In our last email we said that as a default, the best place for you to post your content is probably on Linkedin.

It's where people hang out for business. And it's easy to find potential clients with the search features.

And although people on Linkedin aren't as active as on Facebook, there's been a lot of progress in recent years.

But how do you make sure the right people see your content?

To figure that out, you have to understand the Linkedin algorithm a little bit.

Now I'm not saying I'm some deep, geeky algorithm expert. But I've learnt and tested enough that it's working well for me (and for a small gang I've been teaching this to recently).

Really there are two things you should know.

The first is that Linkedin by default only really shows your posts to your connections. And especially the ones you've recently interacted with.

If they like or comment on your posts, it can then show it to their connections too.

So very obviously, you should be connecting with and interacting with the people you want to see your content (there's a special “advanced” tip on how to make sure your connection request gets accepted next time).  

Secondly, Linkedin decides how many of those connections to show your post to based on how “engaging” it thinks the post is. In other words, it's trying to show people posts they'll enjoy and value.

Now since Linkedin isn't so advanced it can tell how engaging a post is just by looking at it, it has to go based on what other people think of it.

So what it does is initially show your post to a small percentage of your connections. And then it measures how they react.

If your post gets lots of likes and comments and people spend time reading it in the first couple of hours, then Linkedin will show the post to a bigger percentage of your connections (and a bit to the connections of the people who liked and commented too).

If that goes well, it'll show it more widely still. Rinse and repeat.

However, if your post gets very little love early on, it'll kill its reach stone dead.

Of course, it’s a bit more complex than that in practice. There are various potential reviews and filters in place to make sure people don't game the system and that it doesn’t end up sharing spammy content.

But that's the essence.

And there are a couple of important implications.

The first is that if you want your post to be seen widely by your connections, you need to be creating not just valuable content, but “likeable” and “commentable” content.

There's a strong overlap between good and “likeable” and “commentable” of course. But it tends to mean that stories work well rather than facts and figures. Asking questions works well. Writing about emotive topics works well.

But here's the other key implication that many people overlook…

It means that you have to be careful who you're connected to.

If like most of us, you've always kind of randomly accepted connection requests on Linkedin from people who look like decent sorts but who aren't particularly in your target market or connected to them then you may have a problem.

They might be lovely people, but if you write content on leadership skills for people in service businesses and they're not leaders or aspiring leaders in service businesses then they're not going to be interested in reading your posts.

The same is true of course no matter what your field. There will only really be a limited number of people genuinely interested in your content. Most likely potential clients because that's who you're writing to help.

So if these connections who aren't interested in your content end up being randomly selected by Linkedin as part of the initial small percentage they show a post to then, of course, they won't like or comment on it.

That's not a problem if 80% of your contacts are people who would be interested. A few who aren't won't hurt too much.

But if you've got lots of contacts who aren't interested in your content – 80:20 in the other direction – then it's a big problem.

It means that very few of the initial people your post is shared with will engage with it and Linkedin will think the post just isn't that good and stop sharing it.

Hardly any of your other connections will see it.

So you'll get hardly any of that lovely credibility building and relationship building you're looking for.

The answer is to prune your connections down sharply so they're almost all people who would be interested in the content you share.

That might seem a bit harsh.

It might mean disconnecting from genuinely nice people who you'd be happy to chat with if you met them.

But if you're serious about using content on Linkedin to reach your ideal clients you must make sure your connections are almost all the type of people who are going to be interested in that content.

Otherwise your content is hardly going to be seen by anyone.

Action step for now: take a look at your Linkedin connections and see how many of them you think are truly relevant and are likely to comment or like your posts.

You might well be shocked at just how many random connections you've picked up over the years that you really should prune back on.