How To Outsmart The Linkedin Algorithm And Boost Your Reach & Engagement with Michelle J Raymond

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B growth show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and this week I'm taking over my own show. We don't have a guest. It's just me. So for those of you, if this is your first show, welcome to the community. For those of you who are regular listeners and watchers, I appreciate you. Either way, make sure you reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn because I love to continue these conversations.

Now, this week. We're going to talk about something that has been brewing and brewing for me for a while now, because I have so many conversations on the platform where people are feeling overwhelmed, they're feeling defeated, they're feeling sad, they want to give up because they just don't seem to get the reach and engagement that either they used to, or they're comparing themselves to other people on the platform who have been doing it for way longer. We are going to be talking about how do you outsmart the LinkedIn algorithm?

Now, that's a little bit more click baity for a title than what I would usually like to do, but [00:01:00] I think there are ways that we can really start to use the LinkedIn algorithm and I'm going to go through what is reach and ? How does the LinkedIn algorithm work? As per what LinkedIn tells us, not my personal opinion directly from LinkedIn.

And then I'm also going to share the growth tactics that I personally use that you can use as well so that you can get growth. Now I listen on the platform and I hear reach is down, we can't get as much as what we used to, all the numbers are downward spiraling. There's nothing you can do. Oh, woe is me.

Maybe because I've been a company page admin for so long, worrying about numbers on reach. If you did that as a company page admin, you would literally go crazy. So shout out to all of the page admins who really have been up against it on LinkedIn and not being able to get reach and engagement on pages very easily. You have to work hard.

And so for those of you trying to grow your personal brands[00:02:00] either as an employee, or maybe you're a consultant or have your own small business, it's time to work differently. And one of the things that I'm going to teach you is how did I grow my personal reach to 850 percent growth over the last 365 days versus, everybody else that's saying no, it's Doom and gloom it's all going down. Like, why am I the odd one out? And the good news is I'm not the odd one out. There are plenty of people doing it. Shout out to Nola Simon, who also sent me her numbers. She's had over 500 percent growth in the last 365 days. This is amazing, but it's totally possible for everybody that's listening in today. So grab your pen, grab your paper. We're talking tactics. We're going to do a deep dive and like I said, it's exactly what I use.

There's some of you that might be out there that are wondering what is reach and what is engagement. It's the number of eyes that see your content. How many people can you get one post or [00:03:00] piece of content to go out and see. The usual measure on LinkedIn is called an impression. An impression is as simple as this. The number of times your content is shown on screen to somebody else. How long do they need to look at it? That's not actually measured. They can scroll. So imagine pick up your phone, put it in your hand and scroll, however many posts go past your eyes, LinkedIn is roughly counting those. That's what we call impressions.

That's the thing that you hear people talk about the most. That's what's available in our analytics on LinkedIn. And it's the one where if you pay too much attention to it, some days you'll feel really amazing. Other days you'll sink down low. And over time you'll fall into the trap of comparing yourself to other people, which is my number one tip that we're going to go here today.

Comparison-itis, worrying about what's going on for someone else is the number one killer of your [00:04:00] progress on LinkedIn. And I know it because I'm guilty myself and it's happened to me, especially when I moved from having as an employee, an amazing niche community that I'd built over six years to going back to the beginning and starting again as a business owner, having to rebuild an entire new community.

So if you're at either end of those stages, I know what it feels like. This didn't happen by magic for me. It's happened by work and I'm going to share exactly what that is. What's the engagement part. So if reach is how many eyeballs see it, then the engagement part is as simple as how many people clicked on one of the reactions. Whether that's the smiley face or the laughing emoji, any of those kinds of things. Or how many people commented or how many people reposted. And I imagine that there's an element of this that also gets included by LinkedIn of who's saving posts, but you don't get to see those numbers. So we'll stick with how many people commented, how [00:05:00] many people use the reactions and how many people reposted. It's easy to count those numbers because they're shown on every single post, but there's lots of things that LinkedIn doesn't show you. When someone looks at your posts? They might love it, but then those kinds of people, which are around 90 percent of the users on LinkedIn that don't like to press buttons, they just like to come in, have a look around, maybe they learn something, maybe they're inspired and then they go, okay, I'm done. I'm out of here. And you never know they're there and they're the kinds of numbers that LinkedIn doesn't record for you. But I want you to be aware that for the numbers that you see versus who else has seen it and just not pressed any buttons, they can be really big differences. And it's something that we don't often think about when we're getting started.

