Invisible Man – A Linkedin Experiment

Experiment: As an experiment I posted the following on Friday 28th February 2020 at around 5pm.

Linkedin post

Please click ‘like’ if you are one of my 1,973 connections to see this post. This is an experiment to see how well Linkedin can work for you when you don’t pay for promoted posts. #b2bmarketing #design

Results: After one and a half weeks there were 9,976 views of my post, according to Linkedin. Of my 1,973 1st degree connections (coincidentally the year I was born) I received 210 likes and 32 comments. I also received 40 likes from 2nd and 3rd degree connections.

Typo: There was a typo on the spelling of ‘Invisible’  but only 2 connections commmented. Perhaps it was politeness, couldntcarelessness or is spellcheck (including Grammarly) helping us lose the proof/ability to spot typos. There is also a possibility of middle letter blindness as famously highlighted by National Geographic amongst others. 

Thanks to Michael Kelly who sent me this article which highlights some of the key success factors for an organic Linkedin post. These include commenting from connections, ideally as quickly as possible, use of #hashtags, 3 seems the optimum number, not posting too often and adding links is bad, and only tag those that will respond.

Insights: Many Linkedin accounts/users rarely (occasional job hunters) or never log in. Many more are infrequent users and although they may view posts, wouldn’t interact by liking or commenting. I only asked connections (ie 1st degree) to like, so 10% is the approximate success. Its human nature to want to help when asked to ‘like’ a post yet 90%, assuming full visibility didn’t do anything. If its just awareness you are looking for then almost 10,000 views is excellent, interaction at 3% (32 comments), is ok for B2B. So if you follow best practise and create good engaging content it should definitely be part of your B2B mix.