How to harness the power of LinkedIn

With 830 million members, LinkedIn is a really powerful marketing channel. Are you making the most of it?

We love LinkedIn! So much so, we could write 1000s of words about how we’re making it work for both my personal account and the Scale Up Collective right now.?

For those of you getting started with the platform (or who want to do more with it), here are three ways to get started and make it work for you:

? Set up your profile for success

Your profile needs to show who you are, what you do and how people can work with you. So get the basics right; your profile photo, header graphic and headline should all be up to date and on brand:

Your headline is searchable, so the usual rules of SEO apply - include keywords for what you do and what your audience will be searching for.?

LinkedIn recently rolled out “Creator mode”, which has additional tools and features. If you want to create LinkedIn newsletters and LinkedIn Lives from your personal account, this is worth switching on.?

? Curate your feed

Your feed should be one of the most useful resources in your business. You should be able to open LinkedIn and see industry news, updates from your suppliers, what’s happening with your customers and what’s trending in your world. If all you are seeing is clickbait, influencer brags or irrelevant content, then you need to curate your feed:

• Unfollow or hide irrelevant accounts
• Connect with people that you want to hear from
• Follow company pages of your suppliers, customers and industry peers

Remember to engage with your community. Your audience should know why they are following you and what you have to offer them. And even if you don’t want to create posts, you’ll build strong relationships by reacting and commenting on your feed. This is easier when your feed is giving you great content to engage with.

Top tip: a reaction or a comment will generate better reach than a share.?

? Create relevant content

A good post is one that makes readers pause their scrolling to read more. Unlike Instagram, the algorithm won’t punish you if you don’t post all the time - consistency plus quality over is the key with LinkedIn.?

When it comes to creating content, think about your own feed and what makes you stop scrolling, then consider your target audience and what they would be interested in. Most of us have something to sell, but consider:

• Reactive commentary - Is there a big news story or legislative change that you can comment on and start a conversation?
• Your story - How did you get started in your career? What have you learned? What’s your founder journey?
• Your business - Can you show something behind the scenes? What new services are you developing? What’s happening in the team?
• You - It’s up to each of us how much we share of ourselves online. But, in the same way that you would get chatting at an event and talk about your family and what you got up to at the weekend, why not share this on LinkedIn? We often see the best engagement from more personal posts.?

LinkedIn experts all seem to conclude that text posts work best and we should avoid including external links in posts…. However this very popular post of mine broke all of those rules. We suspect that relevant and engaging content is the trick - which makes absolute sense.?

I asked a couple of my favourite LinkedIn creators for their top tips:

Jessica Barlow from No Agency Method recommends thinking of LinkedIn as “One big networking event, IRL. If someone at a networking event walked up to you and started yelling at you about a huge crypto opportunity... chances are you'd make your excuses and walk away.

So instead, how are you going to pull someone in for a proper get-to-know-you chat? They want to get to know the person behind the business, not the sales pitch. You'll achieve this by bringing your authentic and human self to the party.

Don't be afraid to be personal, that is where you stop the scroll and make real connections.

It's this approach that's taken Sunday Care Therapy's co-founder Derek from zero to hero on Linkedin, with ￡50k inbound revenue and speaking on stages across the UK.”

And Lottie Unwin from Copy Club suggests that "you need to say something that someone might disagree with! If your comments are so neutral that no one could disagree you're not that likely to get a response".

And a final tip from me. I say a lot, but it definitely applies here: Dance on other people’s dancefloors. Tag your favourite contacts and companies in relevant posts, engage in their content and share each other’s content. This is an excellent way to build relationships and communities.

Richard van der Blom shared this awesome guide to LinkedIn last year. It’s full of tips and tricks, all backed up by testing and learning.