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Hopefully, those of you in the Northern hemisphere will be experiencing – I love the way our American friends call it ‘Fall’; love that terminology- we in the UK call it ‘Autumn.’
Fantastic colours abound everywhere, and I am recording a series of podcasts looking out at some amazing colours.
[Excuse any strange typing errors as this is a direct transcription for those of you who prefer to read.]
I have been having various conversations with some of our clients recently, which has spurred a lot of ideas around content that I want to record.
And today, I want to talk about the LinkedIn feeds, some changes that have happened, some things that you may have noticed, but before I get into that, if you’re new, here, welcome. I have a few things for you that might be useful.
There will be a transcription of this particular podcast over on the Superfast website. If you go to Superfast Recruitment Blog, you will find transcriptions for the majority of our podcasts.
We’re going to be talking about a particular social channel that is very important for most recruiters and staffing owners, and that’s LinkedIn. If you are not leveraging social as you would like to, and I respectfully suggest many people don’t download our social media marketing guide. It gives you some advice and top tips, and different sorts of content to be sharing. You can find it at, again, at superfastrecruitment.co.uk/smm. Just pop your name and email address in, and we shall whizz over a copy to you.
LinkedIn Has a New Algorithm
Now, your LinkedIn feed. I don’t know if it’s anything like mine. It’s been a little bit all over the place recently, and there are many reasons for this.
Yes, it’s highly likely that LinkedIn is changing their algorithm and how they prioritise things. It changes all the time, and we need to be mindful of that before we go into a blind panic about what’s happening here.
We’ve been chatting with some of our clients recently about LinkedIn and how engagement seems to have changed. I just wanted to speak to this for a while in this particular podcast and give you some ideas to consider.
One of the first things is it’s always good to have a ‘reboot’ every few months. Sometimes we can get into a particular pattern of doing things. If we’ve got into that pattern and become a little bit used to what we’re doing, it’s possibly not going to impact our candidates and our clients in the same way if we want to stand out and gain attention. And remember first, always base your decisions on data, not drama! Let me explain.
Consider the Metrics
We were chatting with one of our clients about this recently on one of the Superfast Circle calls. One of the first things that came up was looking at the data before you change anything.
Though it’s not always easy to think on a platform like LinkedIn or Facebook, “Have I made a direct sale? ” because there are so many different nuances in marketing. You can’t always guarantee that sales came from this specific action.
The only way you made a sale is somebody clicked a buy button. Everything else that you’re doing is leading to that sale, and it’s nurturing clients or candidates that haven’t quite said yes.
What I would suggest you do is, first of all, look at the content that you think is not performing well. Don’t expect lots of shares and likes when working in the recruitment and staffing sector. Let’s be frank about it; a candidate isn’t necessarily going to want their current employer to know that they like a recruiter’s website or social media.
Conversely, clients don’t always want to show that they’re engaged with a recruitment company or that they like and share content from someone that could indicate they are expanding or that they are going to get a load of recruiters contacting them!
Just remember, don’t always base everything on that. I like to look at views because a friend of mine once said, “Likes and followers are vanity metrics,” but when you’ve got somebody viewing your content, that is something different to be looking at.
Check out what exactly is working and what isn’t working. It’s great to see these viral posts that get hundreds and hundreds of likes, follows, and shares, sometimes thousands. Just remember, though, how many people are they connected to? What was the topic area that they were sharing? Which we will come on to later. So, check what’s working, what isn’t working. Also, have a look at the times you posted things. Sometimes that can make a difference.
Post On Different Days
I often find whatever I post on a Friday seems to get a lot more views than other times. Just think about that. First of all, get some context around it, about what is working, what isn’t. Then, as you’re doing this, look at some of the posts getting a lot of traction.
What is it they might be doing differently? What have they posted about? Is it something about their team? Is it something else they’re posting that can make a difference?
I’m not saying copy what they have done, but does that stimulate what your version of that may be? That’s the first point that I would consider.
