Justin Welsh’s success isn’t an accident.
You don’t build a $5 million solopreneur business around 471,000 LinkedIn followers without knowing what works on the platform.
His LinkedIn OS and Content OS courses are great – I recommend them.
But…
LinkedIn’s algorithm changes as often as Taylor Swift changes boyfriends.
(Welcome to the “team” Travis Kelce!)
And that means what works best on LinkedIn constantly changes too.
So…
I analyzed how Justin used LinkedIn last month and learned some valuable lessons.
I didn’t speak with Justin for this post (though I have before and it was SUPER helpful), so it’s possible some of my assumptions are incorrect.
(But I doubt it.)
Here’s what I noticed…
Justin’s Profile Strategy
Justin’s LinkedIn profile is verified.
No idea if that affects the reach of his posts or not, but it has to help.
After seeing that, I went and got myself verified.
It only took a couple minutes – here’s how to do it.
His header image promotes his LinkedIn product.
I don’t think that was always the case – he used to use it to describe who he was in general (I think).
But now it’s a billboard for his product which makes particular sense since his product is about LinkedIn which means 100% of his profile visitors are his product’s target audience.
It’s like if whenever I subscribed to someone’s newsletter I did so from the email address ICanHelpYouGrowYourNewsletter@IfYouCareAboutThatWhichIKnowYouDo.org.
(Maybe that’s not the best analogy, but whatever.)
The link in Justin’s bio and the About section of his profile link to his product as opposed to his newsletter or website home page.
Sensing a theme here? I am.
He’s optimized every element of his profile to drive product sales.
Justin’s Posting Strategy
Here’s where it feels like Justin’s strategy has evolved from his courses.
(Though it’s possible he’s updated those courses since I last consumed them.)
The shifts are a direct result of how LinkedIn’s algorithm has evolved.
Every one of his posts includes an image.
Most are modified tweet images.
(Update: Justin let me know that Tweetpik is the tool he uses to easily create these images.)
He strips a lot of the Twitter “stuff” out of the images, but keeps the retweet and like numbers on them.
Why?
It’s a way to sneak in social proof since those numbers are always impressive.
He posts once a day, early morning East coast time, every day.
In addition to the images, his posts include lengthy copy in the post itself – always enough to trigger the “see more” option which creates an additional engagement opportunity to catch the algorithm’s attention.
That’s LinkedIn 101 strategy at this point, but…
Here’s more of a master class strategy:
Justin includes a link to his website in every post. (Sort of.)
This goes against the conventional wisdom that social algorithms reduce reach for links off-site.
(And by conventional, I mean something I say all the time.)
But…
Every one of his posts has also been edited after it was published.
What he’s doing (I think) is publishing posts without links and then going back to edit them and add a link at the bottom of the post after it’s been up for a while…
And after it’s already been scored by the algorithm.
Smart.
He gives the algorithm what it wants (initially) AND gets what he wants (on a slight delay).
The links primarily go to his archival blog posts and newsletters on his site.
It’s a real Content Maximizer power move.
(Btw, enter code MAXIMIZER25 at checkout on that page and watch what happens.) 😉
Another realization:
His posting approach gives him three shots to attract engagement in every post.
Some readers will like the image, some will like the copy, and some will click the link.
Compare that to what most people do which is jot down some thoughts with no image or link.
They’ve only got one shot per post to draw engagement out of readers.
Also: Most people’s LinkedIn posts suck, so that’s doesn’t help their cause either.
(Minor detail.)
Justin’s Comment Strategy
This feels similar to what he’s preached in his courses for a while.
He replies to a bunch of comments on his posts shortly after they get published to juice the algorithm and then dips back in to respond to a few more an hour or so later.
He doesn’t respond to every comment (he gets way too many to do that), and most of his replies are short and sweet – just quick acknowledgments of his commenters.
As far as replying to other accounts goes…
He does that daily, but seems to only post a few a day and clearly has identified a few people’s accounts where he wants to be particularly active (Sahil Bloom and Dan Go for example).
Justin’s (NEW!) Page Strategy
Now here’s something completely new!
A couple weeks ago Justin set up a separate LinkedIn company page for his Saturday Solopreneur newsletter.
The first post was about a week ago and it’s up to 27,000 followers at the moment.
His posting strategy on it seems to be the same as his personal profile, but with one BIG twist:
Instead of only posting his own tweet images, he also posts images from other successful solopreneur types (who he tags in the posts and who often share them with their audiences).
For example, Alex Hormozi and Codie Sanchez were recently featured.
He posts once a day on the page, comments on those posts from his personal account, and (I assume) drives eyeballs to it in that way.
I don’t see any direct promotional posts for the new page from his personal account, so maybe he’s still in testing mode.
It’s a smart test and easy to envision how it can become a second outlet to leverage for reach – in addition to helping grow his newsletter.
(Note: He might have also promoted that page in his newsletter itself, but I don’t know because I only studied his LinkedIn activity for the purposes of this post.)
Good For Justin, But…Who Cares?
Thanks for asking!
(I said sarcastically to the hypothetical sarcastic reader who asked.)
The point is if you pay attention to how successful people use the tools you use, you can apply what they do to your work.
(Duh!)
Also, it’s a reminder social media platforms constantly evolve.
(That Twitter course you bought two years ago from “The Twitter Guy” probably won’t help you much in our new Elon hellscape.)
Change is inevitable, so pay attention.
Actually…
I take that back.
Change isn’t inevitable – lots of people never change.
Those people are called “frustrated.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me…
I’ve got to go edit my LinkedIn post about how to write LinkedIn posts and add a link to it.