LinkedIn

posted on September 25, 2019 by Allison Shields

Which Posts Get the Most Engagement on LinkedIn?

Do you want to increase visibility and engagement with your LinkedIn posts?

Hi, it’s Allison Shields from Legal Ease Consulting where I help lawyers build the practices they want and attract their ideal clients using tools like LinkedIn. In my last couple of videos, I talked about using hashtags and mentioning connections as two ways you can increase visibility and engagement for your LinkedIn posts.

Today, let’s talk about how you can use the format of your posts to encourage engagement.

Text: Believe it or not, experts say that solely text-based posts still get more engagement on LinkedIn than posts that are not text-based. In other words, you can get engagement even without any fancy equipment or searching high and low for an appropriate image. To make your text posts even more engaging, you might consider asking your audience a question in your post, and encouraging your audience to respond by commenting.

Video: The number two type of post on LinkedIn right now is video – video is hot everywhere. Of course, if you’re a Videosocials member, creating video and posting it on LinkedIn is easy. But what if you’re camera shy? (you can still use videosocials’ feature and just pull the audio) You can create a simple video using readily available tools like PowerPoint and then add a voiceover timed to the slides to create a quick and easy video.

Images and PDFS: Posts with images, or posts that contain PDFs, take up more room in the Feed than text-only posts, and for scrollers, these kinds of posts can be attention-getting, but they can also serve as a way to show, rather than simply tell, what you do, who you do it for, and where your expertise lies.

Again, I’m Allison Shields from Legal Ease Consulting, For more LinkedIn video tips, visit my website at LawyerMeltdown.com and look for my forthcoming book, Make LinkedIn Work for You, A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and Other Legal Professionals.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: legal marketing, LinkedIn, video

posted on September 20, 2019 by Allison Shields

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Mention Connections to Get Attention on LinkedIn

In this video in my LinkedIn series, I talk about mentioning or tagging connections as a way to boost visibility and get some additional engagement from your posts.

Hi, I’m Allison Shields from Legal Ease Consulting, Inc., and in today I want to talk about another way to increase engagement with your posts on LinkedIn.

In my last video, I talked about hashtags. Hashtags can help increase visibility and engagement on LinkedIn with users who use hashtags to search for content or who follow hashtags for content that they are interested in on LinkedIn.

But what if your audience doesn’t actively search for content like that on LinkedIn? Or what if you are sharing something on LinkedIn that’s particularly relevant to a specific connection or group of connections? That’s where you can use mentions or tags for connections in your posts on LinkedIn.

To do that, simply type the @ symbol, followed by the person’s name within your post on LinkedIn. Once you start typing, LinkedIn will create suggestions and you can simply click on the correct one.

When you tag or mention a connection in a post, they’ll receive a notification on the desktop and mobile versions if they have those notifications enabled, and they will receive an email from LinkedIn telling them that you mentioned them in the post, and including a link so they can easily navigate to the post. Mentioning or tagging specific connections makes it more likely that they’ll want to check out a post and possibly like, comment on or share it with their network.

There are two ways to use tags or mentions in your LinkedIn posts. The first way is by mentioning the person’s name within the body of a LinkedIn post itself. For example, I might mention my co-author in the body of a post I write on LinkedIn about our upcoming book, saying something like, “My co-author @DennisKennedy and I are pleased to announce the release of our new book, Make LinkedIn Work for You.” In that post, I’m talking specifically about Dennis, and his name is within the content of the post itself.

But you can also tag your connections at the end of a post to draw their attention to the post even if you don’t mention them within the substantive portion of the post itself. For example, when I post this video on LinkedIn, I might tag Dennis so that he sees I’ve posted a video about LinkedIn, hoping that he’ll share the post with his audience, comment on it, etc. since it’s relevant to the work we do together and to our book.

