17 ways to update your Linkedin status & win more likes, shares & comments

Have you ever had this horrible feeling? You’re at a conference hall full of potential customers, suppliers and possible new business partners. They’re all talking, pitching, joking and exchanging ideas with each other. But you’re stuck by yourself with ZERO idea what to say.

Afterwards, you look at your notebook and realise you received ZERO enquiries, offers, opportunities and new contacts. Why? Because you didn’t speak to anyone.

You, like many people, might have the same problem on Linkedin. You’ve written a great profile but you don’t know what to say to people you’re connected with. In other words, you’re not talking, pitching, joking or exchanging ideas with the other people on Linkedin. Which means you’ll probably get ZERO enquiries, offers, opportunities and new contacts.

To get a stream of new business opportunities, the best place to start is to regularly update your status. Like a Facebook update, your status will be visible to everyone in your network and can help start discussions with potential customers, create new opportunities and drive traffic to your profile.

If you hit the three small dots next to the ‘Publish a post’ box, you can toggle between a view of the most recent updates and the most popular ones.

Unfortunately, many people say they simply don’t know what to say on Linkedin. Here are 17 tips and ideas for Linkedin status updates, so that you’re never short of something useful to share with your network:

1. Comment on other people’s updates
This is, arguably, the most effective tactic. Rather than broadcasting what you’re up to, be interested in what other people are doing and saying. Like their updates, add a fresh point-of-view, a supportive comment or share the update with your network.

In the words of Dale Carnegie in his seminal book How To Win Friends And Influence People: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

Author of Business Networking For Dummies Stefan Thomas explains how to make this work in your day-to-day activities in his great post: Aim to be interested, rather than interesting.

2. Showcase your results
Whatever fancy features and benefits your products deliver, most potential customers only want to know one thing. What results will I get if I buy it? Results are what matter. Sharing the results you or your clients are getting is a great way to highlight the results you’ll get for any new potential customers seeing your updates and considering your services.

Example: Just signed-up three new clients for our premium Turbo 300 service. One of them has already saved 17% on their monthly maintenance spend. Can’t wait to hear how they get on once they’ve had time to fully install the system. So happy.

3. Share your daily (or weekly) diary
Sharing what people, places and appointments are in your diary is a great way to tell a story about you and your business. If you or your company has an inspiring mission, sharing regular details of your progress is a brilliant way to generate support for your cause. (Just don’t give away details that could give your competitors a strategic advantage.)

Example: Looking forward to meetings with three potential new distributors for our emergency lighting system this week. A year ago our lights were only available in the UK. Now, they’re being used in more than 17 countries. After this week, it could be 20.

Voice coach Priscilla Morris  is extremely good at this; sharing details of her busy travel schedule with her followers and involving them in her on-going journey to help people present, speak and communicate more effectively around the world.

4. Thank and promote the people you’ve met
If you’ve bumped into someone interesting or inspiring that you’d like to build rapport with, mentioning them on Linkedin is a great way to help yourself and them. Write a positive and supportive comment that highlights their area of expertise and how other people in your network could benefit from connecting with them.

If the person is already in your network, you can mention them in a comment and they’ll receive a notification that you were talking about them. Be warned, the system that picks up you typing their name can be a little erratic and occasionally, you may be have to type it once or twice before it shows their name.

5. Share the expertise of well-known influencers
Whatever industry you’re in, there will be influential experts and thought-leaders. Building relationships with these people is a great way to create win-win opportunities that help you get where you want to go more quickly and easily. And an easy way to start creating those relationships is to share their blogs or articles. Even better, add your own insights to their article in your comment.

Buzzsumo is an excellent content marketing tool. Among its many features is an ‘Amplification’ menu that lets you identify influential experts within your industry. For example, if you’re in financial services, fintech innovation specialist Jim Bruene could be a useful person to get to know.

Example: Very interesting article by Jim Bruene about 3 new innovations in investment banking. Number 2 could have big implications for anyone with significant offshore investments.

6. Ask for people’s advice, suggestions and opinions
Most people love to give their opinions on things. If you ask people to read your sales pitch, they almost certainly won’t. If you ask people to give their opinion on it, a lot of them will relish the chance to tell you where they think you did well and/or badly. The result for you is the same; they’ve read your sales pitch.

For this reason, asking questions is a great way to start conversations with your network. Ask them for their opinions, advice, suggestions, tips or ideas. Remember, as Christina Camillo found out, your question can generate a LOT of responses. Depending on what you ask, that may or may not be a useful thing. Either way, it’s a good way to create exposure and get people looking at your profile.

7. Let people know the latest industry news
New information is, was and always will be interesting to people precisely because it is, err, new. Decent news articles contain something unusual, intriguing and important for a particular audience that they won’t have heard before. Sharing quality news that’s relevant to your potential customers is a good way to highlight your know-how, expertise and interest in helping them.

You probably won’t be able to find high-quality news specific to your niche or industry from general news websites like the BBC, Sky News or Al Jazeera. In which case, these content aggregating news sites will help you be first with the latest high-quality news stories relevant to you and your customers.

Feedly – Let’s you organised the latest news from your favourite publications, YouTube channels, blogs and website into easy-to-digest streams
Google News – A computer-generated site that aggregates headlines from online news sources.
Google Alerts – Alerts you to new web content related to your specific areas of interest.
Fark – A news aggregator with a team of editors who hand-pick the best, weirdest and most notable stories from the web.
News 360 – Builds a custom stream of blogs and articles tailored to your specific interests and likes.

8. Share quick hints, tips, quotes and quips
Writing blogs, analysing news or sourcing high-quality content can take time – something most people don’t always have a lot of. If this is you, write a short hint, tip, fact or piece of trivia that your ideal potential customers would find interesting or amusing.