So reach, how many people saw your content go past their eyeballs on a screen. Engagement? How many people looked at your post [00:06:00] and then clicked on something or wrote a comment? I'm going to keep it that simple. We can get way more technical, but that's as simple as most people need.

Why does it even matter? Like, why am I so passionate about helping people get more reach and get more engagement? It's as simple as this. If you are trying to grow your B2B, you need to build a community. You need to be able to have your content seen by people. The more people, the higher the chances, but I've got a disclaimer on this one.

The bigger, the number doesn't necessarily lead to more business. It does work if you're building a targeted and niche community. So I don't want people that are listening in today to be trying to grow numbers for numbers sake. It's easy to look around LinkedIn, and I'm sure that you've seen that there are influencers that have 50,000 followers, 100,000 followers, 200,000 followers, maybe more. You don't need those kinds [00:07:00] of numbers. I think a good number for those of you like direction, make sure that you've hit your minimum of 500 first and then aim for the next lots of 500. So we're going to go for 1000 then to 2000 in your community. I think that's probably a really healthy number for most people when you look around you in a work environment. In your industry and you think, wow, that's a pretty high number. And you're right. You know what? So these numbers, like 50,000, a hundred thousand, for most of us, they're not actually feasible and they're a completely different way of going around LinkedIn than what you do if you're trying to grow a B2B business.

Now that I'm going to calm down and there's the definition pieces, I literally just want to help people that are listening, do things that will make a difference over time. One of the first things that I ask you to do is stop putting so much pressure on every post [00:08:00] every single day. I know that LinkedIn want you to look at it. I know that they want you to say, Oh, look at your numbers and they give us analytics and things, but here's the problem. You're too close to it. You're too involved. It makes no difference in the big scheme of things. I look at my trends over the space of a year. I've done over a million impressions in the last 365 days. And that grew by over 800%. Now, if I look at my individual posts, I have posts that bomb just like everybody else. There are days when I am scratching my head and wondering if the LinkedIn gods hate me just like everyone else.

But when I zoom out and look over the space of 90 days and look at the trend or 365 days, then all of a sudden I can see that over time things are improving. And that's what I want people to start to do. [00:09:00] Zoom out. Don't look at every post and be so intent on going, Oh my God, it's not perfect. It's not amazing. I've had bigger posts with more reach. I've had more comments on other posts. Don't worry about it. Just keep doing your thing over the space of time. Time is your friend. And I know when you want new leads, when you want to build brand awareness, some of you might be responsible to someone else who set KPIs for you.

LinkedIn, as far as I'm concerned is the classic tortoise and hare tale. And what I mean by that is slow and steady wins this race. It is not those that go in hard, try all the cheap viral hacks. You can log onto many platforms these days that will give you viral templates that you can reverse engineer and away you go.

Now, it's not going to help you in the long run. It might make you feel good about [00:10:00] yourself, but it's not going to help you actually sell anything more because going viral doesn't actually help you grow your business. They're not related. It might help you get seen by more people, but is it the right people?

And for every person that's on LinkedIn with big numbers, that goes viral, you could probably find other people that had a one hit wonder that go. Oh my God, all I did was got bombarded by people I don't know, don't want to know outside of my audience. I'm really happy it resonated, but it's just been a sidetrack mission.

Don't be like that. Don't focus on going viral. It's an absolute rule that I would share with people . I know I'm sounding probably a little bit ranty today because I'm pretty passionate about this. But when I say don't focus on going viral, I'm not the only one that says it, and so there will be those of you out there that want to know about the LinkedIn [00:11:00] algorithm. How can we know about it and use it to our advantage? I'm totally on board with that and I'm going to share about it. But if you think that knowing the ins and outs of the LinkedIn algorithm is going to help your business grow, and you're not in the business of being a LinkedIn trainer like me, I don't know what you think's going to happen, but it's just not going to be the difference that you think.

