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.
if i tag someone in my post will the people in his network see my post even if they are outside my network or will only the tagged person see my post??
Hi Randa, Thanks for your comment! The person you tag in your post will receive a notification that they have been tagged. Occasionally LinkedIn will show other people connected to the tagged person, but outside of your network, the post in their feed as well, but it will depend in part on how you set the visibility for the original post.
How many @mentions at the end of a post are really too many? I’ve a colleague who may @mention anywhere from 10 to 15 people in a post. My feeling is that he’s overdoing it. And as someone who runs a business that does digital and social media marketing, I think that all the tagging makes him appear to be less a digital expert as he is supposed to be.
Hi Gerri,
I have seen quite a few people mention many people at the end of their posts. I think a lot depends on who the audience is and whether that method is working for the person posting. If it is increasing their actual engagement and the people they tag are appreciative and engaged, 10-15 might not be too many. But I’d recommend watching it carefully to see whether those people end up disconnecting or simply don’t engage any longer – that might be a sign that they are not interested or do not appreciate being tagged. I have some connections who tag me constantly, and I don’t always appreciate it.