LinkedIn is one of the most popular and powerful social media sites for B2B marketing. While it might seem out of place for the freight industry, LinkedIn can be a great place to generate interest and connect with current and potential new customers. Like all social media, LinkedIn uses proprietary algorithms to determine what content to feature. Each year, digital advertising trends change, and rules get updated, so it’s important to stay up to date! If your LinkedIn posts aren’t generating audience engagement, you may be missing one of these fundamental rules. 

1. Original Content Is King

Many companies try to boost engagement with a steady stream of sharing content. Unfortunately, if that content isn’t original, it will be very difficult to get prioritized by the LinkedIn algorithm. Even if you are sharing original articles or job listings from your own website regularly, this will be a low priority if it’s not originally published on LinkedIn.

To boost visibility, focus on quality, original content that connects with your audience. 

First, decide whether you want to create an article or a post. Articles are ranked in Google’s SEO, but they are a lower priority for the LinkedIn feed. In contrast, posts are internal and exclusive to LinkedIn. Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn posts are prioritized, though you are making small sacrifices on SEO. 

Best Practice:

Share an image or a video directly within LinkedIn as part of a post. Then, link to your job or article in a comment section rather than in the main post.

2. Instant Engagement Is A Must

LinkedIn wants to see that you can generate interest immediately. In brief, if your content isn’t interesting or engaging, LinkedIn won’t keep it visible. The first hour after you post content is the most important time to push post engagement. That hour determines what happens next with your content. Will it be pushed to the top of your audience’s news feeds? Or will it disappear into social media obsoletion? 

Instant engagement may feel like a big ask, especially if you run a small marketing operation. Luckily, this side of digital marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. LinkedIn post engagement can include adding a reaction, commenting (three words or more!), or sharing.

Each of these actions is weighted a little differently in the content scoring phase. For example, liking a post may only give one point. A thoughtful comment earns two points. Sharing demonstrates that the post is popular, so three points. Every engagement helps position your post for increased visibility going forward. 

Best Practice:

Alert your team when you or your company page shares a post and encourage genuine company-wide engagement. If you share from a company page, engage with the post from your personal profile and vice versa.

3. The Right Hashtags Make All the Difference

On social media, hashtags serve two primary purposes. The first is to bring all of the posts on a single topic to one place. This can be used at a large scale for general topics such as #trucking. These hashtags are helpful to follow to stay in touch with current events in your industry. Post consolidation via hashtags is also a common tactic for event marketing. In short, the intent is to generate interest by bringing together the people talking about the same event. 

Include 3-5 of the top hashtags for your industry in each post.

The second purpose of hashtags is to increase audience engagement organically. If your goal is to increase post reach and expand your audience, start by doing some research. Identify the top-performing hashtags in your industry. Pay attention to spelling and stay professional in your language. In general, you should avoid punctuation and symbols in your hashtag. If you are using a multi-word tag, don’t include spaces, but do capitalize the first letter of each word. It won’t impact your post’s ability to be found, but it does make it a little easier to read.

Best Practice:

Choose hashtags that are relevant to the topic of your post and are also top performers in your industry. Include 3-5 of these top hashtags in each post to maximize impressions.