And that’s an important point – when you are tagging or mentioning a connection in a post on LinkedIn, make sure that post is relevant to them. And don’t over-use mentions or tags. Don’t keep mentioning the same connection over and over because you might end up annoying them. And don’t mention 50 different in the same post, because it may dilute the impact of the mention.

The next time you’re creating a post on LinkedIn, consider which of your connections might benefit most from reading that post, and consider tagging or mentioning them.

Again, I’m Allison Shields from Legal Ease Consulting. Look for my other videos on lawyermeltdown.com.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing, Social Networking Tagged With: legal marketing, LinkedIn, video

posted on September 18, 2019 by Allison Shields

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Increase Post Visibility on LinkedIn with Hashtags

One way to get more visibility and engagement from your LinkedIn post is by using hashtags (#).

Do you want to get more visibility and more engagement from your LinkedIn posts?

Hi, I’m Allison Shields from Legal Ease Consulting, Inc., where I help lawyers build the kinds of practices they want and attract their ideal clients using tools like LinkedIn.

In my last two videos, I talked about what to post on LinkedIn whether you create your own content or simply share content created by others. But either way, all of your Connections on LinkedIn are not going to see all of your posts. The more engagement (likes, comments and shares) a post receives, the more visibility it gets, and the more visibility it gets, the more chance there is for engagement.

In my next few videos, I’ll show you a few methods you can use to increase engagement with your posts on LinkedIn. Today, we’re going to talk about hashtags.

You’re probably familiar with hashtags from other social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram, but hashtags are relatively new on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn has really embraced hashtags. For example, when you start typing a post, LinkedIn will suggest hashtags to add to the post based on the content of that post. LinkedIn users can also choose to follow hashtags or they can search for hashtags. That means that if you use hashtags in your posts, you’ll increase the visibility of those posts.

But don’t go overboard using too many hashtags on each post. I recommend using no more than three per post. And put your most important hashtag first.

If you’re not sure which hashtags to include in your post, you can find them by searching for popular hashtags on LinkedIn, or look at the Profiles of industry leaders in your industry or your target audience and look at the skills, interests, and keywords that are on their Profiles and use them to create your hashtags.

Again, I’m Allison Shields from Legal Ease Consulting. Visit my website at lawyermeltdown.com for more videos like this and for information about my soon to be released book, Make LinkedIn Work for You, written with my co-author, Dennis Kennedy, especially for lawyers and other legal professionals.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing, Social Networking Tagged With: LinkedIn, video

posted on September 4, 2019 by Allison Shields

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What to Post on LinkedIn (Part 2)

In my last video, I talked about what to post on LinkedIn if you are a content creator – if you have a blog, write articles, do presentations, etc. But what if you aren’t a content creator? Never fear – there are still plenty of ways for you to post on LinkedIn.

The truth is, you don’t have to have your own content to be successful on LinkedIn. Every single day, other people are creating content for you that you can use to educate, inform, or entertain your target audience on LinkedIn.

Think about it: very few lawyers create new laws or completely novel arguments. Lawyers are experts at finding information relevant to their client’s case or transaction, and analyzing that information to persuade a judge, a jury, opposing parties or other participants in a transaction. You can do the same thing on LinkedIn by simply finding information that would be useful to your clients or referral sources – and that information doesn’t always have to be strictly about the law.

The lawyers who use LinkedIn the most effectively are not the lawyers who are always talking about themselves or their cases – they are the lawyers who are providing information their audience can actually USE. For a divorce lawyer that might be posting about services for families in their local community. If you’re a real estate lawyer, that might mean linking to an article about how to find a reputable moving company, or a YouTube video on packing tips. A debt relief lawyer I know posts all kinds of articles, information and resources about things like how to save on school supplies and where to find the best credit card deals.

As I’ve said before, it’s about providing value to your audience. The news can be a fantastic source for posts, as can trade or special interest publications or websites. You can post about or link to an article in the local news that relates to your practice area. Or post about events in your local community.

When it comes to posting on LinkedIn, the only limit is your creativity.

