How I grew to 10K+ followers: my metaverse content strategy explained
Over the past couple of years, I started growing a following here on Linkedin and after reaching 10K followers I decided to gather and share some of the knowledge, tips and tricks I learned along the way. This is not a story of quick and easy success, hacks or hyperbolic growth. What you can expect are some down-to-earth practical advices, tools I used, analytics from posts I made, and my own personal profile. You will also find plenty of examples that are related to #metaverse, #web3, #VR, #MR and #AR but many of the tactics are applicable to other audiences and verticals. So let’s get started.
About me and my “marketing philosophy”
I started heavily investing in my LinkedIn profile over the past 3 years. This means increasing the frequency of posting and sharing content, engaging on the platform, and in general building a personal brand. I found it always hard to understand how I was really doing, so here is a more in-depth picture of my last year in terms of views and engagement to help you have some sort of reference (feel free to share your own metrics in the comment section below… I still don’t know how I am REALLY doing). Over the past year, I had 6652 impressions/day and 100 engagements/day on average (keep reading to understand the reason for the big spikes in October 😉). When we look at other metrics you can fetch from LinkedIn, my profile was viewed 3688 times over the last 90 days, and appeared 371 times in searches over the last week. These numbers fluctuate but I hope they give you a ballpark impression you can compare yourself to.
Now that we got some handy reference numbers out of the way let me briefly explain my approach and the one thing that I would like you to take away from this article:
If it isn’t informative or entertaining don’t even bother posting it.
People like and engage with something that adds value to them, either in the form of knowledge or a smile. Of course, there is at least one more type of content that we ALL end up sharing… the promotional kind. It is often necessary but my personal advice is to stick to a minimum and try to still frame it as something informative or entertaining (more on this later).
Content, content, content
I started posting my own content 1 time per week. That is what I consider the absolute bare minimum if you want to have any sort of presence on a platform like LinkedIn. There is still a lot you can do by liking, commenting or resharing posts from other people. The easiest way to start is to share articles you find interesting. If people in your network share an article it is often much more effective to share that piece of content in your post than just reshare that post. You can also be the first to find hot news or articles by following the press in your vertical. For everything #metaverse, #VR and #AR UploadVR, RoadtoVR are a good bet. I sometimes find interesting stuff on Google Discover (that “surprisingly” knows a lot about what I like 🙄).
Without a doubt, the BEST source of hot news for me has been Reddit. Reddit like r/OculusQuest or r/VirtualReality are the best places to get hot news or announcements within minutes.
After you got the hang of it it is time to up your game and start posting original content. This means images, GIFs, documents and of course videos. Videos have been my main source of followers but before I tell you more about that I would like to remind you about one important concept behind every content marketing strategy: repurposing. Coming up with something original to talk about is not always easy and repurposing content in various formats is a lifesaver. Use images to tease what you are working on, create looping GIFs of a specific highlight of the creation process or final experience, make a pdf to summarize key takeaways and upload them as documents. If you get creative I am sure you can pick different angles of the story and have at least 4 to 6 posts ready to go without major effort.
Let’s talk about Video
If you really want to grow an audience videos are your best bet. You can make videos of yourself sharing knowledge, videos of what you are doing, videos of what others are doing, videos of stuff you are building… Almost every story can be told as a video. I also highly recommend expanding the type of content you post and look at other apps, services or projects that still somehow relate to your interests or business objectives. That being said, there are a few things that worked particularly well for me.
- In line with my main statement above (If it isn’t informative or entertaining don’t even bother posting it) try to find a way to frame your video in a way that is surprising, unexpected or informative. You can very often disguise promotional content in a way that still catches people’s attention and teaches them something.
- The first 3 seconds of the video are the most important. Start bold! If you have built something, start with the best part of the final product, if you have visited a place pick the best moment, if you are telling a story start with the final takeaway and then explain how you ended up there.
- Do not start the video with a black frame as that will be the thumbnail of your video. You can certainly upload your custom thumbnail but that is a little extra work.
- 1:1 aspect ratio works best as it takes more “real estate” on both mobile and desktop
- I usually don’t bother much with a soundtrack but if you want, you can get A LOT of free soundtracks directly from youtube here.
- For all creators and creatives out there that are building software, experiences remember that showing the process is sometimes even more important (and interesting) than the final product. Show your progress, your failures, and your experiments. Just sharing the final polished product is a lose-lose situation: you will have much less content to post and the audience will not understand the hard work it took to reach the final result.
