A guide to using LinkedIn to grow your brand and increase leads

Ten Tips (actually way more) to increase your engagement on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for lead generation and increasing your brand awareness with your target market. Especially if you’re in B2B.

This week’s article explores LinkedIn, and my learnings from the platform over the past ten years. I post a piece of content on LinkedIn most days, and my content averages over 50,000 views a month. I have over a hundred people a day check out my LinkedIn profile.

I will discuss strategies you can use to increase the value you gain out of using Linkedin, such as more views and comments, more people viewing your profile, more people visiting your website... WITHOUT SHORTCUTS!! There will be no bullshit strategies such as tagging 100 people in your post or using engagement pods. (That's as offensive as the language gets)

THIS IS REAL ENGAGEMENT!!

The potential is huge… Here is why.

A brief history of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-focused social media website and mobile app that launched in 2003. The platform had a reputation of being your “Online CV” and for job seekers, but that has changed over the past few years. LinkedIn has seen consistent growth, and after reaching 10 million users in 2007, now has just under 700 million users in over 200 countries. That number has grown 100 million in the past two years. There must be something to it, right?

Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 and since then, the platform transformed into more of a Facebook-like platform. The algorithm moved away from pushing the content of high-profile users such as Bill Gates to millions of users, tweaking it to ensure people instead see content from people more relevant to them.

When I first started using LinkedIn around ten years ago, it was vastly different. Long-form content dominated the platform, along with groups. Fast forward to 2020, and long-form articles and groups are far less relevant. Articles no longer get much attention in the feed, and Spam killed the groups, so LinkedIn pushed them to the background.

Short-form written content (1200 characters maximum) and videos now dominate the platform. The introduction of native video on the platform was not until mid-2017. This was a game-changer for the new LinkedIn “influencer”. Before this, people had to post a link to an external video on YouTube.

The interface of the platform is now remarkably like Facebook. My 15-year-old son thought that LinkedIn was Facebook when I showed him a video a couple of months ago. When LinkedIn morphed into a “Facebook for professional people”, is when its popularity took off.

History of LinkedIn. Source: officetimeline.com

The benefits of using LinkedIn for professionals

There are several benefits to using LinkedIn for business people and businesses alike. As well as the obvious benefits for job seekers and recruiters, it is a powerful tool to build professional relationships, grow your personal brand, as a content marketing medium and for lead generation.

Eighty percent of leads sourced for B2B marketing now come from LinkedIn, which should speak volumes for the value in the platform.

51% of Americans with a college education now use LinkedIn (Pew Research) and 44% of people between the age of 25 and 29. This is part of the reason for LinkedIn’s growth. Users are well-educated and eager to use the platform to further their careers, motivated to engage in constructive conversations on the platform.

Half of LinkedIn’s users are on mobile and the other on PC, and there is a similar proportion of people using for work or personal use. This feels about right based on my experience on the platform. People in my network I chat with have commented in the past that they only use it for personal use. They're not using it for lead generation - they just prefer it to Facebook. For context, over 95% of people use Facebook on mobile.

One of the huge advantages of LinkedIn is the reach potential, even if you have a little following. LinkedIn has higher organic (non-paid) reach than any other social media platform currently (apart from maybe TikTok, if you are into miming and dancing), meaning it is easier to have an audience without needing to spend money on advertising. It is perfect to grow your professional personal brand as well as generating leads for potential customers.

According to LinkedIn, over 90% of B2B marketers are using the platform now as a source of lead generation. If you are part of the 10 percent, why? If you are a business owner, consultant, salesperson, entrepreneur, politician, in media… The list goes on. So, why would you not be on LinkedIn?

My Background on LinkedIn

When I first started sharing content on LinkedIn around five years ago, I had not done any research and at the time and I do not think there was much information out there about how to best use LinkedIn to its potential.

I had learnt a lot about Relationship Marketing during my master’s degree in Marketing, which was the foundation of my strategy. I did not know the nuances of the platform and this is a period where the platform was drastically changing how it worked anyway. I joined LinkedIn in 2009 but had not used LinkedIn as 'social media'. Much like everybody else, it was my online CV. Being a student at the time, I had spent a bit of time getting endorsements for my relevant skills and a few recommendations, but this was about it.

Around this time, Facebook had become quite saturated with local real estate agents and a reduction of organic reach on the platform. I saw the potential in LinkedIn as it was evolving, so started focusing my energy there.