So let me put it in some numbers. If you have a thousand followers and you do a post, it might go out to say roughly 10%. It's a hundred people. You might get a few people interact. Realistically, if you had 12 instead of 10, is it going to make that big of a difference?

Not really, it's not, but I'm going to show you the things that will make a bigger difference over time, that if you look up and away from the algorithm, then you are going to just go from zero to hero really quickly. You can fast track your results [00:12:00] by following these tactics that I'm going to share.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do for those of you who do want to know the latest information on the LinkedIn algorithm, I'm here to share it, right? I want you to know that I've done all the research so that you don't have to, and I actually recently wrote a LinkedIn newsletter about all the research that's gone into the LinkedIn algorithm, and I'm gonna share the link to that in the show notes so that you have access to that because this is something that I could rave on about all day, and I don't want to do that for people.

But I do want you to know the basics. The number one thing that you need to know is that LinkedIn does not want you to go viral. I'm gonna say that again. LinkedIn does not want you to go viral, their words, not mine. And in the newsletter, I share links to the article and a podcast that LinkedIn were involved in directly to [00:13:00] share what's happening on the platform.

What do they want? Great question. That's exactly what I would want to know. LinkedIn, when they say, we don't want you to go viral, they realise that say last year, maybe even the year before, while COVID was happening, the platform was used for different purposes, especially while we were all working from home and not so much in the office.

Life's changed. Business has changed. We saw that personal posts on LinkedIn, the out of context selfie, having a coffee seemed to go what I would call viral. They just went sailing on past, and I'm not going to lie, there were days where I was thinking, Oh my God, I am spending so much time and effort in these posts and then these people post selfies at a cafe and they're just going crazy on past me. I've been guilty of that myself. And then I'm really glad to report in that LinkedIn went, you know what? We might've [00:14:00] got this wrong. What does LinkedIn want? It's this simple. LinkedIn, the algorithm is going to reward those that share knowledge and advice.

How cool is that to hear? That when I read it, my eyes lit up. I was super excited and I just thought that's brilliant. But what is knowledge and advice? How do they define that? Knowledge and advice according to LinkedIn is made up of three things. The post speaks to a specific audience, so niche communities, they're so important.

You have your own audience. The broader you go, the less specific, the less you're going to get traction. Second thing, the author is writing on their core subject area. I don't know about you, but in my feed, I often get confused that people have totally [00:15:00] unrelated businesses to anything to do with LinkedIn or LinkedIn training, start talking about the algorithm all the time. We'll start talking about LinkedIn hacks or start talking about AI or start talking about whatever the latest greatest hit is on LinkedIn. And let's be clear, there always is one. And what happens is it's confusing. I scroll and I go, why is this person talking about this?

It does not make sense. And now the algorithm will also be thinking the same thing that I've been thinking and going you've gone off track. You've gone off scripts. That's not what your followers want to see. The third thing is they want you and your posts to have meaningful comments. And we've been through this and I've talked about engagement pods.

They're the ones where people pay other people to comment on their posts. Done originally to try and game the algorithm because more comments drives the algorithm to show your post to [00:16:00] more people. I can't even imagine how desperate someone is. To pay other people to come and like their post and comment on their posts. Like it blows my mind. And I'm just going to leave this one here. Cause again, that would be a whole other episode in itself, which I'm sure I've done around the place.

So post speaks to a specific audience. The author is writing on their core subject area, and the post has meaningful comments. LinkedIn have actually broken this down so simply, but I'm going to break it down into what I call the three C's.

And the three C's are all you need to know about what makes the LinkedIn algorithm happy to summarise this. The three C's that I call it number one is community. Start building yourself a niche community around the industry that you want to work with, the industry that you work best with, the one that lights you up. It doesn't happen overnight necessarily. It's taken me a few years to get to this point, but start [00:17:00] having targets goals in mind about who you're going after and what kind of business you want to do. Build that community.