- If you are joining any event or session in #VR remember to record a few minutes of the experience within the headset or screen capturing while you roam around the space and engage with other people. You can use this footage to pick still images, GIFs or cut a short showreel.
- There are A LOT of free apps and tools that you can use to make catchy and engaging content. An example are many of the apps that implemented passthrough where you can really catch people’s attention by recording #mixedreality footage (more on tools shortly). Sometimes you can also contact the developers and ask for access to an early beta of their app. This is a great strategy that I used several times to get access to unpublished apps AND a great way to diversify your content. I personally take this very seriously and always try to put extra effort when I showcase someone else’s app in action. Since I doubt I will have the time to make all the videos I wish I could make here are some apps or products that could easily produce viral content on Linkedin: ShapesXR, Kaedim, Womp, 2sync, Vologram, clipdrop, polysketch
- If you see a cool video of an app do not just repost it. Look for that app, download it, and make your own original content out of it.
I now want to show you how SOME of the points above have been implemented in the most successful posts I have ever made.
The post was done in October and generated over 300K impressions and is the reason for the big spike in followers this year. I think there are two main reasons for the great success of this post. Firstly the #Meta #QuestPro was just announced and showing something actual and relevant was very relevant. The other reason is that the video captures the audience almost straight away and after a few second one fo the controllers get thrown up in the air and the scene moves into a VR environment. After that, there is a crescendo of unexpected things happening that keep the audience glued for the whole length of the video.
If you enjoyed the content so far do not forget to check out my profile here.
LinkedIn specifics
A lot of the tips above can be used to create content that works on any platform. Here I will dive a little deeper into strategies that are specific to LinkedIn.
- Toggle your creator mode: this is a mode that was introduced some time ago and that makes it easier for people to follow you (less clicks).
- Engage before posting: engaging by liking or replying to comments is always a good practice…. But especially good RIGHT BEFORE posting something. This increases the chances that you will pop up in the feed of the people you engaged with. A good way of doing this is to hold on and reply to comments in your posts only when you have a new one ready to go.
- Make sure to add an interesting caption: it could be provocative or complements the content you are posting. To make sure it shows up on mobile do not go above 130 characters. On desktop, you have up to 170 characters and after that, the audience would need to click on “see more” to keep reading. Still related to captions, I usually add a max of 5 relevant hashtags with a mix of VERY popular (with 1M+ followers) and less popular (with 10K+ followers).
- Deal with the strict(er) no-link policy: over the last months adding an external link to a webinar or website resulted in the LinkedIn algorithm burying your post into the abyss. This also means that links to youtube videos are usually not a great idea. I have tried to add links higher up or lower down in the caption or in the comments, but in all honesty, I am not sure what is the best thing to do. If you have any suggestions feel free to post them in the comments.
- Experiment with LinkedIn live: I believed I needed LinkedIn permission to go live on the platform but it turned out all I needed was Streamyard (more on this in the tool section below). I do that quite regularly right now but I feel I am barely scratching the surface.
- Articles: well… if you are reading this, it probably means it is a good strategy😅. I don’t think this type of content can be compared to the more “disposable” social media posts like images and videos. The reach and type of engagement are also very different. Oh and you can use GIF as a thumbnail for your article to spice things up and stand out while people mindlessly scroll past static stuff
- “Animated” profile picture: Using the LinkedIn app you can replace the image in your profile with a short clip that talks to your audience. Here is a quick tutorial on how to do it.
Tools of the trade
Here is a list of tools, software and services I use and that you might want to check out.
- ShapesXR: the best creative #design tool for #XR in my opinion. Easy to pick up, it is collaborative, works in #MR and can be used to build spaces, prototype XR apps and more. If you are a creative and would like to bring some ideas to life there is no better way to start.
- LIV: not yet perfect but still the best MR capture app. The list of compatible apps is limited but MR content is very impressive.
- Lidar Scanner: the best apps I found to scan are polycam and 3D scanner app (the latter is free). The 3D models created can be used in many different ways for your other creative projects.
- Streamyard is a tool that allows streaming live simultaneously on various platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Youtube
- Sidequest is the best solution to capture MR footage, access files on your headset and tap into a vast library of VR apps to check out
- OBS is a must-have to capture your screen and record the creative process, or any “#metaverse event” happening on the browser.
I hope this post was informative and that you managed to get one or two tips that will help you grow an audience of engaged followers that truly believe in the value you provide. Don’t forget to reshare if you think others in your network might also benefit from it 😉.