Read the numbers, drawing them: Hacks on LinkedIn.. Miths or facts?

I repeat the phrase “Read the numbers, drawing them” because it’s the center of the data: You will have to mix 3 different areas: linguistics (reading) + math (operating with numbers) + art (drawing) to understand data, to decypher data… Basically, if you want to get the best of the data, you need the context, the storytelling behind (and beyond) the numbers, and it is possible with this method: reading the number, drawing it.

In this article, I want to share the result after I have proved a LinkedIn hack, and the numbers I got after apply it to conclude if the hack works as expected, or it’s just a way to get more likes.

Probably you have seen TikTok videos, Instagram Reels or blogs/vlogs where influencers recommend some actions (called “hacks” due the symbolism of something hidden or unknown, even platform’s issues discovered to get some advantage over the average users) to get more views or recruiter messages.

Actually, I saw some of them, and it is incredible the quantity of likes/interactions those videos get, considering the majority of the “hacks” have no proof of existence, or the effects to apply them. Ask yourself if you have seen numbers of messages, views or statistics about the result to apply the “hack”?

Few weeks ago, I saw a TikTok where the “tiktoker” says he has the hack to increase the number of profile views, and increasing the number of recruiter messages offering a job. The hack was simple: Deactivate an option in LinkedIn, waiting for some hours and afterwards, reactivate the same option. The tiktoker says this action could send and alert to the platform, and at the same time, the platform will share the alert with the recruiters, who they will interest in your profile, visiting it (increasing the views) and sending you the message (after confirming the fitting with the job posting). Obviously, he never showed numbers of impressions, views, messages… just the “miracle”! Here is the link of the video, if you want to see it before.

Deveiling the hack

To deveil the hack, I want to show you the context of data, which is the historical information about the number I want to analyze. For this case, I want to check the number of visit/impressions over my LinkedIn profile.

To make a good exercise, these are the numbers of the same previous period that the period I applied the “hack”. Actually, as you can see in my LinkedIn post (here is the link) I made the modification over my profile on Nov 1st (the first week of the month). So, the period to analyze should be the week of Oct 31st, 2022 – Nov 7th, 2022. Having this period on the scope of the analysis, the context should be the same periods over the last months. For this analysis, I took the first week of the last 3 months:

a. Aug 02nd, 2022 – Aug 09th, 2022: 6 visualizations

b. Aug 30th, 2022 – Sep 06th, 2022: 4 visualizations

c. Sep 27th, 2022 – Oct 04th, 2022: 6 visualizations

If the “hack” is true (as the tiktoker says) the visualizations over my profile would increase exponentially. It is important to highlight I did not nothing special in my profile over the weeks I took to compare results, and doing nothing during the week I did the hack. In November 1st, I made the application of the “hack” over my profile, and couple days after…

The results

Next, you can see the results gotten in my profile, after the utilization of the “hack”:

Let’s see the comparison:

Aug 02nd, 2022 – Aug 09th, 2022: 6 visualizations

Aug 30th, 2022 – Sep 06th, 2022: 4 visualizations

Sep 27th, 2022 – Oct 04th, 2022: 6 visualizations

Oct 31st, 2022 – Nov 07th, 2022: 12 visualizations

It worked! Right? Well, I duplicated the visualizations over my profile, and I have to be honest… I received at least 4 direct messages inviting me to participate in recruitment processes (well, I’m not interested to change my employer right now). However, in the last image there is an insight you might be interesting to know:

I got more than 20 visualizations in one period! More than the hack, even 3x the average of views. How could I get it?

Well, I shared a post! Simple like that… here is the post I did, doing some important things:

1. Tagging people in the post, even, enterprise accounts (I tagged my employer, Applaudo).
2. Using at least 3 hashtags. I tested before, and the utilization of 3-4 hashtags could improve the reach of the post.
3. I improved my LinkedIn profile, using relevant keywords in specific parts on it, using picture’s best practices, updating my background and my work experience.

I got 757 impressions over this post, and around 2% of these impressions, visited my profile.

In other posts, I got more impressions, and another good practice is sharing part of the information in the comments, like in this post:

Or this post, where I use 3 hashtags (again):

Conclussions

After I applied the hack, I concluded the hack worked, duplicating the views over my profile. However, other actions like sharing a post or creating content and applying specific actions on it, could be better. Besides, it’s important to follow LinkedIn best practices, in order to get the most accurate profile.

In the next articles, I will writing about some disruptive technologies, like Blockchain, Augmented reality, Artificial Intelligence… actually, the portrait picture of this article, was created using an artificial intelligence engine, using a simple query (“LinkedIn hacks”) and afterwards, getting the image. Amazing, isn’t?

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