And I highly recommend to people that are listening to this, think about the community that is related around your industry.

 So first C is community. Second is content. We're talking quality content here, and I'm going to talk about this in a little bit more detail. When I talk about my five tactics that I encourage people to use, but content that is created with the community in mind.

What do your community want to know from you? You're the expert, you're the unique person with a unique point of view and that's what they're looking for. Again, don't go off topic, stick in your lane as Michelle Griffin would say .

And let's talk about conversations. So the third C, so we've got community content and now conversations, LinkedIn are [00:18:00] going to reward you for having generated conversations on the platform. So the more times that you can have comments going backwards and forwards, differing opinions, people with unique points of view, and really lead those conversations, that is what's going to work for you on LinkedIn as far as the algorithms concerned.

And it totally makes sense. Are you sitting there thinking duh, Michelle, of course that makes sense. It's funny to me to think that it took LinkedIn some internal reflection to actually come back to this and say, let's get things back on track. And I've seen it since June and if I look at my personal numbers since around that time. They have doubled, in some cases tripled, to what my normal everyday numbers are. Now those numbers don't matter to you, but what it actually is it says to me, I have built an amazing community to [00:19:00] shout out to all of you listeners who are part of it.

I talk about the one thing all the time. So I'm always talking about how you use LinkedIn to grow your B2B. And there are different components to that company pages or social selling or LinkedIn fun facts and tips, but ultimately it's all about the same topic. And then I always want to encourage people to comment on my posts and drive those conversations and get involved.

Really that's a reflection on the quality of the community ultimately, because I want to be surrounded by smart people. I want to be surrounded by people who challenge me to think differently. And I'm just really blessed to have a whole bunch of people in my world that do that on LinkedIn.

So that's the algorithm changes. I've given you every single thing that you need to know about the LinkedIn algorithm, directly from them. And as I said, I'm going to put the link to my newsletter, make sure you subscribe so you can stay up to date with all of the new tips that I share, hear from me first [00:20:00] about how they can be used specifically to grow your B2B. That's what I'm here for.

I've got five tactics that I'm going to share with you right now. Exactly what I personally have used to outsmart the LinkedIn algorithm. Why? Because I don't worry about the LinkedIn algorithm. I focus on people. I focus on my community.

What's number one? Number one for me is probably the most important thing that I want to share with people. And number one is on LinkedIn you have to stay mindful that what goes around comes around as my nan always says. And what do I mean by that? The more that you support other people, the more that they support you.

I do an enormous amount of work behind the scenes, lots of commenting strategically. Lots of supporting and turning up at other people's events, sharing about that, supporting new book launches, posting, helping. And these are people that may not [00:21:00] necessarily ever be my clients. But I can also assure you that these are the same people that show up and support my posts and it's a law of reciprocity, which is probably one of the hardest words I'll have to say today, but it is literally as simple as if you go out and are supportive of other people, they are going to do the same for you.

 That has such a multiplier effect when you've built a niche community, because not only are you leveraging their community in your industry, they are also going to help give you support and with that support, it then means that you get seen by second degree connections and third degree connections. Those people you haven't met yet, which I think is just the most amazing thing, but it only works when you're targeted.

Make sure you bring in that focus. And even if you keep narrowing it over time, don't go too narrow that you don't actually end up with a [00:22:00] market of people that can buy from you. Cause that is the last thing that we want in B2B and especially when I'm trying to grow a business. But laser focused, and I can assure you that if you haven't done the work up front to write out a game plan and have those targets in mind, your activity on LinkedIn will be pointless. Why? Because you're going to be creating content with nobody in mind, or everybody in mind, which can be equally as harmful.

So back to this again, what goes around, comes around great advice from my Nan. It's something that I just think is a good thing in life. And I hope that you guys are, that way minded anyway, but ultimately just go out there, support other people, they will support you.

