8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

written by Houston Golden
Founder & CEO, BAMF Media
September 11th, 2017
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Viral posts are integral to your growth hacking strategy.  If you want people to notice you, then you have to be seen. What if we told you that your virality on the platform can be measured and that you can growth hack LinkedIn?

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to optimize your posts for virality and maximum exposure. We’ll even give you the lowdown on streamlining it with your lead generation efforts!

You’ve got to start measuring what you do to find out if it works. Marketing and growth hacking are data-dependent.  There is nothing you can do to separate them, so it’s time to start looking at the data that we have.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Measuring Virality on LinkedIn

1. Drive Traffic to Your Company’s Landing Page

2. Lead Your Best Articles Back to Your Site

3. Use the ManyChat Integration with Zapier 

4. Build a Custom Tool like the LinkedIn Auto-Connector

5. Skip Your Prospect’s Gatekeeper

6. Use LinkedIn to Show Company Appreciation

7. Landing Pages

8. Increase the Size of Your Network

Measuring Virality on LinkedIn

We’ve run a lot of tests to measure what makes a post go viral. It wasn’t the number of comments that formed a correlation to the views, but rather the likes that gave us the connection. So, what does this mean for us?

We may be able to “predict” virality.

The Old Algorithm

Here’s what the data told us before: the magic number was 142. That’s how many views a post will get for every Like – on average – with a 90.04% confidence. You can see how strong the correlation is in the line graph below:

growth hacking linkedin

The New Algorithm

However, those were the previous number and the last time we checked it’s at an average of 131 in 2017. This represents a change in the LinkedIn algorithm meaning that we now need fewer likes to get to those many views.

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

Viral posts on LinkedIn only stay viral for three days, and that’s only 72 hours. Let’s say you’re running after 100,000 views for your post.

This means that you need to get an average of 9.78 likes per hour for a post to hit its targeted views. (100,000 views / 72 hours = 1,388.89 views per hour | 1,388.89 / 142 = 9.78 likes).

Let’s assume that people are asleep 8 hours a day. That leaves us with 16 hours. 16 x 3 days = 48 hours. 704 likes / 48 hours = 14.678 If you are aiming to get 100,000 post views, make sure that you get 15 Likes in the first hour – minimum.

Without taking any other velocity engagement metrics into account (which we don’t have the data for, yet), you need at least 15 likes in the first hour of a post if you want to get 100,000 views.

Another Case Study

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

These are the totals of a client that we’ve worked with in the past, as you can see, there were fewer views per like. This could be indicative of a higher like requirement for a post to get more views.

Note: However, LinkedIn is global – and you’d better have made international connections by now – so it could be picked up globally. This increases your likelihood of hitting your targets since you’re sure there’s at least someone awake who’ll see your post.

What Does This Mean for Us?

The data does not lie. It might be crude since we do not have access to the exact algorithm that LinkedIn uses nor do we have the information for how they calculate their velocity engagement metrics, but the correlation exists, and it can’t be shrugged off too quickly.

At BAMF, we know when we’ve hit virality to the point where if posts are not getting strong enough engagement, then we take them down. If it’s within the first hour, we still have time to adjust. Rewrite the first line. Draw in the emotion sooner.

Emphasize the pain harder. This process is raw. It’s intuition combined with our best practices and relentless obsession for excellent copy.

But wait:

You can’t just rely on that magic number alone, even if you get 55 likes in the first hour, it will mean nothing if you don’t have a copy that’s good enough to create engagement. You need to make sure that you’re conveying the sentiment that breeds emotion in your reader.

However, there’s more you can do (and often forget to do.)

 

 1. Drive Traffic to Your Company’s Landing Page

There are plenty of ways to get people to visit your website or landing page from LinkedIn. Whether it be a status update or through your company profile, you can drive traffic where it matters the most.

Your webite.

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

 

Status updates are a great start at getting people to visit your website. Check this status update for instance:

 

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

 

It had 45,100 views, 448 reactions and 43 comments.

That’s heavy interaction and that can be considered viral by any standard.

It’s made even more potent because it had a link to our landing page on it. This means that our link was placed in front of 45,100 sets of eyeballs, that’s tantamount to giving everyone an invitation to your product.

Simple viral posts such as these can only drive traffic to your landing page if you include a link to it.

 

bamf.commpany page

Also, your company LinkedIn page is one of the most powerful tools that you have in your disposal. You can use your page as a springboard to your website or landing page, but you have to make sure that what you have on it is convincing enough for them to do it. This means that you need to have enough teaser content on it for them to find enough value to get on your real site.

 

Another strategy is to add links to content or additional content in the first comments. We do this in the first comment and not within the post body so that LinkedIn doesn’t limit the reach of the post.

 

Now, how are we supposed to this if we’ve already given them the meat in the article itself?

 

Easy.

 

Starve the reader a little bit more. If you’re going to post a listicle with nine methods, leave the other four on your site and tell your reader to finish reading it there. If the content was good enough for them to stay for the first five, they’re going to want the rest.

 

2. Lead Your Best Articles Back to Your Site

LinkedIn loves how-to content about LinkedIn (how meta). And they love story-oriented content about the workplace. With how-to content, I always leave the second half of the article on my website.

In this case, I wrote an article with eleven tips to gain a following on LinkedIn. I included the first five in the piece, then had a link to view the last six on my blog. This way I can capture my readers in a Facebook re-marketing audience to run ads to them.

