Let me be perfectly honest: you are going to hate this advice, but it works. In this piece, I'm going to explain how I got 420,000 people to read my article today on LinkedIn. More importantly, I'm going to show how you can use the exact same technique to grow your business.

Way back in May, I wrote a piece on Forbes called 50 Ways to Do Well By Doing Good. Over 29,000 people read that article, which is a big number for me on Forbes, so I took that positive response seriously.

I have a much bigger audience on LinkedIn, so on November 11, I slightly revised the piece and published it on LinkedIn as Do Well By Doing Good. 36,000 people read it, but much more importantly, over 200 commented, which is a high level of engagement.

Here's the crucial part: I read every single comment, and thought about what people wrote. A significant number of people said that they especially liked my tip #9 out of 50. Here's what #9 said:

9. Don’t try to teach a starving person how to fish. First, give them a fish. Teach them how to fish when the pressure to eat is gone.

The main reason I publish articles on LinkedIn is not so lots of people read them. It is so that I can find people who will make my life richer, more rewarding, and also sustainable. By sustainable, I mean that I generate enough money to let my family and I lead the lives we want.

When people comment on your articles, they are telling you that something in your piece hit a nerve, good or bad. I always listen.

So I wrote a full-length article, Do NOT Teach a Starving Man to Fish, and published it Monday on LinkedIn. As of this hour, over 1,300 people have commented and today I received quite a few inquiries from potential clients.

The morale of this story is simple: when you publish articles on social media, treasure the feedback and act on it.

Most people do the opposite. They publish an article, then "get busy" and ignore the responses. This is like inviting the CEO of a prospective client to dinner, then ignoring him or her.

Writing an article is only half the battle. Treasure what happens next.

Image: theschulers09/Flickr