 Let's go to number two and number two for me probably goes against the grain of what you see out there by some of the big creators. So the Gary Vee's, the Alex Hormozi, all of theirs [00:23:00] speaks to being everywhere, quantity over quality. And I just look at that and I think if I had a team of a hundred people that were creating everything for me, we'd be having that conversation where I'd be like go team, let's go quantity. But the reality is most businesses do not have unlimited resources and we have to choose where we best spend our time. Now I choose to spend my time on LinkedIn because that is where my audience is. B2B businesses are on LinkedIn. I choose backup platforms and from that, I make sure that I'm really good at what I do on those platforms.

And just recently I wrote a post about mastery comes from simplification. If you are trying to be great at LinkedIn, great at TikTok, great at Instagram, have a podcast, write a book, run a business, all of these kinds of things, if you try and [00:24:00] do it all too soon, what happens is you'll be overwhelmed, exhausted, and just not do anything really well.

And I was guilty of that. I was on Twitter and Instagram, which they're just not for me and my audience isn't there. And so I was investing time in places that just it was a waste, absolute waste, no other words for it .By stripping things back and keeping things simple and narrowing my focus to where my audience were, where my community I'd built and doing more effort on there. This is another reason why my numbers just keep climbing.

I have cut back on the number of posts .I cut back and I tell my clients to cut back on the number of posts and yet my numbers have still gone up. Why? Because I create things that I know my community wants ,that I know are going to drive those conversations on my topic. I'm not under the pressure to just create quantity for quantity sake. I don't have that pressure anymore. So I [00:25:00] create things that I absolutely love and that resonates with other people. It's that simple. That's why other people enjoy it because they know I'm enjoying what I'm creating.

Third one. Now, this is one, I have to confess myself that over time, there are days or months where I've strayed off course while I was trying to figure some stuff out. And number three for me aligns back to what LinkedIn told us they want for the algorithm. And that is, Stay on topic! Please, anybody that is listening just because ChatGPT, AI, other topic du jour at the moment, please don't go off on a tangent. Because here's what happens. It confuses people. I have people that I can't refer business to anymore because I just am not certain what they actually do. They talk about so many different things that I'm a bit confused about maybe the business has changed or maybe it [00:26:00] wasn't what I thought it was in the first place.

And so I want people to just stick in your lane, talk about what you're really good at. And it doesn't matter if it's a small audience, it's going to be an engaged audience. I began my career on LinkedIn talking about chemicals and beauty and the more I spoke about just that topic, the more I attracted the right kinds of people.

And of course the opportunities came more new product inquiries, more sales. I can honestly hand on heart tell you that by doing this, I ended up with a $2M order from a LinkedIn post . That is absolutely crazy to think about. But if I got sidetracked talking about things that weren't in my core area it would never have happened, because people would have left and gone, this girl, she's everywhere. So stay on topic. It's so easy to [00:27:00] get sidetracked and want to talk about LinkedIn cause we're on LinkedIn. Save it for people like me. There's enough of that noise that's going on the platform. We don't really need any more.

And I think people are probably nodding their head going. Yep. I don't know. I think it's one of those things on LinkedIn is one of those platforms that naval gazes more than any of the other social sites.

Number four is something that is near and dear to my heart. And it's something that if you're listening in, and you follow my content, you'll have noticed that I'm starting to do this more and more. And it is. People get off the fence. I am so tired of every post and every comment in my feed, everybody agreeing with each other, everybody regurgitating, everybody high fiving the same regurgitated viral posts that you can go and get [00:28:00] these templates and just copy and paste and put on your posts. Enough the AI tools that we're using were not designed so that you would sound like everybody else. It is okay for you to have an opinion on LinkedIn. I encourage it. I do not care what industry or subject matter expert you are, every industry has a thing that is a topic that will at least go and get people arguing for and against on both sides.

Now, for me, I come from the beauty industry. So quite often it's around clean beauty as a topic for and against, and there's probably a grey area in the middle where most people sit. Start to have those kinds of conversations that matter in your industry. Don't be afraid to be on the anti to the popular. This isn't about, trying to come across as, you know, messing with your brand. It's just, can we have real conversations that [00:29:00] matter and you will not do this unless you actually start to have conversations on real topics and express your opinion. So I'm just going to call it, I'm just going to leave it out there.

