How to Get People to Leave More Comments on Your LinkedIn Posts
In case you’re new to LinkedIn I’ll just cut right to the chase: engagement on your content makes or breaks your success.
All engagement i.e. ‘likes”, “re-shares”, and “comments” is important (that signals to the algorithm that people are finding your content useful and interesting) but comments are king.
And if comments are king that means leaving a strong ‘takeaway sentence’ (more on this) and easy to answer question at the end that invites someone to jump in and respond in your comments section is queen.
A heaping, lively, a bit of challenging back-and-forth dialogue in your comment section = a successful LinkedIn post and strong engagement.
So how do you make sure that happens…if you want people to leave comments on your LinkedIn posts
Remember this:
LinkedIn is a VERY visible platform.
The actions any user takes will get announced to your entire audience’s feed.
I.e. “So and so commented {THIS} on so and so’s post” and it’ll pop up as a mini announcement when their network is scrolling through. Personally, I like this. I like seeing who my audience is engaging with and it introduces me to new creators.
It’s great for you too, because it’s how your content gets pushed out to new users. When someone in your network comments on one of your posts, it appears on the feed of their connections, too. And that’s why LinkedIn has such fantastic organic reach.
But also, knowing that, it leaves people hesitant to get wildly vulnerable or reveal too much in a public LinkedIn comment. It means they might not leave a comment or engage at all on a post related to a job change, personal health, or business resource they don’t want anyone to know they’re seeking out.
(Which is why you shouldn’t take engagement too too seriously, SO many people are lurking instead of actively engaging)
But if you’re wanting to drive more engagement to your posts, especially comments, and effectively use questions to make this happen, remember this:
1. Keep the question at the end of your post super simple that doesn’t require a ton of deep thinking “agree/disagree” goes a long way (people are busy and are going to move on if it requires them to dig tooo deep)
Avoid questions like - “what do you think about the theory of gravitational matter and how is it going to impact xyz”
Instead ask something like — “have you noticed this too?”
2. Make sure the body of your post also has some anchors people can refer back to in a comment, numbers are effective for people to call out “yes I love point # 3”
You’d be shocked at how well this works. If you clearly number or label your ideas it makes it super easy for someone to grab onto one of them and then reference back in a comment without having to write out the whole concept. Much like why menus number their food ordering options. It just makes it easy.
3. Lean towards the positive when asking a final question i.e., “what’s your biggest struggle” might not get a ton of replies as people want to appear professional
Avoid questions that are going to require anyone to reveal anything too vulnerable. For example a question at the end of a post like “Tell me about the time you had a toxic leader in your organization and what you did about it?”
No one is going to public write about their last toxic boss in a LinkedIn comment - so don’t ask it and make people feel weird. Or similarly, “What are you struggling with right now as a business owner” people want to protect their reputation and likely aren’t going to answer for the rest of their audience see.
People will appreciate that you’re not putting them in the position of having to get uncomfortable in your comments section and will instead jump in to participate if you’re keeping it more low stakes.
4. End with a “Hallmark greeting” that is universally relatable, people will want to be seen agreeing with
I’ve had a lot of success using these types of post endings. By “Hallmark greeting” I mean something like: “Everyone deserves a break” or “Don’t give up before the miracle” or “You never know what making one connection could do for your business”. a) they’re uplifting and inspiring (and hope sells) and b) who doesn’t want to be seen agreeing with those.
5. Make such a statement in your piece of content or final sentence that people literally cannot scroll by without saying something.
Now this isn’t an approach I personally take but I do see it happening out there. If you’re really polarizing or really going there - then yes, it will compel people to jump in and say “that’s ridiculous and can’t be true!” or “You’re a maniac, you’re such a hypocrite!”
Again, not something I ever do but it is a tactic you could use if you wanted.
So, in closing, in order to drive engagement and ensure you have a healthy comment section on your posts, you need to think thoughtfully about your final few sentences in order to make it happen.
You’ll know you nailed your ending question (or wrote quality post content) when your comments section is popping off.
I hope this helps!
Thanks for reading! Learn more about Molly’s LinkedIn services, courses, and programs here.