Don’t Just Post And Disappear  

Let’s talk about the other part of posting content on LinkedIn: the followup. 

Here’s a scenario I see too often: Someone who posts often on LinkedIn, sometimes as often as daily. They are consistently writing and posting good content that positions them as an authority and helps their ideal reader with their problems, yet they are not getting very many people reaching out to them to talk about their product or services. They think they are doing everything right and are mystified as to why things aren’t working out for them. 

The problem is that they are missing the other half of the equation. What they do can best be described as “post and disappear.” They never make themselves available to reply to comments, and I know a couple people who don’t even know if they received likes or comments on their posts because they don’t bother to check. 

Everyone who posts content on LinkedIn absolutely should respond to comments. You get notified when someone comments, so there is no excuse for avoiding this. And there are lots of good reasons to respond to comments. Here are five. While the first is obvious, the other four are not and they can make a huge difference in your overall LinkedIn results. 

1) It’s the polite thing to do. Someone took the time to read or view your content. Then they took the time to write a comment on it. Acknowledging that comment is the polite thing to do. And you should do so with a written reply, not just pasting a “like” on it. A written reply shows that you have read and appreciate their comment. I always appreciate the comments I receive, even the ones I don’t agree with. 

2) When you respond to someone’s comment and show your appreciation, it encourages them to read and comment on more of your future content. And regular readers / commenters are gold. I have a lot of regular readers of my LinkedIn newsletter. Not everyone of my “regulars” comments every week, but a lot of them do quite often. These people help start conversations.

3) When you respond to comments, it provides an opportunity to strike up a conversation with them and take it offline. If you have some interesting back-and-forth with someone in the comment thread, the odds of them following you improve, and the odds of them accepting your connection request improve too. 

4) Unfortunately, a fact of life on LinkedIn is that there are both trolls, and people who want to use your platform (post) to publicize their own agendas. If you are not checking back in after you publish you may not even be aware that someone is posting a nasty comment on your post, or using your comment thread to link to a post or page they want to promote. 

5) Last of all, but best of all: LinkedIn rewards comments, and LinkedIn especially rewards conversations within the comment thread, where there is back and forth between two or more people.

This has to do with the big theme on LinkedIn these days: relevance. When someone comments on your content, LinkedIn sees the comment as supporting the idea that your content is relevant. And if the LinkedIn algos think your content is relevant, the algos are going to want it to be seen by more people. And that’s what it sets out to do. When someone comments, the algorithms put your content in front of a small slice of your connections and followers, and does the same for a small slice of the commenter’s connections and followers. 

Note that LinkedIn does disregard the dumb throwaway “nice post!” and “I agree” comments, as they are correctly interpreting these as not really comments, but more like some kind of steroidal “like.”

And if you get some back and forth in the comment thread based on a person’s comment, and in particular if one or more people join in, LinkedIn interprets this as really relevant, and you get even more distribution. 

Your content alone can increase your credibility, but comments add a very different benefit: they can increase your reach. One comment may only put your post in front of twenty new people. But if you receive ten comments, that’s two hundred new people. And if you post every week, that’s ten thousand.

So if you post on LinkedIn and expect it to do the job for you by itself…it’s possible. But after doing the heavy lifting in creating the content in the first place, why wouldn’t you take advantage of the opportunity to increase your reach and develop your network?