Just please, can we start having some original authentic conversations on the platform? I want you to stand up for what you believe in. You are a subject matter expert. Share that with people, bring them along on the journey. You might actually inspire other people. You might teach them. Educating people is one of the privileges that we have on this platform, but not if we just say the same thing as everybody else. I'm going to jump off my soapbox again on that one.

Number five is I want you to bring your A game onto LinkedIn, not the version of you that is half turning up. Not the version of [00:30:00] you that doesn't think that it's really going to work anyway. Mindset's such a big piece, but it also means content and reach and engagement specifically on LinkedIn is such a small piece of this puzzle that imagine you've got posts that go out and someone come across to your LinkedIn profile, which you haven't updated the about section in probably five years. And even when you did, you just plonked a bit of stuff on there. You've also got your work experience. Oh, you couldn't be bothered putting any detail in there, so you just put your job titles and that was about it. You haven't got any recent recommendations. Your profile photo hasn't been updated in over eight years, which is a recent story, but not my record, 20 years is the oldest LinkedIn photo that I have come across with a client. These are the kinds of things that we have to show up and again, not everything is all about the posts that you do, because if someone sees the posts and then go and look for more [00:31:00] information, what are they going to find?

Most of the time when I'm working with new clients and rewriting and optimising their LinkedIn profiles, the person I have a conversation with and a discovery call with, versus the person they present on LinkedIn with their profile could not be further apart if they tried. And for those of you who don't want to be the center of attention or don't want to talk about themselves, it's not about that. It is literally your credibility that you have earned and your experience that will help support other people to grow just as much. And, there's some really amazing experts out there that are hiding in the shadows that I'm on a mission. I'm coming to look for you so that your LinkedIn profile reflects who you are, where you want to go and how you can help people.

And what has been amazing is I found that when people are confident in their profile, then they start to share their content as well and start to build their [00:32:00] community. So it doesn't matter which way you go, but please make sure that your profile, your company page that all of them really present things in the best way possible.

 This is what I have personally done over the last 12 months. These are exactly the things that I do. I have rewritten my own personal profile. I'd neglected it. I put everybody else, all of my clients forward. You'll notice that my content now starts to call out some stuff that I don't agree with. Things that have been really pressing my buttons. Not in a way that's at the cost of somebody else, but in a way that I want other people to start thinking .We're going for staying on topic. Don't get led astray. Quality over quantity. We are not Gary V's of this world. Make sure that what you do counts and of course, what goes around comes around. These are my five [00:33:00] tips that I have used personally that have been at the root of how I've been able to grow my content. As I said, over 850 percent growth. It's not just for me, it's available there for you just as much. So every show that I normally have a guest on, I ask them, what is the actionable tip that you would give others , my actionable tip go and do an audit, have a quick look, have you strayed off track or maybe you didn't even have some goals there in the first place.

When I work with clients, when we're doing our LinkedIn for B2B growth masterclass, the first thing I always start off with is a game plan. If you are someone that is on LinkedIn without a game plan, we need to talk. It's that simple. You are wasting your time. But if you want to grow your business, we have to do things more methodically. So LinkedIn profiles, if they need some [00:34:00] love and you don't like to write about yourself, you know where to find me, but make sure it's creating an amazing first impression and doesn't undersell you. So I'll leave it at that because this is a topic that I would love to talk about all day.

I hope that you have walked away with this thinking that everything is actually in your control, your mindset that you bring into this, the quality that you put out, the community that you build, this is all in your control. So you don't have to worry about cheap algorithm hacks. You don't have to worry about, is it two hashtags or one hashtag or no hashtags?

Ignore all of that. Community, content and conversations. That is your answer. My friends, I appreciate you all listening. If you have enjoyed this show, one thing that would help me amazingly is that if you could take the moment to leave me a recommendation or review, if you're listening to this on the podcast, or if you're [00:35:00] watching on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button because it will make a difference and I have got some amazing guests that are coming up to add on to this conversation. So on that note, I wish everyone well, cheers to B2B growth.