I’m Allison Shields, President of Legal Ease Consulting, and I help lawyers use resources like LinkedIn to identify and attract their ideal clients. If you found this video helpful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. You can find more tips and information about what I do here on my website.

Have an idea for a future video? Let me know in the comments below!

Filed Under: Legal Marketing, Networking, Social Networking Tagged With: LinkedIn

posted on September 3, 2019 by Allison Shields

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Don’t Know What to Post on LinkedIn? Start Here

In my last video about LinkedIn, I talked about the fact that starting a Profile and just collecting Connections isn’t really enough if you want to get something out of LinkedIn. You have to actually engage with other people to see results.

Hi, my name is Allison Shields, and I am the President of Legal Ease Consulting, where I help lawyers create more productive, more profitable and more enjoyable law practices. One of the ways I do that is by helping them to improve their LinkedIn presence.

Just like in real life, if you want to engage with others on LinkedIn, one of the things that you can do is simply create a post, share information, or start a conversation. But when I talk to lawyers about using LinkedIn, a lot of them tell me they’re afraid to post regularly. They don’t want to annoy their Connections by posting too much, or they don’t know what to post, or they’re afraid of running afoul of the ethics rules.

The truth of the matter is that most lawyers that I see don’t engage often enough on LinkedIn or post often enough to be effective, let alone to annoy their Connections.

When you post on LinkedIn, the post shows up in the Feed of your followers and your connections on their LinkedIn Home page. But in reality, they’re not going to see everything that you post. LinkedIn has way too much volume of activity for everybody to see everything that you do. Also, LinkedIn sorts posts by what they consider “top” posts by default, as opposed to the most recent posts. So, the more engagement a post receives, the more likes, comments or shares it gets, the more likely it is that your Connections are going to actually see that post. But if that’s the case, it also means that that Post is probably more valuable to your network, as evidenced by the fact that other people have already engaged with it. So don’t be afraid to Post on a regular basis.

But what do you post?

Well, in my next video, I’ll give you some ideas and some examples, but for now, let me just leave you with this thought: when you’re creating a post on LinkedIn, don’t think about talking about yourself; think instead about how you can help the people in your network. So, what keeps your clients up at night? What useful or valuable information can you share?

Hopefully thinking about posting as a way of helping other people, instead of as a way of talking about yourself, will make it a little more comfortable for you.

Again, my name is Allison Shields, and I’m the President of Legal Ease Consulting. To see other videos in this LinkedIn series, please visit my website at LawyerMeltdown.com.

Filed Under: Networking, Social Networking, Uncategorized Tagged With: LinkedIn

posted on May 31, 2019 by Allison Shields

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Email Tips: Don’t Let Email Be A Distraction!

Email can be a great productivity tool or it can be a huge distraction that puts others’ priorities ahead of your own and prevents you from getting important work done. This short video includes a few quick tips for keeping email from being a distraction.

Filed Under: Law Practice Management, Productivity Tagged With: LinkedIn, productivity, Tips

posted on August 28, 2018 by Allison Shields

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LinkedIn Groups Gets an Update

I’ve long been an advocate of LinkedIn Groups as a business development tool, but, especially with the previous round of changes that separated Groups into a stand-alone app, many lawyers didn’t take advantage of Groups.

This month, LinkedIn announced it’s making some changes to its Groups feature in both the website and mobile app that should improve the user experience.

Groups will now be re-integrated into the main LinkedIn user interface for a more seamless experience, making it easier to access your Groups from the LinkedIn Home page.

With the new Groups interface, you’ll also see conversations from your Groups right in your main LinkedIn news feed. Threaded replies will be incorporated, and you’ll be able to edit posts and comments and reply to comments from the app.

Rich media features will also be added to Groups, allowing members to post video, multiple images or rich media links to Group discussions.

For those of you who are overwhelmed with email, you may be happy to learn that instead of getting updates from your Groups via email, those updates will now be incorporated into your LinkedIn notifications.

