Now I won't talk about all the factors that led to the success of a post on LinkedIn. I'm talking about the most important one, OK? It's called:
DWELL TIME = the time that the average reader kept your post on their screen.
That's it. When Sergey manages to attract an audience and keep them for a long time,
→ ❤️ LinkedIn's algorithm will love him ❤️ ←
and his post will go viral.
If it's the opposite, no likes will change the fact that he's swimming against the current.
Want proof?
We have plenty of screenshots like these two:
This post by Sergey that had huge support, but you didn't really have a reason to read it for a long time.
This is a post that you didn't support as much with interactions, but you really paid attention to it.
Now let's do some quick math:
SHORT, MORE-LIKED TEXT ABOUT ME (Sergey)
158 likes + 26 comments = 184 interactions
5,034 views / 184 interactions = 27.4 views per interaction
LONGER, LESS-LIKED TEXT ABOUT YOUR INTERESTS (Sergey)
38 likes + 4 comments = 42 interactions
11,592 views / 42 interactions = 276 views per interaction
That's wild, right? A 10x difference.
And when you see this pattern repeat over and over across hundreds of your clients' accounts, you arrive at this rule:
KEEP YOUR AUDIENCE READING AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.
YOUR POST SHOULD BE AS LONG AS POSSIBLE, WHILE MAINTAINING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE'S ATTENTION.
For those of you who are still skeptical and think that social media posts should be concise and have lots of likes and comments, here's LinkedIn's official statement:
https://www.linkedin.com/blog/engineering/feed/understanding-feed-dwell-time
I hope you found this information useful. If so, support this article with a like or comment, because those are powerful tools. Even though they're less powerful than the time you spent reading it :)