Your LinkedIn account is a portal to opportunities if you know how to use it well!

It’s all about analyzing what works for you and your audience and pivoting your strategy. And monitoring the engagement rate is a huge part of that process. By analyzing your LinkedIn engagement rate, you can understand what kind of content your audience likes the most and scale your efforts into creating it more. 

Today, I’m listing 8 practical tips (with examples) to help you improve your engagement rate on LinkedIn and turn it into your personal revenue-generating machine!

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What Is the LinkedIn Engagement Rate?

Engagement on LinkedIn (or any other social media platform) includes the number of likes, comments, shares, or saves a post gets on the platform. And engagement rate on LinkedIn is the percentage of users who actively engage in your content relative to the total users who view it. 

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How to Calculate the LinkedIn Engagement Rate

You can do this by simply dividing the number of engagements (links + comments + shares) by the impressions of a post. Take the result times 100 and you will get the engagement rate.

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To find the right stats for the calculation of the formula go to your post summary page and choose the post you want to analyze: 

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For this kind of detailed analytics, you need a third-party tool like Inlytics.io that helps you assess multiple other metrics, such as shares and historical data. Inlytics automatically calculates the engagement rate for you and tracks the engagement rate across multiple posts and personal accounts.

What’s a Good Engagement Rate on LinkedIn?

Typically, an engagement rate of above 2% is considered good for LinkedIn. However, the rate depends on 3 factors:

• The number of active followers or connections you have. By active, we mean those who are genuinely interested in your content or actually show up on the platform. 
• The quality and relevance of your content. You must publish content that offers value to your audience. 
• The frequency of your posts. The algorithm rewards consistency, and if you post content once in a blue moon, you’re not likely to see some good engagement.

Keep in mind that engagement rate is just one metric and shouldn't be the sole focus of your LinkedIn strategy.

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What Does the Engagement Rate Say?

The engagement rate indicates the percentage of people who have interacted with your content.  Engagement plays a central role in optimizing your content performance. Especially for the LinkedIn algorithm!

There are still a lot of users on LinkedIn who focus their content creation mainly to achieve more reach. I think this way of acting is outdated.

Ultimately, LinkedIn is about interaction and creating value. I recommend that you optimize for engagement instead. 

To get you going, here are the best tips I know to boost your engagement on LinkedIn:

8 Tips To Optimize Your Engagement

1. Write Memorable & Quality Content

💡 Make Your Content Easy To Consume

Popular posts are usually concise and have many line breaks. They use little complicated jargon and are easy to read.

As an example, notice how skimmable the following content is. Instead of rambling on for paragraphs, the author has penned down their thoughts in a succinct manner, which looks appealing.

If you're not sure if your content is difficult to read, you can test your writing here: https://app.readable.com/text/?demo‍

💡 Help People To Interact With Your Content

Interactions happen when you share something relatable on LinkedIn. It could be a simple question that they keep wondering about. Or, it could be a funny situation they’ve been in with the rest of your target audience.

Speaking of relatable posts, here's one about how the internet is filled with unrealistic content and how not every post is reliable. Anyone who reads this post would nod along as they scroll or perhaps share their experiences about the same. 

Pro tip: Choose questions that many readers can answer and share their opinions. If you choose polarizing topics, you will probably get even more answers and discussions. 

2. Add Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to gain additional reach for your post. A certain number of followers of a hashtag will see your post and, if your hashtag is relevant, will most likely react to it.

Here are some best practices to use hashtags effectively from our LinkedIn hashtags guide:

• Use no more than 3 hashtags in one post
• Avoid using emojis and extra spaces in between
• Use 2 broad hashtags that are related to the core theme of your post
• Use 1 niche hashtag related to the industry you’re in
• Follow new hashtags on LinkedIn to know what’s relevant today
• Create a LinkedIn hashtag bank for easy access
  

3. Build an Engaged Audience 

I think the biggest influence on your post engagement has to do with the relationship you cultivate with your network over time. 

A relationship does not build overnight, but takes consistent work and effort. One thing that has proven to be very effective for me, is to contact my new connections after they accept my request. 

Something like that happens a lot: 

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• I usually try to find common ground to initiate the conversation with the prospect I want to connect with.
• When I receive a connection request from someone, I take the conversation forward. 
• I have fun networking with people from different backgrounds and expertise and just let it flow naturally.

4. Include an Explicit Call to Action

A call to action can dramatically increase the interaction rate on your post. Depending on what your goal is, you can customize the call to action.

I have realized that many engagement-rich posts ask for comments in exchange, so the creators will send a link to a valuable resource (as seen in the photo example). Often the resource gets spoiled by adding a picture or video that’s not relevant to the post. This is why it’s best to use screenshots or a quick walkthrough video of the resource (if you have to) to support your text posts. 

Another way of inducing engagement in your LinkedIn posts is by asking a question related to something your target audience is curious about.

You could start off by sharing your POV on a topic about a certain industry and then ask their POV at the end. 

5. Experiment with Different Post Formats

Though text posts usually have above-average engagement, it’s always a good idea to offer your audience a variety and keep them on their toes about what’s coming next. 

Publish a mix of text posts, carousels, image posts, videos, and polls on your account and watch your LinkedIn engagement rate take off! Don’t forget to check the analytics as you go, and keep noting what’s working, so you adjust your content strategy. 

So I recommend you test for yourself and see what works best for you. To speed up your research you can also use Inlytics.io for this purpose. 

6. Reply to Your Comments Fast

If you respond quickly to questions or comments, you show your counterpart that the interaction is important to you.

People appreciate that.

It will also strengthen the relationship with your network. Also, it’s important to notice that early engagement will most likely boost your reach. 

7. Be Mindful of the Posting Time

Your followers and connections aren’t always around to read your posts—and to make sure they read and engage with them, you must publish them at the right time. 

As per Influencer Marketing Hub, the best time frames to post on LinkedIn are:

• Wednesday from 8 AM to 10 AM
• Thursday at 9 AM and from 1 PM to 2 PM
• Friday at 9 AM

But again, the effectiveness of these time frames depends on factors such as:

• The timezone of the audience you’re targeting
• The quality of your posts
• The sector or industry you’re targeting

For that you need to study your audience well and create detailed personas to understand their preferred time frame to browse LinkedIn.

8. Bonus: Use an Analytics Tool to Monitor Your Engagement Rate

If you are a professional on LinkedIn, this tip is a must-have. While you can manually calculate your engagement rate every time you publish a post, it's ineffective and time-consuming.

Also, you need to make notes of the results somewhere. 

For this purpose, we built Inlytics: a tool that lets you visualize all your statistics in a live dashboard.

You see at a glance all your posts and how your engagement has changed over time. Also, you can find in-depth information on how to optimize your profile appearance through actionable recommendations.

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Boost Your LinkedIn Engagement Rate with Inlytics

Inlytics is your one-stop solution to seeing a detailed breakdown of your personal LinkedIn profile. You can see detailed insights and stats for your posts and keep track of the important KPIs for your account. 

With consistent posting and pivoting, you can very well achieve an optimum engagement rate on your LinkedIn profile and grow your account. 

Start by creating your free Inlytics account today!

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