We have all heard about Influencers on Instgram and Tik Tok, but what about influencers on LinkedIn? With LinkedIn being the most important platform across social media for business purposes, it is an easy way to gain exposure for yourself, your experience or your business.
I have grown two LinkedIn profiles to over 50k followers in under 18 months. How do you ask? Read on to learn exactly what I did.
1. Get the basics right
The first and most crucial step is to have a LinkedIn Page that explains your experience and information about yourself. Your LinkedIn page should be an accurate representation of your CV. Make sure you update all the requested information, including:
- Professional photo of yourself
- Name and location (it’s important to put the city, as well as the Country)
- Profile “about you” section
- Work history (up to 10 years)
- Certificates and education
- Skills and endorsements (include 50 that are relevant)
- Honors and awards
Ensure to include SEO-optimized keywords throughout your profile. The more information you have listed, the higher your profile will rank. A high ranking is important to raise awareness of yourself or your company, whether it’s for business, networking, or job hunting purposes.
2. Turn on “Creator Mode”
Creator Mode is a profile setting on your dashboard that can help you grow your reach and influence on LinkedIn. You can turn on creator mode to get access to additional tools and features that help you create content and grow your audience base on LinkedIn. In addition, it also means that any new connections will need to follow you before sending a connection request and you can approve/reject accordingly.
Click the link to find out how to turn on Creator Mode.
3. Gain recommendations and endorsements
The more recommendations and endorsements you have, the higher your profile ranks. You can request a recommendation from any of your connections and can then post it to your profile. Follow the link to see how to do this.
4. Grow your audience
Every connection you have will automatically be added as a follower, so by adding new connections, you are adding new followers. However, Linkedin only allows you to have a maximum of 30k connections. You want to ensure your connections are relevant to you, your business, and ideally people you know or want to know.
5. Post regularly
To increase the number of followers you have, you need to give them a reason to follow you. This can be done with quality content on a regular basis. Just as posting content regularly to a blog will gain a consistent following, the same is true on LinkedIn and any other social media platform.
When your audience knows you are going to post something on X day, they are going to be waiting for it — assuming you provide valuable content. In addition, the more frequently you post, the more likely your profile is going to show up in the feed. This will make your brand far more appealing, increasing the chance of a new LinkedIn user following you.
As you get started with posting content, you may need to post every day or, at the very least, every other day. This is to ramp things up and get your profile seen as quickly as possible. Once you’ve got the momentum up, you can take things down and post a couple of times a week.
Just never let the quality of your content suffer.
6. Publish LinkedIn articles relevant to your expertise
LinkedIn has a unique publishing platform, which is exactly how you are reading this. It’s a great way to showcase your expertise and grow your audience. Publishing valuable content on LinkedIn positions you as an authority on your topic. Posting regular, valuable content creates trust with your connections and helps you to be seen as an expert on your topic.
7. Post videos
TikTok is a video-sharing app that allows users to create and share 15-second videos and is now the most used social media platform in the World. Don’t underestimate the value of a video, some people prefer them to a normal post as they are more personal. Videos have on average 3 x more views than posts with pictures and 12 x more views than just posts alone.
8. Use hashtags in every post
Use 3 hashtags on each post. Why? Because your post will automatically show up in all the people’s newsfeeds that are following that hashtag. This not only creates exposure for your post but profile also. I recommend viewing the hashtags you are posting before tagging them, to ensure they have a decent following.
Tagging more than 3 hashtags can actually bring your ranking down, so stick to a maximum of 3 when you can.
9. Tag people and companies in your post
LinkedIn allows you to tag people, companies, or organizations in your post. All you have to do is to type the @ key, followed by the name. Why would you do this? For the exact reason that you should put hashtags in your post – because you show up in everyone’s newsfeed within the person or company, you have tagged.
10. GO VIRAL
Sounds easy doesn’t it.. Just put a post on LinkedIn and let it go viral? Creating a viral post is actually harder than it looks. With so many different people, personalities and trends it’s hard to know what’s going to gain traction and what isn’t. A few ways I have gone viral is:
Talk about your experiences..
Help someone..
State your opinions..
11. Comment on trending posts
You don’t need to go viral yourself, you could comment on someone else’s post that is going viral. Comment with your opinions and things you believe in, or even
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Happy networking.