The secret society of LinkedIn algorithm masters

LinkedIn is a great place to hang out. I know - I built my career on LinkedIn and got to know so many wonderful people on that platform.

But - I know that it has severe limitations that have only grown worse in recent years. The place where I built myself up doesn’t seem to exist anymore. It’s become a quagmire of fluff influencer content, political posts and ads, with a couple of interesting posts from connections scattered between.

As with any social media platform, on LinkedIn, you’re entirely reliant on the all-mysterious algorithm, which the secret algorithm masters manipulate in the dark of night to make good engagement on your posts ever more elusive.

But the problem goes deeper. Even if you get good engagement on a post, it’s not a platform designed to lead to sales. On LinkedIn, people are scrolling, looking for entertainment and/or to promote themselves. Will showing up daily on the platform have an impact? Sure. It helps get people more familiar with your brand.

But is it the best way to get sales? Far from it.

Unlike on LinkedIn, once you've built an email list, you have a captive audience there that you can regularly sell to - without paying advertising fees.

The trouble is that many brands view email as just that. A way to bring in more sales. And if you view it that way, you'll fail to build any sort of relationship with your audience. That's how most brands' sales emails wind up becoming just another annoying email delete or mark spam.

The trick is to create an email strategy that provides value - whether through entertainment or education - and builds a relationship with your readers. This way, they'll LOOK for your emails.

If you're signed up for my daily emails, you have an idea of what I mean. Here's the process of how I can recreate that email experience for your email list, in a way that suits your brand and audience:

• Customer survey sent to your email list. This helps me get to know what brought them onto your list and to get a sense of what interests them.
• Create a basic messaging guide that lays out what kind of content will resonate with your audience, and the voice and tone to be used in all the emails.
• Come up with the concept for an opt-in page that draws people in, beyond the standard “get a discount code”, to help you further grow your email list
• 4-5 email welcome series sequence that gets sent out to every new subscriber
• Sample one month content calendar outlining 2-3 weekly email topics. Sample topics:
  • Story behind specific products
  • How a product is made
  • Meet a team member
  • Different product use cases
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Want this for your brand? Let’s talk.

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