This piece drove almost five hundred visitors to my website over the span of a week. Impressive, huh?

3. Get them on your List by leveraging value

You need to be capturing your audience on Messenger and email. It’s not one or the other. You need both.

Our Messenger list has of over 6,000 subscribers and is more active than a 30,000-person email list.

Yes, you heard that right.

Check out what we did with this post:

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

We were willing to give away marketing dashboards that they could use for their organizations because we knew that it would be worth more to grow the list of people who would be a part of BAMF.

There were able to grab thier free marketing dashboard on messenger, making them a part of our list.

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

We got them engaging with us by offering them an incentive. This allowed us to be able to connect with our network. Being able to personally connect with your network establishes your relational approach which is important in growth hacking.

 

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

Enough of these statuses over a year can build you a 10,000-person Messenger list!

4. Build a Custom Tool like the LinkedIn Auto-Connector

We recently updated our custom LinkedIn auto-connector tool to sync with different merge fields. As a result, we can send out personalized connections at scale.

 

For example, “Hey {{first_name}}, Checked out {{last_company}} and noticed you were hiring for a {{job_name}} and wanted to talk about how I can help.” The best part: Anyone can create a tool like this.

 

We spent several hundred dollars on the freelancing site, Upwork, to outsource the development work.

It took him one week to finish it. Note: This tool is only available for our BAMF community.

 

Here are the top tools that work for this: GrowthLead, PhantomBuster, etc

 

Disclaimer: We do not officially endorse the use of any third-party tools to enhance or automate parts of the LinkedIn audience-building & outreach process, as this violates their terms of service. Failure to heed this warning could result in permanent suspension from the platform.

 

5. Skip Your Prospect’s Gatekeeper

At BAMF Media, we’re a relationship building agency. Rather than send out a thousand cold emails, we offer to write about or interview our prospects. “I’d love to feature your professional story on our blog.”

“Do you have time to jump on my podcast with several thousand listeners?” By playing up to their ego, we get an insane response rate. We only aim for the top five percent of the market because the response rate is so high.

This way we can develop enough rapport to get the employee on our side before they talk to their higher-ups about our services. And we get the benefit of having excellent content worth distributing.

This helps develop your image of being relatable with people. And, being relatable is the heart of your company.

6. Use LinkedIn to Show Company Appreciation

This is an easy thing to do.

LinkedIn professionals love it when you appreciate your company employees and partners. It’s a sign of true leadership.

 

This draws lots of positive engagement and leads. Why? It’s rarely done on LinkedIn although everyone knows you should do it.

 

This appreciation post had a ton of positive side effects, including new leads, new recruits  and a lot of exposure. Most notably, this post helped me land an official teaching post as a Professor at Loyola Marimount University, where my intern was from. Amazing to see what sharing gratitude and good vibes can do! 🙂

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

Plus, your employee or partner who’s tagged will appreciate the nice call out. And they’ll receive a flood of connection requests their way. Appreciation statuses are the first step every company should encourage when building a culture using social media.

 

The above appreciation post had a ton of positive side effects, new leads, new recruits, hiring. Etc..  Most notably, this post helped me land an official teaching post as a Professor at Loyola Marimount University, where my intern was from… amazing to see what sharing gratitude and good vibes can do! 🙂

 

7. Landing Pages

Because we need to measure what works and what doesn’t, you should create different landing pages for your content. This allows you to check the metrics for individualized campaigns.

 

Here’s the landing page we use for our LinkedIn Influencer service:

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

 

8. Increase the Size of Your Network

Your primary email address is usually the one that is tied-in to your LinkedIn account, and you can sync your contacts from it to your LinkedIn account to form connections. However, you can also switch out this email for you to sync another email address’ contacts.

If you have a list of emails lying around, you can go ahead and go to “Alternate Option” in this article.

Click the icon on the top right corner of the homepage to bring out a small dropdown menu. You will now want to select “Settings & Privacy.”

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

Go to the “Account” tab and make your way to the “Login and security” area.

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

Find the field labeled “Email addresses” and click “Add email address.” Once you fill this out, click “Send verification.” Verify the email in your mailbox.

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

Now you will want to log out and log into your account again. Click “My Network” on the navigation bar on top and find the field labeled “Add personal contacts.” Input the email address you want to use here.

The Alternate Option

, 8 Killer LinkedIn Hacks to Generate More Leads and Go Viral

Alternatively, you can also click on “More options,” which brings you to this page. This gives you a range of options on how to input additional contacts. Including a file upload, invite by email, Yahoo, AOL, etc.

Being able to go viral by growth hacking LinkedIn won’t mean much if you don’t do anything with it. Whether you need the exposure or the leads in your pipeline, remember there’s a systematic way to do it. Do not be afraid to experiment with your content, but be sure that you don’t forget about the little details.

Release, observe, tweak, and repeat. That’s how you go viral.

 

 

About the Author

The name's Houston Golden. I'm the Founder & CEO of BAMF — a company I've grown from $0 (yes, really) to well over $5M+ in revenue over a span of 5 years.

How did I do it? Well, it's quite simple, really. I've helped hundreds of business owners and executives get major traction (because when they win, we win), I tell all on this blog.

Growth hacking is a state of mind. Follow along as I explore and expose the unknown growth strategies and tactics that will change the way you think about marketing.
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