The other thing is, depending on who you are, whether you’ve got a marketer helping you, how much social media are you using? Are you using it consistently? People will respond when they see a consistent approach rather than a one-off hit.
Let’s make sure you’re basing your data on a good volume of content. Think about, “Am I sharing enough here to be getting some interest in what I’m doing? Next, let’s consider switching up your styles.
Mix Your Types of Content
Are you sharing other types of content? Maybe it’s time that you mix it up and mix it around. Animated gifs can be created quite inexpensively on Canva.
You’ll notice that I write a lot of what I call long-form posts on LinkedIn. You can write up to 1,300 characters, and I do these quite regularly. It gives people insight, and it helps to build authority.
Think about all those different styles of posts that you can do. The other thing is that people love people. It was fascinating, during the pandemic, that all the social media channels, their memberships went through the roof as people, for the first time, in some cases, started using social media more.
I think a couple of years ago, there was something like 600 million people on LinkedIn. I think the last time I looked, that figure now is approaching something like 770 million people.
Remember, more people on LinkedIn, more people sharing content; it will get a bit busier. One of the things about being on social media, people like to see a little bit about you. I know when God rest her soul, we used to post pictures of the Superfast Staffy, it always got a lot more likes than some of my content, which I was gutted about, but hey, you can’t beat sharing a picture of a dog on social media.
Make It Personal (Sometimes)
When you think about that aspect, what about using personal pictures of you, personal pictures of where you’re based, personal pictures of what you’re up to? Again, it could just be a scene, it could be a picture of a building in your local town, anything like that, and you can make some context around it. The other thing to remember is that people do get unconscious around imagery.
So, if you are using the same images repeatedly, people get bored with them. People stop noticing them because we are wired as human beings; we are always looking out for attack. We’re always on alert to see things that might be different. Once we think, “Ah, that thing there isn’t going to kill us or drag us off to a cave to be eaten”, then we view things differently because that is the way that the human brain works.
If you have been using the same style of images for a long time, maybe it’s time to change them and mix up the colours you use.
Get (And Keep) Attention
A while back, Sharon and I did a webinar for one of our partner groups; it was APSCo, on the science of getting attention, how you must have this short, medium, and long-term attention. There are different ways of grabbing attention from a marketing context.
One of the ways is to use different images, and different colours and different fonts. Something else that always gets traction on LinkedIn is local news. So, no matter where you are in the country, there’ll always be local business news. People like local businesses. They want to know what’s going on.
Share Your Testimonials and Case Studies
You will notice that we share a lot of testimonials and case studies.
When someone considers working with you, they like to know if you work with people like them. Sharing testimonials will make a massive difference. There are lots of social media marketing tools out there. I’m sure we all have our favourites, and they do help with the process.
We automate some of our marketing, particularly around social media, but not all of it. Every day, I will physically share at least one post on social media, as in LinkedIn, Facebook. I will also share something in our Recruitment Marketing Mastery group. If you’re not a member on Facebook, come and join us because we share a lot of great content there and sometimes content that we do not share on LinkedIn and other places.
Regularly Re-evaluate Your Social Media
If you’ve been struggling a little on LinkedIn and not gaining traction, perhaps it’s time to do a bit of a reboot and ask yourself:
- What am I doing here?
- Do I need to be sharing more content?
- Do I need to be sharing at a different time?
- Do I need to be using a slightly different style image?
- Do I need to use an image and some text?
- Do I need to use some video?
These things are areas you could consider, and I would almost guarantee that it will make a difference in the eyeballs on you and your brand. Of course, the whole thing about using social media is to help you with your positioning.
You are positioning yourself as an authority in your sector. Though you may not make a sale like that from your social media efforts around LinkedIn, it gives people brand awareness. We’ve had a couple of members join our Superfast Circle recently. Both of them said, “Oh, I’ve been listening to your podcast, and I’ve been watching all the videos that you’re sharing on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, I like that analogy that you used in these about fishing lines”. There are all these different things going on that people notice that then make some more likely to want to have a conversation with you or to pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I’m interested in working with you”.
How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.
Thanks,
Denise