Changes in LinkedIn Group Administration

The previous round of changes to LinkedIn Groups included a lot of changes in how Groups were administered and monitored.

LinkedIn is simplifying Groups administration by reducing the number of categories of users in Groups to just owners, managers and members. Groups members who were previously designated as moderators will become regular members unless the Group’s owner elevates the user to a manager.

All Group members will be able to post in their Groups without prior approval. Group admins should block or remove members who consistently violate the Group’s rules since pre-approval will no longer be available.

Both Group members and admins will still be able to report inappropriate content to help reduce spam, and admins will continue to be able to edit or remove posts and comments that violate that Group’s rules.

Group managers will be able to pin items to the top of a Group’s feed.

Why You Should Use LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are an excellent tool for gathering valuable intelligence about your audience. By following Groups on LinkedIn that contain your target audience (existing and potential clients and referral sources), you can learn about their problems and concerns and see what’s important to them.

In Groups, people share information, brainstorm ideas, discuss their interests and challenges, post informational articles or links and conduct polls, making it easy for you to get to know others and for them to get to know you.

Groups give you the ability to reach out to your target audience to ask for feedback, educate them about your services or the legal issues that affect their lives and/or businesses, demonstrate your knowledge, and increase your visibility.

Reviewing LinkedIn Group discussions and activity can also help you to generate ideas for new service offerings, blog posts, articles, presentations, and more.

Joining Groups gives you access to a wider audience that goes beyond just your direct connections. As a Group member, you can view the list of members who share a specific interest, and navigate to their Profiles for additional information or to connect.

Getting The Most Out Of LinkedIn Groups

To get the most benefit from Groups on LinkedIn you need to be an active participant, just as you would when joining a group or community in “real life.” Merely being a member won’t do too much for you-you have to get involved: start discussions, post interesting articles, engage with other Group members and their content, and reach out to begin one on one discussion or connect.

Engage naturally in Groups, just as you would in an in-person networking setting. Provide value. Don’t over-promote. Be sure to review the Group’s rules and abide by them. Post content that is relevant to the specific Group.

Don’t just post links – add your own commentary, ask a question or make a statement to encourage interaction.

The new Groups experience should begin rolling out to users shortly.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing, Networking, Social Networking, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged With: legal marketing, LinkedIn, social media

posted on May 15, 2017 by Allison Shields

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[Infographic] Six Ways to Jumpstart Your LinkedIn Network

Is your LinkedIn network working for you?

In 2016, Dennis Kennedy, my co-author on LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers, and I wrote a two-part post on LinkedIn about how lawyers can reinvigorate their LinkedIn networks. That post was subsequently combined into one post on Law Technology Today.

As we say in the article, it’s usually best to send personalized invitations to connect and to always think strategically about who you want to connect with and why, as well as what might motivate that person to want to connect with you. But we also talk about some ways to add a lot of LinkedIn connections quickly at those times when that makes strategic sense for your practice.

We discuss these six ways to expand your LinkedIn network, whether you’re brand-new to LinkedIn or you’ve had a Profile for a number of years:

Uploading your contacts/address book to LinkedIn to make connecting with those you already know in the “real world” easier
Sending personalized invitations – your goal is to get the other person to accept your invitation to connect, so invite wisely!
Using Groups to identify and reach out to potential new (targeted) connections
Connecting with fellow alumni from your college or law school
Searching 2nd level connections
Using LinkedIn’s “People You May Know” suggestions

Although some things have changed since we wrote the initial piece because LinkedIn changed the user interface, the main ideas remain the same – you may just need to click in a different place to find what you’re looking for.

For example, now you’ll click Continue under add personal contacts on the left side of the page under My Network to upload your address book. And LinkedIn no longer provides the radio buttons to choose how you know someone when sending an invitation to connect. Find Alumni is no longer an option under the My Network menu, but you can still connect with fellow alumni by searching for your school and then clicking the See Alumni button.

