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PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING INSIGHTS

| 1 minute read

When a picture isn't worth a 1,000 words: LinkedIn penalises image previews on posts

Thanks to Theo Smith's post I've seen a massive increase in views, clicks, likes and comments on posts I've shared on LinkedIn. How? I've stopped using the image preview feature (by which I mean the rich link, where a picture pops up as below). 

Here is how I used to typically post links to LinkedIn, as you can see, this recent one didn't go too well:

Pretty disappointing results for a post that's been popular elsewhere. I decided to re-share this post half-an-hour ago. In that space of time, it has already overtaken in number of views, and got 1 like and 3 clicks, so it seems it's received twice as much visibility on the network already:

What's interesting is that LinkedIn automatically generates an image preview, so if you're posting directly (or using Buffer), you'll need to physically remove the preview to try this trick:

Generally speaking, when you post on LinkedIn, you get a much longer tail of visibility and interaction than on other networks, so here's another example of a post shared a week ago, without an image preview:

The difference is pretty striking. While this technique might not last forever, it's worth giving it a try right now to make sure the right people get an opportunity to read your content.

Linkedin is prioritising original posts over those with links and specifically with images. You'll achieve around 10x more views if you post without an image! As you can see below I posted one of my recent blogs with a link and an image. Over several weeks this received 110 views.

Tags

content marketing, b2b marketing, linkedin, top tips, social media