To Pod Or Not To Pod?

It’s a simple and tough call at the same moment.

With engagement pods usage on social networks, people usually fall into three groups:

• No pods never
• Yep, why not! It’s a tough game
• Mmm, maybe, but…

Even though this post is not that long, let’s start from the very beginning.

Believe me, you will find some value for yourself and your business)).

WHEN IT ALL STARTS

It all starts when we need leads for our business.

Traffic and leads are fuel for our business, w/o them we are all dead. We simply won’t be able to pay our bills. Full stop.

No need to create something if you can’t sell it. Another way to say it.

No?

You disagree?)))

So leads-leads-leads.

What do we do?

We hunt on LinkedIn.

We develop the plan of how we are going to attract them (our leads).

We prepare the tools needed for our hunt, useful means for the job.

We search for the so sweetie bait that almost all potential viewers should pay attention to.

And we put all the pieces into the puzzle, or at least we think so.

So, when time is up, what we see?

• Hours spent on the brilliant idea to use
• Days spent for the so sexy post to write and fine-tune
• Another couple of hours (or daysJ) to put everything together: from creative to images, URL, sign-up form and even follow-up messages
• One week passed and our LinkedIn funnel is almost live

Yes, almost.

We press the magic button “LAUNCH” and… waiting…

10 minutes passed – nothing

25 minutes passed – 1 view. We go to make a coffee, it’s a stressful and critical time(((.

33 minutes passed – 5 views…

1 hour – 17 views and 1 comment. Maybe not bad, but for the week of hard work – nothing, zero.

…

…

…

3-4 days – 235 views, 9 followers and 1 strange connection request.

F..k, it was not what I expected?(((

How do we feel?

Disappointed, at least. Frustrated. Sometimes even broke, it depends on the cycle we are currently in.

1 week of work, no any follow-up with current clients, the long pile of emails and other business routines to do. Family has not seen us for the last 2 weeks… Friends… They forgot about us.

Every second for the past week was dedicated to this simple new post, fresh approach, new tactic to get slightly more leads than we usually do. To boost our monthly sales to 14%.

Flop?

Failure?

…

Honestly, I am not sure about that.

Why?

Cause we did not test our work on sufficient amount of audience.

We’ve built something, but nobody saw it.

235 views is nothing to justify success or failure of our work.

235 views is just NOTHING!

The audience does not even have a chance to:

• see us and our work,
• get acquainted with us,
• try us
• and later to buy.

So how we can blame ourselves for building some “flop” funnel, when in reality we even didn’t show it?

…

Here we come to starting point – views, we need views, sufficient amount of them. So that we can objectively measure success of our campaign.

Otherwise, we are in worse position than hamster on the wheel. We can’t evaluate hours/weeks of hard work and lost opportunities…

Views. Views. Views.

Where to get them?

What can we do? What can we do on LinkedIn?

Classically, we have 3 options (magic number))):

1. pay for ads, LinkedIn ads for example
2. use engagement boost (manual, automated, and there is the other way)
3. fight the windmills

Some details.

1.Paying for Ads. Here you need not only tons of money, but knowledge and time on how to manage ads or your ads manager. Otherwise, it will be the other way to lose valuable resources and time. Additionally, it mainly works for medium and large businesses. Small ones are not that ready for that option.

3.Fight the windmills. Here I mean, continue the approach described above + continuous testing, experimenting, tweaking to find your way out. Normally less than 1% succeed. For sure, it’s a choice.

2.Use engagement boost. By that I mean to get initial engagement from the 3rd party so that your content can be visible to a larger audience. Yep, it’s a trick with the algorithm, but we always have a choice: 1, 2 or 3. And to know exactly how it works we should first understand the workings of LinkedIn algorithm and why initial engagement boost is so important and can be really helpful in our case.

INITIAL ENGAGEMENT BOOST

We talked about views.

Views are so needed to even understand whether we do everything right for our business.

Views are prerequisites to all our validations and business growth with leads-leads-leads.

No VIEWS => NO INFO, no understanding => WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO((((

BUT views on LinkedIn are generated in certain pattern, particularly LinkedIn algorithm.

And the logic here is pretty much straightforward.

HOW LinkedIn DECIDES WHICH CONTENT TO SHOW?

Step 0. We publish our LinkedIn post

Step 1. LinkedIn shows our content to a small group of people to evaluate their level of engagement

Step 2. If our post gets enough of engagement (likes, other reactions, and comments), LinkedIn will show it to all of our 1^st connections

Step 3. If our content continues to gather likes and comments, LinkedIn will show it further and further, until it goes viral.

Quite simple, yep?

Yes and No.

Why?