Linkedin lets you write up to 600 characters in a standard status update. Although only the first 235 (including spaces) will be visible. Aim to write no more than one or two sentences and you’ve got a quick and easy way to keep your network informed and entertained.

Some good examples of this are Caroline Woodward’s ’11AM Coffee Time Tip’.

Phil Ingle’s ‘stat of the day’.

9. Offer words of wisdom or advice
Brief pieces of advice relevant to your brand or area of specialty are always helpful. For example, Lauren Keeling’s useful reminder for anyone with internet problems (which included me!).

10. Entertain and inform your connections with videos
Seen a useful video on Facebook, YouTube or Vimeo? Update your status with a link to that video. Try to find videos that are less than three minutes long, to encourage people to take the time to watch them. You can even mention how long the video is in your update. It will seem more appealing to watch if people know exactly how long it will take.

To get the best results, simply make sure the the video content is consistent with your brand or area of expertise. Here’s a good example from video marketing specialist Craig Smith personalises the comment by adding some tips about how other people could improve the quality of their videos.

11. Promote you knowledge and skills by sharing your blog
Writing a blog is not enough. If you want to get results from your blogging, you have to let people know how people will benefit from looking at what you’ve written. You have to market your marketing! Update your status with a link to your blog and mention people you talked about in the blog, or who you believe would find the blog most helpful.

12. Promote someone else’s blog
Try to find people who target the same customers as you but whose products and services do not compete with yours. By sharing these people’s blogs you help your potential customers with valuable advice AND you help build relationships. As mentioned in point 5, a good way to do this is using the ‘Amplification’ feature on BuzzSumo.

13. Invite your connections to follow you on Twitter
If you’re connected with someone on Linkedin, you get a certain amount of opportunity to interact with them. If you’re connected on Twitter, that amount goes up. If you’re connect on Facebook as well, the amount goes up still further. Inviting people to connect with you on multiple different platforms is a useful way to build stronger relationships with potential customers.

You can update your Linkedin status to invite people to connect with you on Twitter (or Facebook, or Instagram or even Snapchat). Importantly, make sure you give them a direct reason or benefit. The days of people getting excited at the prospect of following someone on Twitter for the sake of it are LONG gone.

Business coach Andy Robinson is on Twitter as @AndyInNaples. He’s created a custom website domain name to make it easier for people to remember his Twitter handle. Simply go to:  www.AndyOnTwitter.com and you’ll be redirected to his Twitter account where you can follow him.

14. Explain what your company is doing at a strategic level
Is your company changing or starting interesting new ventures, programmes or projects? If so, let your connections and followers know what’s going on at a strategic level.

KEY TIP: If you have a sales or marketing team who use Linkedin, you can announce the change via your Linkedin Company Page and simply ask your team to like, share and comment on the update so everyone in their networks see the update too. For this to work, it’s important everyone on Linkedin in your company is following your Linkedin Company Page. Make sure they’ve hit you Company Page follow button. This way, your marketing department ensures the update is in line with the company policy and saves your staff time and hassle too.

Example: Pleased to announce that Globo-Corporation is now a carbon neutral company. It’s taken a few years but was a brilliant experience and has actually helped us improve our business as well as our environmental impact. We’d be happy to share our experiences with any other companies considering a similar project.

15. Let people know places you’ve been mentioned or quoted
Have you been mentioned in the press, in a blog, or at an event. If you’re marketing your business successfully, the chances are people will start talking about you. You can thank them and get publicity for yourself by sharing blogs, interviews or pictures where you or your company were featured.

Example: Opened the Plastic Components magazine this morning and saw we’d made page two of the industry news section.

16. Share any knowledge that will make you better at your job
If you’re continuing your education through evening classes, online courses, certifications or training seminars this could be something that, ultimately, helps your existing and potential customers.

Example: Delighted I just got my Prince 2 project management certification. Already got an exciting new engineering project lined-up that I’ll be managing for an industrial ventilation and cooling systems company in Norway.

If you’ve acquired new skills or qualifications, don’t forget to add them to your Linkedin profile. If your new qualifications mean you’ve acquired new skills, add these to your endorsements section too.

17. Ask for whatever it is you’re trying to achieve
If there’s something you’re trying to achieve in business, why not simply ask for it in a Linkedin status update? There’s a famous story about Steve Jobs who wanted to complete a science project for a school assignment. He wanted to build an electronic frequency counter and so, he phoned up Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett Packard fame, and asked if he had some.

Hewlett gave jobs the components AND gave the 12-year-old Jobs a summer job assembling frequency counters on the HP production line. Granted, in those days, Hewlett’s number was still in the public phone book but Jobs had to chutzpah to simply ask for what he wanted. “I’ve never found anybody who didn’t want to help me if I asked for help,” said Jobs.

If there’s something you want to achieve in business, simply ask your network if they know how you can do it.

Example: I’m really interested in opportunities at Microchips International Ltd. Does anyone have experience working for or applying to them. I’d really appreciate any tips or suggestions.

Example: I’m facilitating a strategic review session for a board of directors at a recycling company. Does anyone have experience working with board members of paper recycling companies? I’d really appreciate hearing from you.

In summary
Being seen, noticed and remembered for the right reasons is an important component of any effective marketing. And you Linkedin status update is a powerful way for you to continually stay in the minds of your existing customers, potential customers and valuable business allies. Try using these tips and let me know how you get on in the comments below.

Until the next time, stay winning!

Tom

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tom Mallens is a consultant and trainer in social media marketing and a DISC behaviour profiler – the world's leading system for helping companies build strong teams, managers and leaders who enjoy their work and perform brilliantly). He is author of the book Get Past The Gatekeeper and director of manufacturing sales business Fibrecore, which sells aluminium honeycomb and panels to the automotive, marine and composites sectors