My strategy was around connecting with local people and having conversations, also posting content about my local city in terms of real estate and any news around growth and new infrastructure. There was not a lot of people posting value valuable content and starting conversations. A lot of people were posting more sales-based content that people tend to scroll on past. So, what I was doing stood out.

I had quickly realised the potential of the platform when my posts often started to get more than 10,000 views regularly. Without having to pay for any advertising. The posts most popular were about positive things happening in my city. I quickly learnt this was a style of content and a tone that did well on the platform. I do not consider myself an “influencer”, my intention was not to influence anybody but grow awareness of my personal brand through content marketing. I still have posts that do quite well organically, with strategies I will talk about in this article. This post from a week ago, for example, had over 6000 views and over 100 comments and likes in a few days.

When the first person recognised me at a local café as “The LinkedIn Guy”, that is when it really sunk in. I had thought as LinkedIn as some anonymous virtual world, but this is when I realised the power of harvesting these relationships offline. In March 2018, I had my first LinkedIn Local Hamilton event, intending to meet more of these people in real life.

Fast forward to today, and I have several friends I met through the platform. I have built a lot of trust in my personal brand, and as a result, I get work from it. This was always the goal. Here are ten of the biggest learnings from my time on LinkedIn.

1. Your profile

Your LinkedIn profile is one of the foundations of your personal brand. If you are using the platform and want people to find you, employ you, hire you, or listen to you, then you need a complete LinkedIn profile. The amount of people using the platform who look like they made their profile in five minutes astounds me. Try and complete every single aspect of your profile. I will not run through everything as this is not an article about optimising your profile; LinkedIn is about far more than just having a profile. But I will cover the general aspects of your LinkedIn profile. But there is a lot you can do these days, you can even customise your profile URL, for example, here is mine: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/dan-hopper-branding-marketing/

Your profile picture and background image

Your profile picture is the first thing people notice about you. Is your picture professional? Or something cropped out of a picture from a work function? Is it 15 years old, or low quality? Is it a shot from far back where nobody can see your face? None of these later options is good enough. Get a proper headshot done, showing you from your shoulders up. People want to be able to see your face. See your smile. I am not saying you need to spend hundreds of dollars of professional photography– most smartphones will do a decent job. You could get your partner to take a photo at home against a neutral backdrop.

You can use a website called Photofeeler to test peoples’ impression of your profile picture. Upload a photo and users will vote on it. If your result is below a 6 or 7, then you should probably use something else.

Your background image/banner is also important. If people click on your profile to find out more about you, it is the first thing you are likely to notice. Many people do not bother and leave this blank. I suggest getting a customised banner that stands out and has a call to action and/or that summarises how you provide value.

Define your USP

What is your unique selling proposition? How do you provide value to people or businesses? What makes you interesting or memorable? Use your headline to illustrate this. Do not make it something boring like “business owner”; or another common one is “Seeking opportunities” … This will not excite many people or encourage them to view your profile, connect or engage.

If you are looking for a job and MUST put that in your headline, use “marketing professional with 20 plus years experience seeking a role…” instead of just “seeking a new role”. Sell what you do and how you are unique. Your headline is the first and most obvious place to do this.

Tell your story

If people click on your profile, they are probably either interested in what you do or want to know more about you. So, tell them! Again, many people do not put much effort into their summary. TELL YOUR STORY! Explain what you do, any skills you have, and what makes you interesting. Share a little about yourself. People like to connect with stories - these are what makes us human.

Try to stay away from buzzwords and trying too hard. You do not want to seem generic, so do not use generic teams. Career-focused sales professional experienced in strategic governance and passionate about innovative… bla bla bla. Focus on demonstrating how your unique, how you provide value and why you would be interesting to have as a connection. Be engaging. Just like your content should be.

Make sure you have skills and endorsements on your profile

Endorsements and recommendations give you substance. They help build your credibility with people who do not know you. Adding skills to your profile can help people find you, and people can also endorse you for having those skills. Make sure you do this. If you do not have any endorsements yet, ask work colleagues or friends to endorse you for skills relevant to your career.

You can also take skills tests and get recommendations from connections to increase your credibility. I suggest you also do this.

2. Start conversations — post original content

If you want to grow your personal brand and increase awareness of what you do, you need to be posting content on LinkedIn. I do not believe there is a better platform for growing a professional personal brand. Sure, you may not have the reach of high-level influencers on YouTube or Instagram; but for the average person, you are far more likely to be able to grow an audience on LinkedIn.

