As a little experiment I posted the same post, same picture and same message at the same time on both Twitter and LinkedIn to compare the amount and nature of the engagement created.
by Darren Caveney
The reason was to see the response and engagement differences of identical content.
And to illustrate the benefits I’ve been extolling upon LinkedIn for some time now to people I work with.
There still appears to be a bit of ‘meh’ from some comms pros regarding LinkedIn. Yes of course there are a few plonkers on there and a bit of showing off. But I have been watching it’s engagement potential grow over the past two years and seen the platform really maturing and throw up opportunities.
So, the caveats are it’s one post on one day so it clearly isn’t robust research.
I’ll do more of this over the next few weeks and revisit the engagement comparisons to see if a firm picture builds.
The content and message
It was a fairly standard message and not the most engaging content in the world, as you’ll see below, but that’s a good yardstick to use in my view. It didn’t have huge levels of engagement - I wanted to use an average piece of content.
It was posted at 7.30am on a Wednesday morning.
Engagement rates – the lowdown
The findings
Crude as it might be at this stage the results do confirm a pattern I have noticed that people are becoming more active on LinkedIn first thing in the morning.
The second observation is that the lifespan of a post on LinkedIn can be huge – up to two weeks for really engaging and popular content. Twitter will rarely see engagement beyond 24-36 hours for a single tweet.
LinkedIn generated more comments.
Twitter achieved one more like and more than double the views, or opportunities to see as I like to think of them.
But as a percentage of follower numbers/connections LinkedIn created more likes and comments.
UPDATE: 4 days later…
The post on LinkedIn is still being seen and getting engagement.
The views have jumped to 1.7k, attracting 16 likes and 6 comments. So, overall, has slightly out-performed Twitter, I would argue.
The verdict
For me, all comms pros should be on Twitter - it’s the number one breaking news channel and an influential professional platform.
And I add LinkedIn to that essential role for profile raising, network building, promotion of our offer and keeping in touch with people frankly we see less of in our Covid world.
Darren Caveney is creator and owner of comms2point0 and creative communicators ltd
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