The Truth About LinkedIn Engagement

You optimise your profile, you post great content, you engage and network like a madman, but you’re still not seeing the results you want.

This is the unfortunate reality of the majority of people trying to build an audience on LinkedIn.

So most of them quit before they get a chance to see any meaningful results. And those who don’t quit, have joined a new kind of rat race.

One of the biggest creators on LinkedIn told me that she used to spend up to 10 hours per day on LinkedIn when she first got started.

While I admire her work ethic, there must be a better way.

If you’re spending 4 hours or more per day engaging on LinkedIn, then there’s a major gap in your strategy and you need to rethink it.

The Harsh Truth About LinkedIn Engagement

Let’s face it, if you’re not one of the big names in your niche, no one cares to give you their time or attention no matter how good your content is.

The amount of engagement you get on LinkedIn is directly related to the quality of the relationships you have within your network.

The more people know you and care about you, the more likely they are to engage with you. This is why networking is critical to audience building.

But, in a way, this also means that you’re limited by the number of relationships you can build. It also means, that once you stop nurturing these relationships, your engagement will take a serious hit.

The Impact of Relationships on Engagement

My dad has around 700 Facebook friends, he doesn’t post inspirational content and he’s surely not building an audience.

However, when he posts, he gets 250 to 350 Likes on his posts and 100+ comments. Crazy right?!

Here’s the thing, he knows everyone in his Facebook network in person. More importantly, he spent decades building relationships offline and he’s one of the most respected and connected people that I know.

Why am I telling you this?

Because it demonstrates how the quality of your relationships translate into social media engagement.

The best part?

You can get the same results without spending decades interacting with people in person. The internet unlocks a different level of scale so you can achieve the same results in a fraction of the time.

How to Escape The Engagement Rat Race

If you don’t want to spend half your day commenting on other people’s posts and having conversations in the DMs, then you shouldn’t.

However, this doesn’t mean you should quit. It means you should think of how you can achieve the same outcome in a different way.

Here are a few important points to consider if you wanna get off the engagement treadmill without giving up on LinkedIn:

1. Strategic Engagement

Instead of aiming for a 100 comments a day and losing your sanity in the process of trying to hit an arbitrary target, think smarter.

I wrote about how I use LinkedIn to grow my brand in last week’s newsletter and part of that is choosing the right people to engage with.

So instead of engaging with everyone who engages with your content or whoever happens to be active on the day, you gotta be more selective.

Find 20 to 30 people in your niche that you enjoy their content and engage with them. Strike a conversation in the DMs and get on a call if you vibe with them. This is your peer level group who will support your journey.

It takes an hour a day to do this. If you think you can build your brand in less than an hour a day, you might as well quit now because that’s not how it works.

Focus on having genuine interactions and adding value in the comments even if it’s in the form of casual conversation.

2. Build Your Brand Beyond LinkedIn

If your goal is to build a strong brand and become known in your niche, LinkedIn alone is not enough.

➛ YouTube

I see youtube as an opportunity to get off the engagement hamster wheel.

Yes, it’s harder and comes with its own complexities, but Youtubers spend more time creating and less time engaging.

So if that’s your zone of genius, I suggest you give it a shot.

If you do it right, youtube gives you a whole different level of credibility and it creates a much deeper connection with your audience.

➛ Newsletter

Launching a newsletter is critical for reasons I explain here. It’s also a great way of gauging the impact of your LinkedIn content.

Creators worry that the engagement they get on LinkedIn is not always genuine and that people engage only so you engage back. Or they simply engage because they’re trying to become more visible.

However, if people are signing up for newsletter, it’s is a great indicator that they are actually interested in what you have to say.

3. Explore Paid alternatives

Great marketing is a combination of organic and paid media.

For some reason, the majority of creators and entrepreneurs rather spend half their day engaging on LinkedIn than paying to get in front of much more people in much less time.

A lot of the creators that blew up on Twitter/X over the last few years have paid other creators with bigger audiences to retweet and engage with their content.

But that’s cheating! No it’s not. It’s smart and it saves time.

LinkedIn has different dynamics than X but it’s also similar in many ways. If you don’t want to spend half your day engaging, you can find paid alternatives.

If you have a newsletter, you can promote your newsletter with paid ads or through other paid options like Beehiiv boosts.

If you have a bigger email database, you can send more traffic to LinkedIn and grow your audience faster which will then grow your email database even further.

It’s easier to create a flywheel effect when you leverage different sources of traffic. Good marketers think beyond organic vs. paid.

What if you just want to be on LinkedIn?

In this case, play the engagement game, explore paid alternatives, and scale back your engagement as you grow or after you’ve hit your goal.

For example: If your goal is to hit 10K followers in 6 months, you’re going to have to spend 4 hours or more engaging everyday (and posting daily).

If your goal is to hit 10K in 12 months, you can probably achieve that in 2 to 3 hours of engagement everyday (and posting daily).

In both examples you can scale back the time you spend engaging as you grow.

You gotta have a specific goal in mind and know exactly why you’re pursuing it.

If gaining 10,000 followers won’t have any impact on your business, I hate to break it to you, but you’re wasting valuable time for nothing.

The truth is, most creators get bored too quickly and quit too soon or simply don’t have the discipline for this kind of commitment.

If it’s not your thing? Admit it to yourself so you can find your thing sooner.

Building a brand isn’t the only way to make a nice living. There are many ways to do that, but they’re all hard in their own way, so choose what you enjoy most.

This newsletter was inspired by a comment from Clémence Lepers on one of my recent LinkedIn posts.

If you enjoyed reading this, hit reply and let me know.

Until next time, keep creating!

Omara

Quick Picks

1. This video by Alex Hormozi is a must-watch for every creator.

2. Find joy in your work by reading this article on getting stuff done by not being mean to yourself.

3. This album by Sleep Token is my current go-to music for deep work. Warning: it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

P.S. If you want to build your online presence without wasting months on guesswork, book a 1:1 Coaching Session with me and let me help you.