Want to get noticed on LinkedIn? Here are five simple hacks to help you grow an audience that will help you to grow your business.
First and foremost, LinkedIn is a professional networking site where people come to share ideas and are generally more interested in promoting their own businesses and interests than listening to what you have to say about yours.
So if you want to stand out and get people to like your posts, never mind follow you back or click through to your website or sign up for your latest insights, you need to forget about using the product and sales language used in everyday business, and instead start communicating like a thought-leader.
There are five simple things you can do to achieve that, from writing a ‘manifesto profile’ that sets out what you ultimately want to achieve with your work, to muscling in on the news agenda each morning and sharing your thinking on breaking stories, as well as writing and publishing articles that people will feel compelled to comment on. Read on to find out how…
1. Create a manifesto profile
When it comes to writing the first few lines of your profile, don’t just describe the company you work for, the tasks you’re involved in or the products and services you provide. Why? Well, unless someone in a very similar field stumbles across you, most people will find this incredibly boring.
Instead, take a moment to be really clear about your mission and what makes you passionate about what you do, so that you create a ‘manifesto’ profile that sets out what you’re really about in the corporate world (saving your hobbies and interests for Facebook or Instagram).
For example, if you sell energy conservation software and daylight simulation technology that helps architects and designers to create green buildings in cities, it would be far better to say: ‘I’m helping to protect the planet by giving urban planners and engineers the ability to model and reduce energy waste.’
Similarly, even though I could say: ‘I help companies selling to HR promote their products and services through content marketing and media relations’, what my profile actually says is: ‘I help companies dedicated to making the workplace a better place to expand and grow’.
So, what’s your manifesto? What is it you or your company are ultimately trying to achieve? What’s the big-picture mission and purpose behind the tactical things you do?
2. Share news about your manifesto
Now you know what your manifesto is (be it to save the planet by reducing energy waste or making the workplace a better place), read 4-6 relevant news sources every day to see what stories are breaking that relate to your mission.
Depending on your sector, good news sources include the BBC, FT, Guardian and Independent, which all publish breaking news and have website pages you can easily link to or share (you’ll need to subscribe to the FT and have a limited number of free shares). Don’t forget trade titles and professional membership journals, such as the CIPD’s daily newsletter, HR Magazine and HR Zone (for the HR sector).
Make it a habit to scour your sources daily, and share and comment on a couple of stories a week on LinkedIn that directly link to your manifesto. For example, I look out for stories related to workplace trends and things that will change the workplace in ways I think will improve it for the better.
There are two benefits to this. Firstly, it keeps you popping up in the feed of the people already following you ,and if they comment and share your ‘news’, it will also put you in front of their networks, encouraging their contacts to follow you directly.
Secondly, your post might also get picked up by the LinkedIn news team themselves, putting you (and your manifesto) in front of tens of thousands of LinkedIn members you wouldn’t have access to otherwise. For example, a post I recently published (about BT’s decision to shift 50,000 workers to working from home) was picked up as the top comment on LinkedIn’s news reporting, helping it to attract hundreds of likes and comments.
3. Comment like a thought-leader
When commenting on breaking news and trends, or other people’s posts, don’t just say ‘Interesting piece in the Guardian.’ Do say, ‘News out today shows [brief recap]. What will this mean for you?’ or ‘Does this signify the end of…’ or ‘Just shows…’
That is to say, add in some commentary to spark debate and encourage others to give their thoughts. This might take a bit of practice and if absolutely no one comments on or likes a post, don’t worry. Not every topic will resonate with everyone (or even anyone); just keep posting. Sometimes a post can lie dormant for a week or more, until another influencer comments on it and off you go.
Also, as well as commenting on your own posts, make sure you follow back relevant contacts commenting on them too; dip into their profiles and comment on what they’re doing or thinking. Not only will this keep you front of their mind, but it will also motivate them to do likewise.
4. Make images, lead-ins and hashtags count
To make your posts stand out, make sure you always include a compelling image (you can buy pictures affordably – or download them for free – from many online photo libraries, so you don’t breach someone else’s copyright) and focus on making the first few lines of your post as memorable as possible. Only the first few words will show up in someone’s feed, or your post summary, and just the first two sentences in their feed – so make those words count. Don’t say, ‘Our product development team has kindly helped us to produce this guide to boosting performance…’ Do say ‘Our free guide to boosting performance has been developed using the latest science…’
Before you post, read the first few words and ask yourself, ‘Would that stop me in my tracks and make we want to click through?’ If not, reword it and keep rewording it until it would. Or ask your PR contact to help. Copywriting is a learned skill that takes years to craft, and even professional writers might spend almost as long on a heading or lead-in, to make people click through, as they do on the rest of the article or post.
It's also important to use hashtags to alert people following specific topics or stories that you have something to say. To find out how many people are using a hashtag before you decide whether or not to use it, go to your LinkedIn home page and enter the search term, including the hashtag, in the search box. LinkedIn will then display how many people follow that tag and the most recent posts. For imstance, #workfromhome has 455,168 followers (at time of publishing), while #homeworking only has 565. If you want to coin a phrase or start a movement, pick a hashtag no-one is following yet and make it your own!
5. Become an author
As well as regularly sharing news stories from print or online media, announcing events you’ll be speaking at or promoting press articles you’ve been featured in, make sure you also author and publish your own articles on LinkedIn from time to time.
Whenever you post an opinion or advice piece, LinkedIn will alert your followers that you’ve ‘published an article’, encouraging much more debate and positioning you as a thought-leader in a way that’s far more powerful than the odd post or announcement.
To publish an article, go to your profile and under the bar where you can post a comment, click ‘post article’ instead. Then add an image, fill in the copy and use headings and links as needed. This will be much easier if you have already written the article in advance.
You can save time by republishing your own articles from elsewhere, for example your monthly blog. Or a press column you’ve recently placed, so long as you’re sure to credit the publication by saying ‘A version of this article first appeared in [Publication Name]’ and add something more to it, so it’s not exactly the same.
At the end of the article, you can direct people back to your own website and invite them to subscribe to your blog, to grow your audience in an even more meaningful way. Because, as powerful as LinkedIn is, as a business social networking site, it’s no substitute for having the ability to drop content into people’s inboxes, in a way that’s much more likely to get seen and read.
So our next blog will look at email versus social media… don’t forget to register here to read it (we promise not to share your details with anyone else)