4 LinkedIn marketing tactics you can steal

6 weeks ago, I decided to take LinkedIn a lot more seriously (after much urging from my Design Lead).

As a former software-engineer-turned-marketing-geek, I decided to tinker to see how far I could push the envelope of the platform.

Here are some tactics that could help you out. I'm not a LinkedIn expert by any means. I've learnt the following by experimenting, testing and tinkering over the last 6 weeks. They are -

1. Drive traffic to your posts by understanding (and gaming) the LinkedIn algorithm

2. Use LinkedIn Events (with some scripting) to drive event attendance

3. LinkedIn Conversational Ads (beta) is the next untapped marketing channel

4. Gain followers by commenting (thoughtfully)

1. Drive traffic to your posts by understanding (and gaming) the LinkedIn algorithm

This was my sorry first attempt -

25 views. 1 (!) like.

I decided to do some digging into how the LinkedIn algorithm works.

Useful graphic from LinkedIn that explains how their algorithm works

The TLDR; is that LinkedIn over-indexes on engagement and (perceived) relevance over recency.

This means the more likes, comments, and shares that your post gets in a given window of time, the better.

With this in mind, here's what I tried:

9,245 views, 125 comments.

See what I did there?

I asked people to comment "interested" in the post, in exchange for a free content offer.

When people start to "like" and comment, LinkedIn's algorithm automatically starts to promote the post to the top of more peoples' News Feeds.

In turn, causing more people to comment and "like" the post - a runaway reaction.

So long as the post continues to get engagement, it will show up in peoples' News Feeds, and continue its ride on the algorithmic safari.

Was this post just a fluke?

Not at all - it gets better.

11,739 views. 191 comments.

29,274 views. 219 comments.

2. Use LinkedIn Events (with some scripting) to drive event attendance

LinkedIn Events is a highly underrated tool to drive attendance for events.

It allows you to send event invitations to first-degree contacts. These invitations appear as connection requests.

Click on the Invite Connection button to start inviting your first-degree connections

The trouble is, you have to manually click on each checkbox to invite attendees one by one. This takes a lot of time.

So I wrote a script to automate this process. Watch the video above to see how I did it.

The simple steps are:

1. Open Chrome Developer Tools (Right click -> Inspect).

2. Go to Console.

3. Type in:

var x = document.getElementsByClassName("invitee-picker__results-container");

var scroll = setInterval(function(){ x[0].scrollBy(0,1000); }, 1000);

This automates the scrolling of the feed, so you lazy-load more contacts into the frame. Wait for a few seconds here until the feed stops scrolling.

var y = document.getElementsByClassName("ember-checkbox ember-view");

for (var i = 0; i < y.length; i++) y[i].click();

This selects all of the checkboxes.

4. Click on Invite.

Using the above method, I managed to invite over 2,100 connections within a few minutes - leading to 500+ attendees after 4 days.

3. LinkedIn Conversational Ads (beta) is the next untapped marketing channel

Hat tip to Danny Read and Jason Widup from Metadata.io for this tip.

LinkedIn recently released a new beta product, called LinkedIn Conversational Ads.

Before we dive into the exact tactics, let me first show you the preliminary results we got.

This is absolutely phenomenal.

We managed to drive a lead (request for demo) for less than $77 a pop.

These are qualified leads who filled up the above form.

What's the implication of the word qualified?

Prior to booking the demo, we qualified our leads as such:

And if they hit, "I don't, unfortunately", we will politely disqualify them.

I understand that this tactic is light on details.

And it probably works well now because it is so novel - but like all marketing channels, it will eventually succumb to The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs once enough marketers start using it.

Want to know exactly how this is done? Check it out right here.

Alternatively, you can sign up for our upcoming webinar here to hear Danny Read @ Metadata.io talk more about this.

4. Gain followers by commenting (thoughtfully)

This last tactic may not be earth-shattering.

I grew my followers from less than 2,000 to 7,020 over the course of 6 weeks.

I did this by thoughtfully commenting on posts with good sized audiences (dozens/hundreds of comments).

Do not post drivel. (the above two examples - "Agree!!" and "Nice!" are bad examples, I apologize)

Weigh in as if you were replying on Quora, and try to add value to your audience. Ask thoughtful questions.

For example, if you commented on an influencer with 1,000,000 LinkedIn followers, and managed to get the top comment spot, your profile might get viewed by over 50,000 people. It's insane.

Each time I made a thoughtful comment on such a post, I would get dozens of connection requests and followers.

Alright, I got to go. Am jumping on a customer interview call (always be talking to users). Hope these help!