Yesterday, on 14.06.2021 I got to the post of the day with 125 upvotes.
Here is how I created the post.
Topic
It’s not always easy to come up with topics to write about.
I have been experimenting with different kinds of posts on LinkedIn and noticed one of my posts had a pretty high engagement.
Here are the LinkedIn stats on my post about my learnings about attending the Y Combinator Free Startup School.
KPI | Result |
---|---|
Views | 1,421 |
Engagements | 15 |
Comments | 5 |
Engagement Rate (ER) | 1,42% |
Data per 15.06.2021
The ER was above my other postings which is why I decided to write up a long article.
Writing Process
I have a trello board for collecting ideas and bringing order into parts of my content.
So I added this article idea and started out with the draft.
I quickly noticed this can be a 1,000+ words article, which is why I split it up into small parts, just writing the headlines and small chunks.
After having the general outline of the article I started with the easiest part, which took a little research, but less creativity.
After completing this I let it rest for a day or two.
Then, I wrote down the “heavy” part, where I had to rethink my experience with YC and dig up some images.
User Feedback
I looked up some of my followers on LinkedIn and send them my first draft.
Most of them were kind enough to read through the ~2,000 words and give me feedback.
From the 7 people I asked for feedback, 3 replied and gave me really well-thought through feedback.
The Post
At first I thought I will just post the whole article as a LinkedIn Article and use parts as a post.
One of my LinkedIn connections brought up the idea of splitting up the post.
I thought this makes sense, as people prefer shorter posts on the LinkedIn stream.
Still, I wanted to test out the article and see whether is’ actually likeable.
Which is why I went to reddit and posted it on the subreddit r/startups with 766k followers.
I saw some postings about not actually acting on startup ideas so I changed the title from
“What I learned in 12 weeks at YCombinators’ Free Startup School”
-> How it’s published here
to
“Freeing yourself from being a “Wannapreneur” and some advice on learning about startups online at no cost”
I guess the main insight here is, adjust your angle to the audience you are speaking to.
The main arguments I am making in the article are the same.
It’s only the headline, which I fitted to the target audience.
Final Thought
A questions that came up for me is:
Could I have utilized this post for traffic of my own website?
At the moment my main goal is to get a better understanding of creating valuable content.
So, as this post only gave my reddit account a lot of karma I am fine with actually not gaining any traffic from it.
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