Links are powerful.
But, you shouldn’t be putting your links everywhere.
They help with ranking, they make sure that prospects have somewhere to go, and they serve as your address.
In this guide, I want to talk to you about why you should never use a LinkedIn link in post strategy when writing LinkedIn post, and what alternatives you have to get on the algorithm’s good side.
Let’s do this.
Why You Shouldn’t Use the LinkedIn Link in Post Strategy
Let’s talk about the bottom lines.
LinkedIn – no matter how awesome they are – still makes a significant chunk of its revenue through the advertising that people buy on the platform.
Making money is still its bottom line.
LinkedIn ads work by redirecting people who click on the ad to the ad buyer’s website.
Now the moment you put a link inside your LinkedIn post, you automatically bypass the potential of a LinkedIn ad.
You’re effectively reducing LinkedIn’s bottom line by putting your own links in a post because you don’t have to buy ad space from them anymore.
LinkedIn doesn’t like this.
In my personal experience, I’ve found that the LinkedIn algorithm cuts the reach potential of a post 7-10 times.
Imagine this.
You spend hours crafting the perfect post with great copy and an awesome lead magnet only for LinkedIn to give it just about 10-14% of the reach since it has a link in it.
Using a LinkedIn link in post strategy is never going to get you to go viral.
Curious about how to get viral on LinkedIn. Here are our proven strategies and examples of taking our clients viral with simple posts.
But, you’re not alone.
I’ve once spoken to more than a hundred people with 99 percent of them telling me that they still engage in this activity …to no success.
Now the question is, what can you do?
You still need LinkedIn to feed you some inbound traffic to your website, and relying on LinkedIn Ads or inbound traffic from your profile alone is not enough.
Here are your LinkedIn link in post alternatives.
LinkedIn Link in Post Alternative 1: Link in the First Comment
LinkedIn won’t penalize you if the link to your website is in the comments section itself.
(In fact, you can even use LinkedIn to mask your link!)
Here’s how we do it.
- Make sure you that you leave your link in the first comment – ideally comment on the post as soon as you release it.
- Click on the three dots in your comment and copy the link to the comment.
- Go back to your post caption and click on the three dots to edit it.
- Stick in the link to that comment.
Boom.
You now have the link to your website safely tucked in the comments section, while a LinkedIn link is acting as the placeholder of your website in the caption itself.
Also, this method prevents the comment with the link from being buried.
This is a great way to circumvent the LinkedIn system and not get penalized.
However, if you want a more powerful approach to this, check out our next strategy.
LinkedIn Link in Post Alternative 2: Send the Link Out to Them
This strategy is one of our favorites at BAMF because it doesn’t just do wonders for your engagement rate, but it also allows you to interact personally with potential prospects.
The proposition is simple.
You don’t put links anywhere in the post or the comments.
You invite them to comment and then send the link personally via connection message or through a reply.
Now the second major benefit to this approach is that LinkedIn views the number of comments as an indicator of virality.
This means the more comments you generate within 24 hours, the higher the chance that your content will be shown to more people. By incentivizing comments you get to personally connect with people, promote your content as viral, and of course, stay safe from LinkedIn’s wrath.
And, that’s not all.
You know that the people who comment on the post are genuine about their interest in your topic that they would step out of their way to give you a little attention. In a sense, you’ve already started your qualification process.
There are the people that you want as your connections and prospects.
Here’s how you do it.
- Get a giveaway ready. Something that doesn’t just have value, but something that is actionable as well.
- On the caption of the post, tell them that they have to comment on the post in order to get the link of the giveaway.
There are a couple of ways for them to comment, they can comment on a particular word (or phrase), or better yet, tell them to tag someone in the post so that they can grab your special offer.
- Once they comment you can connect with them and send them the link yourself – but make sure that you clear this out in the caption of the post – or you can also comment with the link as a reply to their comment.
- While you’re at it, make sure that the post itself has three hashtags so that LinkedIn can accurately categorize it.
By doing this, you can avoid giving out any link in your post altogether.
You’re now relying on organic traffic to get people to go on your site.
I’ve done this so many times in the past and I’ve managed to rake in a lot of views for this strategy.
Did any of them become clients?
Of course.
Here’s an example.
This giveaway had more than 350 comments on it, and due to that volume, we managed to get more than 30,000 views.
That is enough proof that you can go viral on LinkedIn if you play your cards right.
What Else Can You Do?
There are a lot of things you can do after managing to get a link on your post.
- Get extra comments and engagements by using a LinkedIn pod to get virality going. You can use a tool like lempod to do this.
- Grab a list of the people that have engaged with your content but haven’t converted by using Phantombuster. You don’t want to waste your audience.
- Make sure the link that they’re going to has a Pixel so that you can retarget prospects after they end up in your landing page.
- Use the opportunity to onboard leads into your CRM and your funnels. Our second alternative, for example, allows you to contact your prospects personally opening the doors to lead qualification.
Takeaways
Having your website in your post – using our creative examples – is a great way to get a lot of inbound leads on your website without having to buy ads on LinkedIn.
You see, not everyone has the budget to do that.
The strategies that we outlined in this guide can be done without having to spend a single dime.
Being a great hacker doesn’t always have to be about how much money you can pour in your campaign, but rather how creative you can push your campaign forward.
Before I leave, let me remind you again.
Whatever you do.
NEVER PUT YOUR WEBSITE LINK ON YOUR LINKEDIN POST.
Don’t mess with LinkedIn’s bottom line, or they’ll mess with yours.
Stay Golden.
