Tell me more, tell me more.
How LinkedIn posts are like the first big number in Grease
Ah, if real life were a musical, LinkedIn posts would take a cue from the musical Grease and Summer Nights.
Tell me more, tell me more!
In a blog post from HootSuite, Paul Shapiro of Search Wilderness shares his analysis of 3,000 of the most successful posts on LinkedIn. On average, these posts received 42,505 views, 567 comments, and 138,841 likes.
What was the common denominator?
Length.
Grease may be the word, but the more successful LinkedIn posts have 1899 more.
“Posts between 1900 and 2000 words perform the best,” writes Shapiro. “[They] gain the greatest number of post views, LinkedIn likes, LinkedIn comments, and LinkedIn shares.”
If your writing speed is a little less than Greased Lightning and you don’t have the kind of bandwidth to produce a post of that length, shoot for a minimum of 1200 to 1400 characters. That’s about 5-7 three sentence paragraphs.
Yet the numbers you want to pay more attention are the first 140 characters. That’s precisely what you see in a LinkedIn post before you get to the “See More” link. So, you want those first 140 characters—25 words, more or less—to make a mark. Sort of like a “hickey from Kenickie”. Otherwise, a long form LinkedIn post won’t attract as many readers.
If you’re now in a mood to watch Grease, you may want to check out Amazon Prime Video’s reboot/prequel.
Wendy’s wallpapers
Last week, we talked about how changing things up can make a world of difference—even if it’s something as trivial as wearing a funky hat or changing your font. I forgot to mention a change in your desktop wallpaper can do the same. To that end, I offer this photo from my high school friend Wendy.
Wendy loves to hike out in nature and takes thousands of shots each year. I tell her she should be selling this stuff. But she just does it for fun. So, with her blessing, I’m sharing her work. This one is now my wallpaper. I encourage you to do the same.
To download, right-click on the photo and then select “Save Image As”. This will lead you to a menu where you can name the file and where you want to store it.
But what about…Habit Examples
A few weeks back, we talked about the book Atomic Habits and the powerful way those impact our lives. Here’s a noted from newsletter devoted to that Habit Examples.
It’s already [insert current month], and how are your habits *really* doing? Build better habits with sciencey tips and inspiring stories. Read in 5 mins every Tuesday, 100% free.[
Inspiring quote of the week
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”—Cormac McCarthy