7 Ways To Get More ROI From LinkedIn Publisher Posts
Are you posting original content to LinkedIn Publisher? The platform has come a long way in a short time and giving content creators an edge for getting in front of the sea of hot prospects that exist on LinkedIn for B2B companies.
I’ve written in the past about the compelling reasons why you should use LinkedIn Publisher and also shared the secrets to getting your LinkedIn posts noticed but this article is going to focus on how to bring it full circle.
Are you getting an ROI from your efforts on the LinkedIn Publisher platform? Let’s find out with the help of a few simple tools that are already built into the site.
What you will learn:
- How to find an overview of your LinkedIn Publisher posts
- Find your most engaged readers
- How to view analytics data for your posts
- What you should measure
- The importance of creating long-term appeal
- A secret trick for calculating social shares of ANY post (even though LinkedIn hides this now)
1. Get an Overview of Your Published Posts
LinkedIn has buried the area that stores all of your posts on LinkedIn Publisher and requires a couple clicks from the homepage to get there.
To get an overview of all your LinkedIn Publisher posts, go to your LinkedIn home page and select “Your Updates” under the Profile menu.
Select “Published” and you’ll be brought an overview page for your LinkedIn posts. You can also go here for a shortcut, but now you know how to get there on your own.
2. Who’s Following Your Posts?
When at the “Your Updates” page, select “Followers” from the menu to see a list of people that receive notifications when you post an article. This list shows the people on LinkedIn that already find you credible and most likely to consider you a thought leader in your industry.
3. Go Deeper With LinkedIn Publisher Stats
For a more detailed look at the stats for each post, check out your LinkedIn Publisher stats by clicking the “View Stats” button on the “Your Updates” page.
You can see the demographics of your readers organized by industry, job titles, location and traffic source (how they found your post).
You can also see a clean breakdown of the people engaging with your posts further down the page organized by likes, comments and shares. Consider which readers could be potential prospects or strategic partners.
PRO TIP: Go to the profiles of your most engaged readers and then send a connection request with a personal note thanking them for engaging with your article. Do not pitch them – relationships are built over time and you must earn the privilege to pitch.
If you want to know more about the process of turning a LinkedIn contact into a client, check out my guide to creating powerful LinkedIn lead generation messages.
5. What Should You Be Measuring?
The analytics available for LinkedIn Publisher are fairly basic, but you can do a little extra number crunching yourself in Excel or even a calculator to find out some additional info.
The following questions will help you get a better understanding of what’s working and what isn’t.
- How many people are reading each article on average?
- What is your average engagement level (comments, likes & shares)?
- What are the most common job titles among your readers? Look for trends to see what type of people your content resonates with most and adjust if needed.
- Which topics and titles perform best?
6. How To Check Shares For Other People’s LinkedIn Posts
Though I don’t know why, LinkedIn suddenly removed the public share counter on LinkedIn posts. A bad move, in my opinion. This isn’t inconvenient for you since you can see shares on your overview page (My Updates > Published), but it is if you want to see how other people’s posts are performing.
I have a simple workaround from my article, 19 LinkedIn Ninja Tricks Experts Haven’t Taught You Yet. It’s a free Google Chrome plugin called ShareMetric and it shows shares across the major social networks plus it also keeps track of comments and likes on Facebook.
NOTE: You MUST remove everything after the “?” in the link bar for this to work. For example if the link is:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140417174121-34888774-linkedin-etiquette-guide-20-do-s-don-ts?trk=mp-author-card
you must remove the:
?trk=mp-author-card
7. Does Your Post Have Long Term Appeal?
One way to maximize the ROI of your LinkedIn Publisher content is to do everything you can to make it have long-term appeal. Timely articles are great for a high amount of traffic in a shorter period of time, but they are dead once it becomes “old news”.
Evergreen content is the type of content that can be shared again and again over time. If you’re a lawyer, it could be as simple as answering a question like “How do I incorporate my business in Delaware?” in your post.
PRO TIP: I don’t have any “official” data to back this up, but I have noticed that I get a surge of views, likes and comments every time I go back to update an older LinkedIn post. I’ve seen this happen a few times now so I’m inclined to believe it’s not just a coincidence at this point. Let me know if you’ve seen the same thing in the comments.
Need Help With Your Content Strategy?
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