How to… LinkedIn

Admitting our bias

We’re big fans of LinkedIn. As an agency with both B2B and B2C clients, we’ve seen it grow communities and increase sales. And as individuals, we’ve forged connections, built networks, and learned more about our industry. If you need convincing beyond anecdotes, then we’ve got you. (I mean, who doesn’t like a good statistics report?)

• There are nearly 800 million LinkedIn members, 40% of which visit the site daily.
• 91% of marketing executives turn to LinkedIn as their top place to find quality content.
• 80% of B2B social media leads come via LinkedIn. Twitter is second, drawing only 12.73% of all social media leads.

Depending on your professional interests, we guess that you’ll find at least one of these points quite impressive. And if you have an internet connection (reading this article proves that you do) and a will to connect with people who share your values when it comes to business development, you should have a LinkedIn profile.

You don’t? Keep reading.

You do? Keep reading as well, it’ll still be useful.

How to LinkedIn

The story of every social network begins with a single step — a user profile. This is how the community will perceive your persona, so it is important to do it right. Here are a few tips on how to do it from scratch, or adjust your existing profile if you realize something’s missing after finishing this article.

STEP 1: Complete your profile (at least the top half)

When someone comes across your LinkedIn profile this is what they see: your profile photo, background photo, headline, and summary of your career and job positions. It’s basically as important as what you wear to a job interview. This is your chance to grab their attention here and now, and this is precisely why these sections of your profile should be carefully thought out.

• Avoid photos that are too dark, blurry, distant, etc. When in doubt, an office headshot should do the trick.
• Create a unique headline. Don’t just put your job title in the headline field — that’s what everyone does. Use it to showcase your “so what,” speak directly to your audience, and be specific when it comes to your current role.
• Expand your summary. It should be a dynamic narrative covering your strengths and experience while letting your personality come through.

STEP 2: Create a routine

Just like you do it with Twitter or Instagram, find a time during a day you’ll spend checking out LinkedIn. This will show the algorithm that you are an active user, so it will treat you as such. As it learns about you and the stuff you like, the algorithm will provide you with more relevant content.

So every time you log in, make a mini-goal for yourself to react to a few posts (only those you really like, don’t just click randomly), comment on a post to kick-start a conversation or share one post you think is cool.

STEP 3: Curate your connections

Your network determines what you see in your feed, so focus on identifying profiles and companies you are genuinely interested in, whose work you appreciate, and whose ideas you find worth sharing. Unless you have a premium account, the profiles you view will get a notification about it, so they will probably check you out as well and, hopefully, connect.

Ideally, you should aim for creating 3-5 connections per week. Don’t send too many connection invitations, as this may be perceived as bot activity and may lead to the deactivation of your account. So behave, just like in real life, a few new friends a week is more than enough.

STEP4: Interact with the content

If you see something you like, show your appreciation. Not only will it improve your feed, but it will expand your reach. When you like or comment on your connection’s post, your engagement is shared with their network as well. So as much as you help grow the audience for their content, you are growing your own LinkedIn presence.

STEP 5: Share your own content/posts

This is a good way to tell the world what you or your brand is all about. When you do create LinkedIn content, remember to use #hashtags to make your content discoverable. Also, don’t forget to tag!

If you are working on a project with a colleague, tag them. It is a nice thing to do, and it will increase the visibility of your content because it will immediately be available to all of your colleague’s connections. And as on any other social platform, photos and videos are always welcome as they are easily consumable content.

Now that we’ve got you covered with the basics, it’s your turn.