If you are not already, Start posting original content. Focus on what comes easy to you, do not just do something because some ‘LinkedIn video guru’ is telling you that you “MUST be doing videos!”. If you are good at writing and not comfortable on camera, just focus on writing interesting content. If you are a natural on camera and not that good at writing, post video content. Just start posting content that aligns with your personal brand and what you are trying to achieve.

Different forms of content have their advantages and disadvantages, and people generally have a preferred type of content - so you will never cater to everybody. I do not watch a lot of videos myself, but I like to read interesting articles. Create content that you think your target audiences is going to be interested in. Think from their point of view — what would they like to learn or what would entertain them?

Articles do not get much of a push on LinkedIn anymore. It can feel like a lot of effort for little reward. But if you are already blogging and producing long-form content, there is no reason you should not repurpose it as LinkedIn articles. You are unlikely to get too many views (Mine usually get less than 100 views compared to 2500–5000 views on my average post), but if people are checking your profile out it can increase your credibility to have a few well-written and informative articles on there that position you as an expert in your industry.

It is also important to post any content directly to LinkedIn instead of posting any links. The algorithm does not like it if you send people away, and that piece of content will be penalised. Hail the almighty LinkedIn algorithm! If you must post a link to external content, do it in the comments instead of the main post.

Consistency is also key. Just keep posting content, regardless of whether you have people engaging. If it aligns with your purpose, then people will start to notice. Once you break over that barrier and start gaining engagement then it should consistently happen, if your content is interesting and valuable.

3. Join conversations — engage in content!

One of the biggest unwritten rules of LinkedIn is to engage in the content of other people as well as your own. Comment on content relevant to your brand, whether it is your personal brand or business brand.

The LinkedIn algorithm favours those who engage. If you like or comment on somebody else’s post, they are then more likely to see your content. The algorithm is more likely to send your content into their feed. LinkedIn will assume that you know each other and that your content is also relevant to them. If you do not engage in anybody else’ content, they are unlikely to see yours. You could have high-quality content, but this does not matter if nobody sees it.

I have come to realise the importance of this over the last few years of using LinkedIn. If I am busy with work, and do not spend much time on the platform browsing content and engaging for a few weeks, I notice that there is a reduction in my reach. Fewer people see my posts. If I spend a couple of weeks of commenting and liking a lot more content, it will bounce back to previous levels.

As well as putting your content out to more people, writing well-articulated comments helps builds your reputation as a thought-leader, and more people will connect with you and find you credible to do business with. This will help you to start building a community around your personal brand. LinkedIn is full of people like you who want to connect and use LinkedIn for mutual benefit, but most of all to have conversations. It is social media. Also, it might seem obvious, but reply to comments on your post — do not just leave them hanging! They may never comment again.

4. Connect! Grow your network

Connect with people and form professional relationships. The more people you connect with means the bigger your network becomes, so theoretically the more potential opportunities of somebody seeing your content who might find it valuable. As well as being a content marketing platform, I believe people should think of LinkedIn as a relationship-building platform.

LinkedIn allows you to connect your email address book with your LinkedIn account. So first, send an invitation to connect with past clients, friends, and colleagues.

I suggest connecting with many people locally and with relevance to your industry. Even if their competitors or people in similar roles, this means they will have an interest in your content and may engage with you. If you are going to try and create a community around your brand you need to be visible. It is extremely hard to get your message out there if your network is only a few hundred people. I recommend trying and connect with at least 1000 people.

I have over 6000 connections, and when I first started using LinkedIn for my business, I was aggressive with building my network. I would connect with anybody in my area with more than 50 mutual connections. I assumed that if we have that many mutual connections then they likely to accept my request to connect. LinkedIn is not like Facebook where most people only have a few hundred friends; many people on LinkedIn have an open mind toward connecting with anyone, regardless of not of whether you have or will ever meet.

You can send a little connection notes to increase your chance of them connecting. To be honest, sending notes to people that is not something I did a lot of when I first started building my connections up. It was about volume, and LinkedIn makes it easy to quickly send requests on mass to people they think are relevant. I know a lot of LinkedIn ’gurus’ would tell me off for this. But I figured that if people took offence me sending a request to connect without a personal note, and refused to connect for this reason, then they are probably unlikely to engage in any content anyway. It seems a bit dramatic.

If people send a note to me with a request to connect, I will try and respond to most and say thanks for connecting. I highly recommend not trying to sell to people when you first connect, without first establishing a relationship and credibility. If the first thing a person does when they connect tries to sell me something, then I typically will not respond to that kind of message. That's not the LinkedIn way.

