery

2. My humbling lesson (about niche)

3. A LinkedIn posting calendar for you

So, let’s get into it.

Impression Count Mystery

A well-known LinkedIn creator made a post last week about LinkedIn impression count. He has a post that has (let’s assume) 200 reactions but with 51k impressions.

A client he works for as (let’s assume) 8 reactions but with 51k impressions.

How come?

You see, all audience is not the same.

There are fans, who would react to anything you post. They rarely comment.

There are peers, who only react to anything you post that concerns (or appeals to) them. They often comment.

Then, there are total strangers.

Those are the 3 categories of engagement people on LinkedIn. What about clients? They mostly do not engage. They just quietly observe for a while and then opt into an offer when you make one.

This particular LinkedIn creator has a lot of fans. His posts regularly gets over 200+ reactions within 24 hours. And he also has some influential peers who are his friends and regularly engage on his post.

Meanwhile, his client doesn’t have fans or anything like that. The merit of whatever he is posting is based on the post (like most of us).

If the post is very relevant to an audience. And someone with a large audience (or influential on LinkedIn) engages withe the post (maybe through a comment or repost), it would suddenly hit viral status.

I have had a post with 8 reactions hit 8.5k impressions. I showed that the other week.

The point here is that impression count is not a mystery. I have tested various things and still continue to test. If you play the game right, you can win big. That’s why I write this newsletter.

However, I will continue to encourage you to make a lot of comments. Write a lot of comments.

I heard LinkedIn has limited it to 30 comments per day (on other people’s content). I have not experienced a scenario where I was blocked from making comments though.

If you need a reason to take comments seriously, here you go:

And this is an anomaly because I had some viral posts. Normally, the comments section is usually more than 80%.

Tip: I used to put keywords in comments in the hopes that it will help me rank better. I just did a control test and it turns out, that made zero (or little) effect.

My Humbling Lesson

I was humbled this past week.

Now, you know I started going viral when I made remote work my niche. If you missed that the part where I broke that down, check it out here.

When that happened, I thought I had discovered a genius formula.

I wasn’t making any money from remote work, so I decided to switch to a niche that was making me money. And that is content and promoting this newsletter.

For 4 weeks, I hustled hard at it.

I followed people who were in the same niche. I engaged on their posts. I added thoughtful comments. I re-posted great content. And most of all, I wrote amazing value-adding posts.

I couldn’t go beyond 500 impressions, except for the 8.5k post. The only post that came close was the celebratory post I made to announce that I am writing this newsletter. And that had just about 1k impressions.

I altered my headline, re-positioned my “about” section, and still nothing hits.

The worst part of this experiment was that I saw people who made the same post I made, with a weaker hook (and shallow content) and they got 100+ reactions and tons of comments.

It was a humbling experience.

Then, I went back to my core niche and made 1 post on remote work. Just one post. Guess what? 35k impressions. 40+ reactions.

Just like that.

The lesson here is that your niche is your niche. You can’t force anything to be your niche (at least, from an organic standpoint).

Find your niche and stick with it. Occasionally, you can deviate and post something around what you sell and things like that. But once you find a niche working for you, keep posting content about that one niche, at least once a week.

I decided to start experimenting with this “double niche” strategy.

Remote work gives me the impressions surge, so I will keep posting about it. But also, I have to post about my work too. I already started and so far, I can tell you that you will not be penalized for having two niches - one for impressions (and reach) and the other for conversion (and sales).

The evidence is not conclusive yet, so I will keep sharing as I keep experimenting.

LinkedIn Content Calendar

This is still a work in progress. But it guide you a great deal in your content strategy.

This is what my content calendar looks like:

Mondays: Personal story + lesson (emotional trigger) #PersonalMonday

Tuesdays: Show proof or case study (authority-based) #CaseStudyTuesday

Wednesday: Pitch (demand gen) #PitchWednesday

Thursday: Share wins (emotional trigger) #HumbleBragThursday

Friday: Controversial takes or advice (Contrast) #ControversialFriday

Saturday: Repost a viral content

Sunday: Shoutout to helpful people or businesses #GratitudeSunday

Now, this is just a guide. I like to experiment so I break a lot of my own rules just to see if the rule holds or it’s something else.

I highly recommend that you follow this as a guide, especially for days when you don’t know what to post.

You can follow the company page “LinkedIn Famous Newsletter” on LinkedIn and you will get reminders every day on what to post according to the content calendar.

If you want me to design a printable version of this, do let me know.

If you would like a personalized LinkedIn strategy for your business or personal brand - book a call with me here (paid)