Cause from that “initial engagement” depends whether our content AT ALL is shown to even all 1^st connections.

Mmm, not sexy((((

Also, most people (I am not an exception) don’t much engage, not ready to like, comment, but a passive observer.

So what do we have?

We have very little support when it is so much needed. At least we all think so.

We need some help with that INITIAL ENGAGEMENT BOOST, step 2 in LinkedIn algorithm process. Here are two ways (the way “fight the windmills”, I don’t consider here):

• engagements pods: manual or automated
• this is the way (alternative to pods. Hope you remember the name of the post :-))

ENGAGEMENT PODS

I believe you know what engagement pod is.

In 2 words, engagement pod is a private group that engages with each other’s content to trick the algorithm of social network platform. The target here is to get high initial engagement rate so that the needed content goes viral.

All the engagement interactions with content can be done manually or thanks to automations.

Manually. Here we would need to go like and comment on someone’s post and in return should get our favor back.

Cons here: time-time-time-time and the work doesn’t cost the effort(((((

Automated. More interesting animal. The process is a kind of automated, so “someone” with our profile will like/comment in return that the other people of the pod community engaged with our content.

Cons here: still time-time plus we give to the software we use the access to our LinkedIn account, so it’s doing “something” on our behalf. Even though it just likes/comments. You can also imagine that software is not another human being, but a piece of code.

This is what the engagement pod is.

But there is an alternative))

THIS IS THE WAY

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with engagement pods. I understand them and I respect them. I used them myself and quite successfully.

You can use them and get some results, but you would also spend more time and resources than originally planned. It could be very costly. As always, with every tool.

But I might have a better alternative for you especially:

• if you don’t want any association with a pod, but still need “initial engagement boost” to get more VIEWS
• if you value your time and effort to create more valuable content and delight your customers, but still need “initial engagement boost” to get more VIEWS
• if you want to keep your LinkedIn account for yourself and safe!, away from automations and chrome extensions.

Spoiler. It’s not an engagement pod))))

With this solution:

.you don’t need to be in a group

.you don’t need to message somebody and wait for their reply

.you don’t need to like/comment or whatever in return

.you don’t need to worry and expect whether you get initial engagement boost

.you don’t need to search and join any pods

.you don’t need any chrome extension or whatever

.you don’t need to give access to any 3^rd party app or whatever

.you don’t need any automation for getting visibility on LinkedIn

.you don’t need to lose so much time and effort

What you need is JUST 3 simple steps:

Step 1. Copy/paste your LinkedIn post URL

Step 2. Define/Select comments to be used for your post

Step 3. Press the button “Growth.Cool Boost”

As simple as that.

And what do we, Growth.Cool team, do after step 3?

We will take care of your initial engagement boost! We will make sure that our supportive LinkedIn community will like, comment and even repost your content.

PLUS engagement on your content will be delivered within golden hours.

Be sure your content is visible to your 1^st level connections and to a wider LinkedIn audience.

But don’t forget that Content is King, we help with that little, but so valuable push to reach broader audience on LinkedIn – with “initial engagement boost”.

And what to do now?

Just START YOUR FREE TRIAL with us. Nothing to lose, but to get engagement on LinkedIn for free.

Please:

• Press the button below
• Register (name, email, password)
• Confirm your email
• Get 2 boosts with 100 likes and 50 comments in total

and get 100 likes delivered when they are so needed!

*no credit card required

Questions? Drop as a line at info@growth.cool

Hope I answered the question “to pod or not to pod”)))

No matter what you choose, I wish you more leads and more time with your family.

Stay safe

Nick K.

P.S. What do you think about this post? Please leave a comment below.

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Take your LinkedIn Content Strategy to the next level with Growth.Cool

Social networks want you to spend a ton of money in ads spend to make your posts visible, to reach your audience, to promote your business and generate more leads. BUT we have a better solution for YOU!

• LinkedIn post. When you post on LinkedIn, the algorithm first shows your post to your nearest network. Small part of it, kind of sample.
• Engagement rate. Based on the comments and likes, the algorithm decides whether the content is relevant/useful/interesting or not. Whether it worth distributing further.
• Pass the test. If the rate is promising, especially within the first couple of hours after publishing, LinkedIn shows the post to the wider network and so on.
• Avalanche effect. If your content continues to get a high engagement rate (comments, likes, and re-posts), LinkedIn expands it exponentially. Your content goes VIRAL.

So what do we do?

We engage with your posts on LinkedIn to give your content initial engagement boost, so needed and so critical! So that your LinkedIn CONTENT can get the highest possible reach ever!

and get 100 likes delivered when they are so needed!

*no credit card required

Questions? Drop as a line at info@growth.cool