LinkedIn Tips That Have Stopped Working

I am sharing 3 things that are no longer working on LinkedIn:

1: The comments strategy

2: Link in comments

3: Failed verifications

Let’s get into it.

The Comments Strategy

If you follow a ton of LinkedIn gurus, you would have noticed this trend on posting on their own comment sections. I recommended this and did this also.

I made the first 2 or 3 comments on each of my posts. And that performed well for a while. But lately, they have been under-performing.

At first, I couldn’t tell. I just noticed that my content was not performing well anymore.

Then, someone pointed my attention to it. And I also noticed that some of the LinkedIn savvy people have stopped making the first 2-3 comments on their posts.

So, I put a hard stop to it this past week.

Guess what? My content started to perform well again. But there is a catch…

Instead of making the first 2 comments on my post, I wait. I wait for the first comment by someone else. And the moment I see that, I go reply that comment.

That feels more organic. At least, the LinkedIn algorithm thinks so.

The conclusion here is to stop writing the first 2 or 3 comments on post. Instead, wait for the first comment by other people. And be quick to reply their comments in a way that is engaging and aligned.

If you see someone still using this strategy and it seems to be working, there is something else (about the account) that you don’t know.

Link in Comments

LinkedIn is actively working on having zero-click content on their platform. They don’t want people directed away.

They know that once someone gets directed away from LinkedIn, it is hard to get them back for that session. So, they are actively making it hard for posts that have links on them.

But if you are on LinkedIn for business, you would have to share links at some point. So, how do you do that?

First, you must know that having multiple links on the same post still works. This is because if there are multiple links, people are more likely to save the post than click away from the post.

However, if you make a post with multiple links, there is a chance you will never get conversion from any of them. That’s the hazard. But I would have to do a bit of testing on this to be sure.

As for link in comments, it doesn’t really work anymore. Except if you tag a particular person to the link. And in that case, it is personalized and more likely to be opened by that one person. But no one else will probably open it.

So, I’d say the best place to put a link is in the DMs, after having a conversation that relates to the link you want to share.

However, there is something else I learned…

Make the post without links. Post it. Engage on the comments it generates. And after about 15 hours (and it has had good engagement), change a small part of the text and add your link.

The idea is that the LinkedIn algorithm would already be throttling the post, so editing the post and adding your link wouldn’t do much if anything.

It sounds like a smart hack. Well, I experimented with it.

For now, all I can say is that while the impression count can grow impressive, there is hardly any conversion traffic from it.

The post I tested this for gained a couple of more thousand impressions. But the link I added got no reasonable traffic.

My current theory for this is that the people who would click are those who had already seen the content without the link. But I would still be testing this theory.

The lesson here is that “link in comment” no longer works (sustainably) except you personalize it and tag someone on it.

The best sales pathway on LinkedIn remains to be from comments to DM and from DM to sales call.

Failed Verifications

I tried verifying my LinkedIn account this past week and it failed in spectacular fashion. Can’t say all the details for now. I’d like to get it sorted first.

However, what I can say is that when you have a notable company on your experience section, it doesn’t affect how LinkedIn treats your account, and also how the algorithm treats your posts.

It’s difficult for me to explain this in terms of metrics. But my hunch is pretty strong on this one.

I have tried verifications before and it was not working. But when I rearranged my experience section and added “Medium” to put all my Medium writings in one place, the verification process became a lot smoother.

Actually, I am not a staff of Medium. But I have over 1,000 articles there and have made tens of thousands from the platform (over the years). So, I added the company and made myself writer that works freelance. Which is kind of true.

I felt confident about this because I saw other people (who were also writers on Medium) do it on LinkedIn. (And actually, I have reached out to Medium to do something to give writers a kind of official status that won’t be mistaken for staff member, but I have not been taken seriously thus far lol).

Anyway. The point is that the LinkedIn algorithm reads it as staff. And even though my account is not verified, I feel like I am treated differently unlike when I just have the small companies I had on my profile.

So, if you notice that people who work in well-known companies are those whose posts are more heavily throttled, well, you are seeing correctly. The only problem is that majority of those people don’t post. Perhaps for fear of losing their jobs.

Anyway.

This part is mostly a hunch and I have no evidence to prove it. Where you work (or have worked) matters. Make of that whatever you will.

Send me a reply if something resonated with you.