500,000 LinkedIn Views/Month With Andreas Jonsson @ Shield Analytics

When talking about getting content in front of millions of people, most marketers will talk about it through the lens of organic search. While there’s no doubt that most companies facilitate their growth through well-executed SEO, some businesses can grow like crazy without it. 

Andreas Johnson, co-founder of SHIELD Analytics—the #1 LinkedIn analytics platform, achieved incredible success just through LinkedIn organics and word of mouth. 

His profile gets over 500,000 views per month! In 2021 alone, his posts were seen over 4,000,000 times. 

In this AMA, Andreas talks about creating engaging content that resonates with your target audience, the importance of establishing a strong social presence, leveraging LinkedIn to scale your business, and more. 

SHIELD on Social Selling

Q: How did you scale LinkedIn growth efforts across the team? What does your playbook look like?

A: It started with just us as founders. When we were building in the very early days, it made a whole lot of sense to immerse ourselves. So we did. We soon realized how beneficial it was to us and the company. 

And so we kept going and that’s the culture we try to instill today – that each and everyone can and will benefit from building brand and creating original content on LinkedIn. Our playbook is based mostly on timeless principles than anything else really.

Q: How do you create a LinkedIn Content Ops framework for enabling team members that are busy doing their actual jobs, to build a brand on LinkedIn?

A: I think there are two dimensions to this question.

One is to build up maturity and understanding of the space. If your team realizes how it actually benefits them personally, then it becomes easier to embrace as motivation shifts from an external source (ie. you) to an internal source (themselves).

Secondly, it’s all about getting into the feed consistently. So working on activity, identifying one’s audience and their key issues, identifying content pillars, and understanding how different content types play into that. It’s mostly tactical around increasing activity when you understand why it all matters.

To summarize, I’d make sure your team understands what’s in it for them – potentially leading with a story of what was in it for you when you began building.

Q: What is the best time to hit US and EU audiences?

A: It depends. Who in US? Who in EU? You can either play it somewhat safe and aim for pre-work hours or post-work hours. Or around lunch time, assuming people check their phones then. There’s no cold hard truth here. Fortunately, there are apps out there to help with that (hint hint)

Q: How important is engaging on LinkedIn, for getting reach on LinkedIn?

A: The answer here is twofold. Technically, I’m not sure how your own engagement is, generally speaking, to get better reach. 

In terms of social behavior, the law of reciprocity would encourage timely, relevant engagement at all times. I apply the latter and good things seem to happen.

Q: How important are engagement pods? We notice a lot more reach when our team engages with eachothers content, then when we don’t

A: I always discourage use of automated pods as they’re not contributing to healthy relationships. Voluntary, manual engagement pods (within a team or company) makes more sense, for example “I just posted about X, here’s the link!”

Q: What is the thing most people trying to grow on LinkedIn should be doing but aren’t

A: be themselves. Be authentic. Most wanna be perceived as experts right off the bat. I think we should all embrace who we are, what our unique voice is, and start from there.

Q: What’s the earned media value of 500k views per month?

A: It depends on what you’d have to pay for the same reach amongst the same audience. In Shield we put in a slider to adjust your would-be CPM cost to match how narrow or broad your audience is. 500k organic views is at least $4,000 in earned media value – for sure – and that’s without counting any engagement whatsoever which naturally would hike the price way up (in a hypothetical scenario where you could purchase genuine engagement too).

Q: You get 500k views/month, how many views are your team members doing?

A: Depends on their posting activity, of course. They get a little less but are catching up quickly. It’s worth noting that I started at least 12 months before them. They’ll outperform me in no time.

Q: Do LinkedIn Ads work for SaaS companies or is it better to just use LinkedIn as a one-to-one outreach platform?

A: The power of LinkedIn (backed by data and experience) is definitely the organic content from personal profiles. I have very limited experience with ads but I’ve seen budgets shift more than once – from paid ads to employee advocacy and engagement. And it makes total sense if you ask me!

Q: Can I have a team member run engagement on my account (engaging with other folks’ content) while I use my account for sales?

A: I guess you could. But why not engage yourself? All the insights and understanding that comes from being in close touch with your audience is key! Besides, account sharing is against LinkedIn’s terms.

SHIELD’s Content Creation Process

Q: What does your content creation/publishing process look like?

A: I’m a writer by heart so in my day to day, I write a whole lot. Notes, drafts, ideas, thoughts, etc. It’s first and foremost journaling, to be honest. From there, I will refine it a little and post. Or elaborate on it, and it becomes a longform piece. So a very organic process for me personally, I must admit.

Q: How do you manage the social content production process? I think ours needs more work

A: At Shield, people create on their own terms, the content they feel passionate about, and when they post, they share it on Slack.

On the sideline, we work on the maturity and understanding of the space as a whole.

What we’ve found is that when people get it, and it clicks, they find their own unique way which is very much in line with being authentic, one of the key principles for winning on social.

Q: I’ve ramped up content publishing to 5x/week. Should I post on weekends too?

A: Weekends are great on LinkedIn. Seems like people have the time to invest.

Q: Any correlation between content type (video, pic, text) and reach?

A: Yeah, we see patterns. Text is always performing well. Carousels (pdfs) too. Video gets less views but typically higher engagement as it conveys more trust and personality. Either way, create what you enjoy creating. Otherwise it becomes a chore. And no one likes chores.

Q: Can founders effectively hire 3rd party ghost writers? If so, where should they look, what should they look for, how should they evaluate candidates?

A: I have limited personal experience with this but we have a bunch of agencies using Shield to document their efforts as ghostwriters and personal branding agencies. 

I’d suggest searching on LinkedIn with the keywords of what you’re after. When it comes to evaluating, have them use Shield and document their effort and impact on your account in follower growth and audience engagement, for example.

SHIELD on LinkedIn

Q: What’s Shield Analytics’ relationship like with LinkedIn? 

A: We have a good relationship with folks at LinkedIn. I mean, we’re creating a product and ecosystem that makes people create, engage and spend more time on their platform, starting and encouraging meaningful conversations.

Q: Why do polls get so much reach, and how do I structure my poll for optimal engagement?

A: Polls are definitely the flavor of the month. It’ll balance out, I’m sure. If you wanna reap the rewards while it lasts, go for polls anyone can respond to.

Q: How big do you think is the LinkedIn-related SaaS ecosystem?

A: Big for sure. I think most SaaS people are there. At least I’ve met a ton!

Q: What are your thoughts on LinkedIn restricting the number of connection requests you can send in a week?

A: I send maybe 5 in a week, so to me personally it has no effect. I understand if people run automation campaigns that this may be frustrating. Perhaps that’s exactly why they implemented it, who knows

Shield as a Company

Q: What was the tipping point for the growth of Shield?

A: No tipping point specifically. Rather, a continuous effort compounding over time. As content does.

Q: How come you don’t have a sales team? Are you guys fully product-led or?

A: Part product, part brand. On that note, everyone at Shield is the sales team.

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