Try and connect with “influencers” too. If they have a large audience, chances are it is because they have a large network. They must have an open mind towards connecting with people. They realise the importance. Do not assume they will not accept if you do not have a big audience. If they then engage in your content, it helps push it out to a bigger audience and increases your credibility.

5. Targeting the right audience

Before you start creating random content with no purpose, it is important to define exactly what you are trying to achieve and who your targeting with your content. Then create content centred around this strategy. There are a lot of people who use LinkedIn to have random conversations or talk about their families as they would on Facebook. You wonder what they are trying to achieve, and whether they care about attracting new clients, or if what they do on LinkedIn has an influence on their career. If your main reason for using LinkedIn is to build your professional reputation for your career, then you need a direction and a focus.

Create content that is of interest to your target audience. Follow and connect with people who already have a large following, with a similar target audience to your own. You can get ideas for what kind of content to produce and share yourself, but also to start engaging in their content to increase your brand awareness with more of your target audience through having conversations.

It is also important to connect with people in your target audience. Some people with more of a sales mindset will tell you to send messages to these people etc but I’m from the perspective that if you start providing value in your content they will start engaging with it and learn who you are and what you do anyway.

6. Tips to get the most from the algorithm

You cannot just throw content out there and assume people are going to see it. There are a few different tactics you can use to maximise the chance of people seeing your content.

As just discussed, there is a mutual benefit of engaging in the content of other people. The LinkedIn algorithm favours those who engage. You often see it when people start posting content for the first time. If they have been regularly engaging in other peoples' content over some time before posting themselves, then their content often they get a huge push from the algorithm. They've already earned a lot of LinkedIn algorithm brownie points.

Make a point to spend an hour or so daily if possible, to spend scrolling through your feed liking and commenting on relevant content. Whether it is leveraging the networks of influencers and commenting on their content, engaging in the content of local connections, or content relevant to your industry (do this by clicking on a hashtag to view content on that topic).

Use relevant hashtags in your content, but not too many. LinkedIn recommends using three. If a post does well, it might start trending in a certain hashtag and go out to more people. As well as this, people can find your content if they are looking through posts with that hashtag. Aim for one broad hashtag such as #Marketing, use one more niche hashtag such as #contentmarketing and you can also use a unique personalised hashtag to help people find other posts from you. I have one called #50weeksofmarketing.

In a post, the maximum number of characters is 1200. Try and use as many of them as possible. The algorithm gives more of a push to content that uses up more characters, as its easier to identify as quality content. Try to add an image to your written content, as more people are likely to notice your post and stop and read it.

The LinkedIn algorithm push posts out to a bigger audience if the initial engagement is high. A post might initially only go out to 1–5% of your connections and if nobody likes it or comments, it dies. However, if five or ten people for example like it within the first 30 minutes, the algorithm identifies it as a good piece of content that people want to engage in and sends it out to a higher proportion of your connections.

The time of the day you post can also influence how well a post does. If you post between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 1 p.m., or 4 p.m. at 5 p.m. during the week, this is usually when the highest number of people are browsing the platform. Therefore, you have more chance of people seeing the content when you first post it.

Most “influencers” use engagement pods to make sure that their content gets this initial push. They try and cheat the algorithm by posting a link to their latest content in a private group and there is an obligation to like and comment on one another’s posts. Most of these pods you have to pay for, and does not guarantee the right people are going to see your content anyway; as most of the people in these groups are on the other side of the globe, and their network is the people most likely to see your post. Not your local network. It also takes a lot of effort to engage in all this random content (I imagine) and it also means you do not learn what content works for you. There is no quality control, they like everything. But hey, if you want an ego boost and pretend you are famous, go for it.

7. Do not have a sell first mindset

The biggest issue that many people face who get little engagement on their LinkedIn content is their sales mentality. Think of LinkedIn as a relationship-building platform rather than a sales platform. I know the term customer relationships are often transferable term with sales, however, I believe too much of a sales mindset harms your ability to build relationships. People switch off from the content of people who keep trying to sell — we do it without thinking. If we do not have any need for a product or service RIGHT NOW, we are going to have no interest. But we might have an interest in a “how-to” guide or quirky story.

I have seen many people post content about nothing else besides the products they sell or how successful they are. Nobody engages in their content, and then they just end up saying “LinkedIn doesn’t work…” Being a real estate agent for over four years, it is something I noticed often. The best real estate agents have no idea what to do on LinkedIn because they have a sales mentality, and that does not work on this platform. Nobody cares about how many houses you sold, but they do care about what is happening in their neighbourhood. That is why I stood out as an agent on this platform.

