How to become more efficient on LinkedIn

Have you ever thought: “Gosh, I spend all my time on LinkedIn!”

I certainly feel like over the past 6-12 months I’ve moved from being an ‘occasional user’, checking the feed twice per week and posting sporadically, to spending a solid 2h+ per day on the platform. This can include making a post, replying to comments, messaging people, forming connections, (more recently) creating stories, and quite often, getting stuck in this ‘pointless scroll’ through the content I’ve already seen. 

During our recent #LinkedInClub - the topic of ‘efficiency’ came-up quite consistently in conversation. So, here are my thoughts on how you can spend less time on this platform, whilst getting the same (or better) results:

1: Set yourself a timed engagement goal

You will get better results and your profile will grow if you react, comment, share, message & connect with other users. However, much like saying ‘I will walk today’ to lose weight - it’s much better to set yourself a time goal and say ‘I will walk for 30 minutes today.’ 

Similarly, block out time in your calendar that you’ll spend ‘engaging’ with users. When the time is up, move on and stop wasting time. You’ll find that when your brain is focused on that task for 30 minutes, you’ll do much more than if you got distracted to quickly reply to a comment or message someone 10 times per day.

2: Don’t connect for the sake of connecting

Around 5 years ago I made the mistake of ‘spam connecting’ with around 1,500 people. They had nothing to do with my industry, location and I doubt they’ll ever use my services… but I was being driven by a vanity metric. My profile looked better now - I was super popular!

Fast forward a few years and my feed is filled with posts I don’t care about… which wastes a lot of time because it takes me longer to scroll and find the posts I do want to engage with. Further, my content is not getting as much reach/engagement because 30% of people that view it don’t care about it.

If you want to save time and be more efficient, drop the vanity metrics, and only connect with people that are relevant to your goals (see next point).

3: Establish your ‘LinkedIn Goals’

If you understand what your destination is, you’ll get there quicker and won’t waste time wandering about. So, why are you on LinkedIn? To establish your LinkedIn Goals, consider questions like:

• If you could choose the ‘perfect person’ to read all your posts, what would they be like? What job role do they have, whom are they connected with, how old are they, what do they want to get out of LinkedIn, what interests them?
• How can you be valuable to other users? Are you knowledgeable about a topic, charismatic, or maybe empathetic? Always aim for someone thinking “I’d love to consume more content like this!”
• How do you best communicate? Is it written, video, audio?
• What do you want people to say about my LinkedIn profile when you’re not in the room? And more importantly, do you care what people think?
• What’s the end destination? Do you want people to visit your website, read your blog, attend an event, buy something, do you want to coach them or maybe you simply want positive attention… what’s a useful result? (note that other people talking about you works much better than… you talking about you)

After you’ve answered these, create a simple 1-page summary, then read this once a week to see if what you’re doing is efficient in reaching these goals!

4: Review your posts

Once a month scroll through your profile and review the posts you’ve made - which ones got the most comments/reactions/reach? Did any of them get other attention such as a positive comment in an email or a message from a prospect? Then, more importantly, learn from this data and try to repeat the ‘best performers’! 

---

These ‘tips’ might not be for everybody and I might be completely wrong! However, I try to ‘do’ them myself and I’ve definitely seen results. I don’t want to be pushing something I don’t preach. :)

Even if you try them and find that they didn’t work, that’s a very valuable lesson learned.

If you'd like to join our LinkedIn Club, it's every Wednesday at 12pm. The Zoom link doesn't change and you can add this to your calendar: https://zoom.us/j/98428268966

matt greg.