You can find Part 1 of the article here (on my LinkedIn Profile) and Part 2 here (on Dennis’ LinkedIn Profile). Or check out this great infographic the folks at Venngage made for us for a quick visual reference:

Filed Under: Legal Marketing, Networking, Social Networking Tagged With: legal marketing, LinkedIn

posted on March 25, 2014 by Allison Shields

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LinkedIn Updates and Changes Every Lawyer Should Know

LinkedIn has been busy making even more changes to its platform lately. Here’s a summary of some of the changes and updates you should know about:

Skills and Endorsements

LinkedIn’s previously named “Skills and Expertise” section has been re-named “Skills and Endorsements” in part due to feedback LinkedIn received from lawyers who advised that many jurisdictions (including mine – New York) would not allow lawyers to complete any section under the title “expertise” without special certifications. The newly-named “Skills and Endorsements” section should cause less ethics headaches for lawyers. However, there are still cautions. To learn more about endorsements, check out my article on Law Technology Today, LinkedIn Endorsements 101.

Changes to LinkedIn Company Pages

In another article on Law Technology Today, I talked about LinkedIn Company Pages. That article gives a good overview of what lawyers can do with LinkedIn Company Pages for their law firms, but as of April 14, 2014, LinkedIn will be eliminating the Products and Services tab from LinkedIn Company Pages. It turns out that not too many users were taking advantage of this feature of Company Pages. In place of the information that used to be contained in the Products and Services tab, LinkedIn recommends two options. First, you can post Updates to your Company Page about your services. These Updates will appear both on your Page and in your followers’ LinkedIn feeds. You can even include video in your Updates. While this is one option, you may want to use this option for announcements of new services or initiatives, news or other timely items, rather than general descriptions of your practice areas and services.

Your other option is to use Showcase Pages to highlight specific services that your firm might offer. Showcase Pages were introduced by LinkedIn in late 2013 as a way to highlight specific products or services, or to allow businesses to reach specific audiences who might be interested in only a segment of the company’s offerings, rather than their general Company Page updates.

Essentially, Showcase Pages are sub-pages under your main law firm Company Page on LinkedIn, but they are dedicated to one individual service that you provide. Showcase pages can be helpful for law firms who have diverse practice areas and want to post different content to different audiences. As legal marketing expert Nancy Myrland noted in her post announcing Showcase Pages last year, Showcase Pages can also be a great way to institutionalize cross-selling, because all of the Showcase Pages link back to the main Company Page and to one another.

To find out how to drive traffic to your Company Page, you may want to read my post from the Legal Ease blog, “Driving Traffic to your Law Firm Company Page.” These concepts can be applied to your Showcase Pages as well.

LinkedIn Analytics

LinkedIn has been adding some tools within the platform to help you see how much attention your LinkedIn Profile, updates and Page are getting. For example, the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” feature of LinkedIn now gives you lots of information about the industries and locations of the people who have viewed your Profile, as well as information about how they found you (LinkedIn search, Google search, etc.) – even with a free account (although premium accounts provide even more information). In addition, at the bottom of the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” screen, LinkedIn will also give you suggestions about how you can garner more Profile views.

If you post Updates to your LinkedIn Profile, on your Home Page LinkedIn will provide you with information about how many views and likes your recent Updates have received under “Who’s Viewed Your Updates” in the right sidebar.

If you manage a Company Page for your firm, you’ll get Analytics (stats on the number of impressions, clicks, and interaction) and Page insights (Page views, unique visitors, page clicks).

Blocking Users

LinkedIn recently made some changes that will now allow you to block individual users on the platform. Simply go to the person’s Profile that you want to block and click the down arrow next to the blue button you see on their Profile and click on “block or report.” For more details, including what blocking means on LinkedIn, stay tuned for an upcoming post on Law Technology Today explaining how you can do it.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing, Networking, Social Networking Tagged With: legal marketing, LinkedIn, social media, technology

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