8. Provide Value — Be Selfless

Instead of aiming to sell something in your content, aim to aim to educate and entertain people. Pose thought-provoking questions. This kind of content is interesting and provides value to people. Think from the perspective of your target audience.

Focus your strategy around providing value for people who could potentially be a customer one day. You could do this by creating infographics, or a video showing how to do something related to your profession. It does not always have to be business-related. It could be an opinion-piece on local politics or sharing a piece of news that makes people happy or excited.

Provide value to people selflessly and without intention to do things just to leverage it. Do it for the sake of genuinely helping people, as if you have this mindset, people will notice. This will establish trust. People love authenticity and do business with people they like and trust.

9. Be Brave, Original and Authentic

Do not be afraid to be yourself. Honesty can polarise some people, but many other people will respect you for it, even if they do not agree. It builds trust with people. Speak your mind and be authentic to who you are and your beliefs but do it constructively. People on LinkedIn have a pretty open mind towards people expressing their opinion. It is not like Facebook, where trolls who just want to pick a fight and abuse people, lurking in the comments.

If you are authentic and speak your mind, this also means you will be original and stand out amongst the crowd. Many people on LinkedIn will stand in the shadows a bit and will not do anything too daring.

I would not recommend trying to replicate the strategies of other people who have a large following on the platform. Sure, take inspiration, but do not directly copy everything they do. Chances are that they built their audience based being unique and original, so that same strategy will not work for you. Stick to your bread and butter.

Do not post all kinds of random things that do not align with your personal brand and the image you want to create. I centre my content strategy around being passionate about my city, my networking events, marketing (before, real estate), and fitness/sport as part of my personal brand because I am passionate and find it easy to talk about. Occasionally I will say something political, but I try not to too much, as it can be polarising to large groups of people. Save it for when you want to take a stand and have something to say.

For example, this recent post I had about using a place in New Zealand called Queenstown, as a Quarantine town (Quarantown), had over 25,000 views.

People on LinkedIn like to connect with the “person”. Posts with selfies in them often do surprisingly well. You might think, what is this, Instagram? But it is true. I have never been comfortable taking photos of myself, so it is not something I do a lot of. Instead, I will post a photo of a coffee meet up I went to. Consider how you can incorporate your unique human element into your LinkedIn content.

10. Build a community

I think one of the ultimate aims of using social media is to create a tribe and community around your personal brand or business. If you can take your community offline, it will be even stronger. However, do not try and make the community about you. Instead, make it about a common cause and provide value through the community. There is a huge ability on LinkedIn to build a local audience.

People are passionate about the city they live in. Just look at your local sports team and the passion their fans have. A way to establish your personal brand in the local market is to create content around relevant news in your local area. When I was a real estate agent, my posts about a house for sale might get 5 likes on average. A piece about the local real estate market might get 10 or 20 likes, where a post celebrating a new piece of local infrastructure often had over 100 likes.

Because I had established local reach, this allowed me to set up LinkedIn Local Hamilton, a local networking event that has become popular. Now ten events in, I host them quarterly and around 1800 people have attended. Might not sound like a huge amount, but 150–200 odd local businesspeople coming to a networking event enjoying a drink creates a pretty cool atmosphere and people love it.

When I started the events, I just wanted to meet some more local people so I could sell their house one day. I had no idea they would become so popular! Building my personal brand around sharing content about my local city was probably the perfect platform to launch the events, as I had a local audience. I had previously aggressively connected with local LinkedIn users - I could only sell houses in my city, so local geographic targeting was high up on my strategy list.

I have been doing the events two and a half years now, but only created a LinkedIn page for the event around ten months ago. I was quite hesitant because I knew it gave my personal profile coverage and I did not want to risk losing any reach. Now, I share a lot of the event content from the event page, and I think my personal page has become less saturated with content. This is a good thing, as I have not lost any reach and I can post more content focused around my paying job.

Organising an event like this also allows you to set a page for the event on your website, as well as a form up to take email details for an events database. This will help with SEO, increasing your brand awareness and gives you the ability to contact these people via email. Do not use it to spam people with email however you will lose credibility quickly. You can see the events page I set up on my website here.

That is it for another article. I hope you enjoyed this week’s content about #linkedin and learnt something new that you can implement into the way you use LinkedIn.

Would love to know your thoughts!

Dan

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