From December 25 to March 25, I am going to post daily on LinkedIn.
Why?
The short answer is that it is free marketing for my upcoming new book.
The long(er) answer is that since LinkedIn is the career and business social media platform and my book(s) are about career development, that is the best place I can get free exposure. And, by engaging on the platform in a strategic way, I can let my target audience know that I am a trusted and respected authority on the topics I write about.
You can learn more about the topics I write about and how I defined the challenge here.
Status update:
Challenge adherence (%) : 144%
| Type of Content | COUNT |
| Comment | 19 |
| Original Content | 3 |
| Original Content-in a private group | 6 |
| Outside Info | 6 |
| Poll | 2 |
| Grand Total | 36 |
By around day 15, this activity went from being a burden to being fun. I became much more relaxed about engaging with the platform and reached my goal of taking less than 20 minutes a day to complete the challenge. As a result, I occasionally posted more than one thing in a day, hence achieving > 100% adherence. One tip I learned is that I can save posts for later. That was great because if there was a day that I couldn’t quickly find something to comment on, I could go to my saved section.
Followers (#): +112 (+3.2%)
I don’t have a lot to say about this number. I didn’t really know what would happen or if this is a good metric to follow. I will keep watching it to see if I can correlate it to something important.
Leads (#): +3
- Podcast appearance in February.
- Guest speaker for National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Charlotte Chapter in March.
- Guest speaker at Penn State in April.
Other observations
Different types of content get very different response rates.
Original content was more popular (as measured by interactions after 1 week) than commenting on other people’s posts or commenting on outside content. However, I was more likely to get a connection request when I commented on someone else’s posts. This phenomenon is something to keep watching. And unsurprisingly, people love polls.
| Type of Content | COUNT of Type | AVERAGE of Interactions after 7 days |
| Comment | 19 | 1 |
| Original Content | 3 | 46 |
| Original Content-in a private group | 6 | 4 |
| Outside Info | 6 | 18 |
| Poll | 2 | 43 |
I am getting lots of positive feedback from colleagues about my LinkedIn activity.
Several times a week a colleague will either send me a note or mention during a meeting that they are enjoying what I am posting on LinkedIn. This is of course a nice feeling but I think it is more than that. Given that I am unable to “take a coffee” as they say in Europe, with my colleagues, being able to chat about LinkedIn has given us common interest discussion topics that aren’t related to COVID-19.
What I am going to try next month
February will be about actively promoting the book now that it is on Amazon, trying to increase the amount of original content I post, and improving my efficiency on the platform.