June 8, 2022
Some recent research conducted by the social media gurus at Hootsuite suggests that it's a possibility. But why?
Social media practitioners have long suspected that sharing an article on LinkedIn may result in fewer eyeballs seeing it, speculating that an algorithm pushes it down on the hot topic list. “Why would they want people clicking away from their platform?” was the conventional wisdom. To combat that potential problem, many started putting the link to the article in the comments. We're sure you've all seen the LinkedIn post that states: "Link in comments."
But LinkedIn says they updated their algorithm, so it doesn't punish article shares.
Back to the Hootsuite experiment. They found that posts without links got 6x more reach than posts with links. While linkless posts had fewer shares on average, they received almost 4x more reactions and 18x more comments than the average post with a link.
The secret? The Hootsuite folks think it's in the quality of the engagement. Engagement is a significant factor in the number of feeds where your post appears. The more engagement, the more feeds (and consequently, the more potential engagement.) It's like a self-licking lollipop.
Bottom line? Make your posts engaging and on-brand, and they should perform well whether there’s a link included or not.
Read the details of the experiment here. And if you need help developing content for your LinkedIn
and other social media feeds, give us a shout!
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