LinkedIn for Beginners by a Beginner

The great thing about learning from beginners is that beginners approach what they do with an open mind and a teachable spirit. More often than not, beginners will share what they have learned and experienced, in the simplest way possible because they are in the process of understanding the kinks of the information that they are implementing. 

As a social media growth hacker, I find so much joy in the primary stages of trying to grow a social media asset because that’s when the builder has the most organic and exciting experiences on the platform that they are trying to grow. It’s a ‘no expectations, organic growth zone.’ 

LinkedIn can seem like an intimidating little beast if you allow it to. Professionals present themselves in their best suits and brightest smiles, hoping to make you think that they’ve achieved a certain level of success, influence, power, or knowledge. It’s all in good faith but a tad over done. 

The golden rule to remember with social media is that: Its for people, by people.

Social media pages with the most human characteristics always do better in the long run, the same principle applies with LinkedIn. 

Use your platform to humanize your brand while sharing/showcasing your talents and skills to colleagues, current & future employees, peers, broader professional community and fans. 

This article is for people who want to be social on LinkedIn and build a community, not for people who simply want to get a job. Its for people who want to build careers. 

These are the things you need to do when you want to have a successful LinkedIn profile:

1. Make an attractive profile (BIO) that describes you and your talents in the best but most realistic way possible (I will be writing an article about this next week)
2. Use a professional picture of yourself as a profile picture. Professional in the sense that the picture is taken by a photographer with a camera. This is important because professional photos have a higher resolution than other photos and so they have greater quality, and stand out to make your profile more eye-catching. 
3. Be Authentic in your visual display. If you wear jeans and T-shirts to work, don’t change that for LinkedIn. If you feel that you must put your BEST foot forward, wear your best T-shirt and jeans, maybe add a jacket, but don’t pretend to be something that you are not. If you want to make authentic connections, that you can leverage from in the future it is most favourable to be yourself (with a bit of sparkle)
4. Initiate the process of making connections with your desired audience. If you’re starting from a base of Zero on LinkedIn like I did, the best way to make connections on LInkedIn is to initiate them (article about this will be written soon)
5. Engage with other people’s content. This can simply be congratulating someone for a new job, to commenting on someone’s article. Make sure that you are not simply engaging for the sake of engaging, but that you are being genuine & relevant in your engagement.
6. Create content. It is not enough to be a consumer if you want to be noticed. Create content that showcases your knowledge, skills, and interests. This incentivises people to gain interest in you when they view your profile. 
7. Upload native content. Most social media platforms downgrade the visibility of you posts when you attach a link to another platform. Upload content that is made for linkedIn and your content will rank higher .
8. Market across other platforms. Another way to make connections and get people to engage with your content on LinkedIn is to encourage your followers from other platforms to view your content on LinkedIn (Article about HOW to do this will surface in the near future)
9. Be patient. Growth on any social media platform takes time. Don’t rush the process, you need to be able to meet the demand with your audience growth, and gain a deeper understanding of the platform as you grow. Be patient. Grow sustainably.

Yours in Growth, Lebo Lion