Am I Influencing Your Finance Career Decisions?

We live in an age of influencers. Where a random person can become a star because of something (s)he did on YouTube. Where celebrities are reaching millions of people with a click of a button nudging them to things differently. Where there’s information overload because so many people put out fresh content every day on just about anything. But what does it really take to be an Influencer?

In my work with the concept of business partnering we also try to be influencers in the sense that we must influence decision-making. At the core that’s what influencing is. When you change someone’s decision about what they want to do in life and in business. 

Who would you call influencers? 

My personal take on this that one cannot call him or herself an influencer. It’s tag that others put on you because they’re influenced by you. I wrote about this in the article “The First Rule About Thought Leadership”. That’s why I don’t call myself an Influencer, thought leader, guru, or something similar. On the flip-side my stated purpose is to… 

“…help finance professional excel in their careers and help finance functions drive value creation…” 

…hence in reality I’m trying to influence you every day. Influence your decisions to make smart choices about your career. Influencing your decisions about how to transform your finance function. Does that make me an Influencer? Perhaps. It depends on if you are indeed influenced and see me as one. There’s no threshold or official stamp you can get to become an Influencer. All you can do is state your opinion and if people see you as both credible and inspirational then likely you’re influencing their decisions. 

Here’s how I try to influence 

My general approach is to speak my mind. I don’t do any research or surveys into the topics I talk about. It’s experienced based and through conversations with believable people. I then publish posts, articles videos and more every week (primarily on LinkedIn) which reaches around 50,000 people a week. I also speak at conferences and attend as a participant to both learn and preach. The best part about this is the engagement with all of you. Every single engagement helps form my opinion about where we’re headed in the future of finance. 

Does that make me an Influencer? 

At the beginning of the year I set myself a goal of reaching 50,000 followers this year. Likely the goal is not achievable because as it stands right now it requires that more than 40 new people chooses to follow me every day. That’s the good thing about LinkedIn. You can’t just connect with 100,000 people and claim Influencer status. You’re capped at 30,000 and while that may seem like a high number, Influencers would typically have a lot more. To go anywhere beyond 30,000, require that you can gather a true followership. People that follow you because they would like to have their decisions influenced by you. Hence, if there should be any stamp at all to be called an Influencer it would be your follower count excluding connections. You can see my follower count below in my quarterly stats but from an official point of view I feel I have far to go before I can put myself in that category.

Still, to count myself successful I would need to be doing good towards my purpose statement every day. If you see an activity that I’m involved in it should be passing the test of impacting your career or your finance functions ability to create value. That’s why I ask you. 

“Am I influencing your career decisions?” 

I hope you will share your perspectives in the comments or in messages so that I can ensure to keep pushing in the right direction! 

LinkedIn by the numbers 

In the first quarter of 2019 I’ve published 21 articles (one shy of my previous high) yet total # of article views come in significantly below last quarter. Almost 10,000 less. There are two main reasons for that. 1) I have shared much less old articles vs. previously and 2) I got 7,000 views on one old article last quarter because it suddenly ranked in top 3 on Google when you searched for “Self-introduction”.

In addition, I’ve also spent much of my time in the past three months growing my following. This has increased by more than 5,000. I’m particularly happy with the increase in true followers. This has increased with more than 1,700 or almost 20 each day. I’m ~800 followers behind on reaching my goal of 50,000 followers. Though I’m much further behind because I’m getting less than half of the true followers needed to reach the goal. You can see the usual numbers below.

LinkedIn continues its pilot called LinkedIn Series which I’m thrilled to be a part of. I’m now running two weekly series called “Trends in Finance and Accounting” and “The Future of FP&A and Business Partnering”. In total they have more than 5,000 subscribers although many of you are subscribed to both series. I have most of my content lined up for the coming quarter already but I’m always looking to collaborate with all of you to get your stories out too. All you need to do is to send me a message or reply in the comments on the article.

The past quarter also has me trying out a product from Shield Intelligence where I can track the stats of all my LinkedIn activity. From that you can see below that my content was viewed 170,000+ times alone in the past month. Not a bad exposure indeed.

Focus for the coming quarter will be to continue building my following and subscriber base. That should also see the numbers improve.

In addition, to above LinkedIn activity the journey with the Business Partnering Institute continues and we have massive growth plans this year. Those are fueled by on-boarding three new partners and already working with some international heavyweight companies.

The future looks bright and I hope you’ll continue to be a part of it by sharing your stories, engaging with my content, and us finding new ways of collaborating!

If you would like to read more about social media and how to get the most out of LinkedIn you can continue reading below.

How I Will Try To Double My Following In 2019

Keeping Up With The Trends In Finance & Accounting

I Declined Your Connection Request. Here's Why!

7 Lessons From Connecting With 9,000 People

How To Hack Your LinkedIn Post To Go Viral

If You Lost Everything How Would You Reboot?

SoMe The Numbers: 2016 Lessons, 2017 Advice

How To Live Off A Social Media Bestseller

How To Master Your Personal Brand

What If I Had Never Pressed Publish?

Have You Gone Viral Yet? If Not, Read This!

How To Rock LinkedIn In 2016

How To Use Social Media For Career Building

Personal Branding Is Like Building A Business

7 Steps To Improve Your Personal Brand

Anders Liu-Lindberg is a Senior Finance Business Partner at Maersk supporting our largest product and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 7,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to show how to be successful with business partnering and drive value creation as a trusted partner. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 30.000+ followers.?