5,887 impressions.

That’s the number of impressions I received to a post of mine on LinkedIn of a couple days.

LinkedIn impressions represent the total number of times your post was seen.

On a good day, I get 600 or 700 impressions on something I post on LinkedIn, a few likes and a couple comments.

Here I received 89 likes and 14 comments.

What the heck happened?

I walked into the backyard of Attorney Jeff Nowak, publisher of the legal blog, FMLA Insights, where he was having a barbecue for friends.

Say what?

Not actually his backyard nor a barbecue, but very much a gathering of people who like to hang out with Jeff and learn from the insight he shares regarding FMLA on his blog and social media.

You see my post on LinkedIn was about a blog post of Jeff’s about the FMLA and a baseball roadtrip with his son. I followed the baseball more than the FMLA.

When I mentioned Jeff on Linkedin, the type of blogging he does and how wannabe bloggers could learn from me, lots of people showed up.

They’re contacts of Jeff on LinkedIn and they follow him. LinkedIn’s algorithms displayed my post on their LinkedIn Newsfeed.

As one person liked the post and another commented, their friends on LinkedIn that liked Jeff, the subject, his employer, his interests, employment law matters and the FMLA started showing up. Things multiplied.

My linking to Jeff’s law firm and Jeff I’m sure helped as well. A LinkedIn post mentioning your law firm drawing 6,000 mentions is going to draw attention from people at the firm.

The people at this barbecue were a who’s who of business and legal professionals. A perfect opportunity for me to engage them via LinkedIn.

So rather than chase down eyeballs by sharing content that is merely information, trying engaging people and organizations with your posts.

Blog and share on social media about other people, or what they are writing. Link to the organizations and people who are the subject of your post.

You’re apt to create your own barbecue with a who’s who of folks you’d like to get to know.

Networking through the Internet.