By Stefane Marrone
The way you format your LinkedIn posts is just as important as what you say.
Given that reading online is 25% slower than in print and attention span becomes shorter and shorter every day, it’s important to be strategic when structuring your LinkedIn posts.
Here’s how to structure your LinkedIn posts for maximum impact.
For example, don’t write long, dense paragraphs. Today people skim content, especially online.
Instead, break up your information into short snippets like I’m doing here.
Use paragraph breaks, bullets, numbers or headers when you can to help the reader as they scan the post.
The first three lines of your LinkedIn post are the most important in terms of capturing your reader’s attention. After that point the post is truncated and says “show more.”
For people to see more you need to give them a reason to, which you can do with an enticing first three lines. Think of it as your headline. Draw the reader in and let them know what they can expect in the rest of the post.
Write LinkedIn posts in the first person. "I" and "we" help you sound like a real person talking to real people. It builds a personal connection with your audience and makes your posts compelling.
Always write with your audience in mind. For lawyers and law firms that means no defined terms. No formal language. No jargon. Don’t refer to people by their surnames. No skipping two or three spaces between sentences. This isn’t a legal brief.
Also, put all hashtags at the end of your posts and don’t use more than five or LinkedIn can flag your post as spam. I find them hard to read when they are interspersed in the body copy.
Don't put links in your posts - LinkedIn wants to keep people on its platform and will penalize you if you try and send them off of it. That's why people put links in the comments.
Users don't read but scan content when they scroll a newsfeed. Your job is to get them to stop the scroll.
Remember client-centric, easy-to-follow, authentic, value-added content will bring you success on LinkedIn and as a thought leader on any platform.
What other tips would you add to this list?
15 Ways to Improve Your SEO
Do you have an SEO strategy? If not you need one ASAP.
With more than 4 billion Google searches every day, you need to make sure your web site is optimized for SEO. Don't let your website become a crisis situation - it should be updated every three or so years. It's the first impression a visitor has of your organization.
Here are 15 ways to improve your Google SEO results.
- Make sure your site has a fast load speed (of three seconds or less)
- Use clean URLs and meta descriptions
- Develop target keywords (which have high search volume, relevance to your business and low competition)
- Use optimized headlines (include your target keywords)
- Make sure every page on your website includes at least 300 original words of content
- Continually update your existing top-performing content
- Include at least one image on each page and use alt tags to optimize
- Focus on local SEO and create a Google My Business profile
- Ensure your content is created around a primary keyword and relevant secondary keywords
- Use backlinks
- Include internal links to increase dwell time
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly
- Use effective header tags to become a Google Featured Snippet
- Identify low-performing pages and refreshing them with new content
- Fix linked 404s and take over links that belong to competitors' 404s
- SEO is important to ensure the success of your content - don't ignore it!