Until I got this message
My Summit 21 student, Yashar Afarath, did something mind-boggling.
During our time in the cohort together, I was always intrigued by his deep thoughts and opinions. But I never knew he'd dig this deep.
He went to my first LinkedIn post and analysed my content.
And he compiled it in this free ebook.
I realised
That old Niharikaa didn't think much.
But 2023 is when I kept going viral because I discovered the format that works for me:
That sucks.
Because virality doesn't mean more money and I don't want to have lots of followers and make the same money, lol.
I want a loyal audience instead.
Moreover, I'm personally not a fan of these random photo posts unless they are travel pictures (who doesn't like good scenery) or relate to the message in the post.
So...
I shook my strategy
I went back to being my old self.
Here are some changes I made and observations related to them:
- Wrote some text-only posts: got fewer views but more engagement.
- Posted tweet snapshots with relevant text: lots of views and followers but comparatively low engagement. This isn't bad because I don't expect employees to comment when I go all anti-corporate.
- Started playing around again - I always was because I still don't have a LinkedIn 'strategy', but I made my format less predictable.
Overall results
I've been doing this for a few months now. Here are some good things that it brought in:
1/ Meaningful Engagement
I actually get valuable comments under my posts now instead of creepy men DMing me and commenting "looking beautiful" 🤮
2/ Slow But Purposeful Growth
The number of followers doesn't matter if those people don't align with your content or interact with them. I grew slowly because my posts got fewer views, but at least the right set of people followed and interacted with my work.
3/ More Comments
Sometimes my post with 300 likes has more comments than my post with 1500 likes.
4/ Frequent Comments
When the same people keep commenting on your posts you know you've built a loyal audience base.
5/ Helps My Craft
Experimenting and improving content is challenging, and challenges are good! It's helped me improve as a writer and creator. Enhancing my craft of writing is my priority but sometimes it's easy to overlook it for instant dopamine.
6/ A Better Brand
I don't read many people's LinkedIn posts because they have cringy and unrelated photos. Honestly, maybe I was becoming one of them.
But I don't want to.
And if that means less likes and views, be it.
I'm going to align my brand with my personal values. I don't care about vanity metrics.
Finally
You might want to check out Yashar's guide, you'll learn plenty about Linkedin :).
He doesn't even know I'm writing this hehe but I hope he doesn't mind it.