7 LinkedIn Tips from an ex-Social Lead at LinkedIn

This is my third edition of the series now.

Newsletters are pretty interesting because it feels like I’m writing into the void (unlike social where you get instant feedback/engagement).

So if you’re enjoying the series so far, please let me know by tagging me on social @ishverduzco can get a quick sentiment check.

And be sure to send this to your boss (who should probably be more active on LinkedIn).

Let’s jump in.

It seems that LinkedIn is cool once again (love to see it).

Creators, brands, and influencers are all flocking to the platform to grow their audiences.

Many of these people are lucky enough to have teams in place to help manage and grow their presence but for the average person who creates content for themselves, the process can be overwhelming.

As an ex-LinkedIn employee and full-time social media addict * ahem, I mean strategist, I’ve outlined a few tips to help you grow your personal LinkedIn account.

1) Turn on Creator Mode

This will automatically prompt new profile visitors to “follow” instead of “connect” with you. This might not seem like a big deal, but when you’re getting hundreds or thousands of profile visitors per week, removing one step in the process will help convert more people.

How to do it:

2) Optimize Your Profile

Why this is important:

Your LinkedIn profile is kinda like a product landing page, except you are the product (so you are pitching people to follow you through the content that you choose to highlight on your account).

What to do:

1. Optimize your headline to describe who you are and why people should follow you? What can they expect to see in their feeds if they follow? How can they be sure that you’re well-versed in your niche?

   A solid template: Role, Social Proof/Experience, Follow for XYZ

   Another template: I’m building XYZ, following along as I share the process.
   
   One more template: I’ve done XYZ, now I’m doing XYZ. Follow along for tips and lessons learned along the way.

   

2. Add a profile banner with some social proof (check out mine below as an example).

   Keep it clean, simple, and additive to your profile. You can highlight companies you’ve worked with, awards you’ve won, or publications you’ve been featured in.

   

3. Add a featured post.

   I decided to use this section to drive people to this newsletter but you can also add more social proof or your top performing content to show people why they should follow you.

   

4. Ask for Recommendations.

   I personally think this is one of the most slept on LinkedIn features. Being able to get testimonials from colleagues, clients, teachers, bosses, etc. is SUPER helpful. It adds a level of credibility that I don’t think can be achieved with content alone. This should help convert more people to follow you since it acts as a social signal that you’ve made a meaningful impact on others.

   

3) Select 1 Niche (for now)

This is where a lot of people get lost on LinkedIn. They share tons of random content without a real focus or end goal. It’s great to highlight different aspects of your life but I’d suggest keeping 80% of your content within a specific niche.

Pick just one general niche and a few sub niches to start — you can always branch out later.

For me, that’s social media marketing.

Sub niches include audience growth, social analytics, startup social media marketing, social growth, copywriting, social community management, startup social marketing, platform-specific advice, and pretty much everything I’ve learned as it relates to social.

When you land on my profile and you go through the past 10 pieces of content that I’ve shared, you immediately know what you will get from me moving forward. This helps people self select and decide that I’m worth following.

Become known for one thing. Then you earn the right to expand once you’ve built trust over time.

4) Post 1 piece of content every single day for 30 days. 

Some of your content will get 0 engagement, but try to post every day to see what sticks.

Since you're only on 1 platform, you can invest more time/energy into your outreach efforts.

Ask people for feedback on your content on a regular basis. What did they like? What did they hate? What do they want more of? What questions or topics would they love for you to answer via your content?

Aim to inspire, be helpful, or entertain people with your content.

You're essentially building the muscle of creating content during these 30 days, then you can adjust moving forward.

Check out the post below. I literally thought of it while in the shower and hopped out, wrote down some notes on my phone and refined it later that day. I didn’t think twice, just posted it to see what would happen. And people loved it.

I think you can really only get to this point by creating a ton of content and developing a gut feeling for what will resonate with your audience.

5) Connect with other creators in your niche

Go to the search bar on LinkedIn and type in keywords or phrases that other people in your niche would use.

Scroll through results by “posts” and reach out to people who posted great content. Even if they don’t accept your invitation to connect, you should still follow their accounts and engage with their content moving forward. Don’t be generic when you comment on their posts, try to add value or your unique perspective. This will help build a relationship with them and also acts as like a billboard for other people to discover your account (since many people read comments on posts). Remember, quality comments that add value or perspective. I’ve been seeing way too many low effort, spammy comments on LinkedIn lately.

6) Import existing contacts

The easiest way to grow your initial following is to connect with people who you already know. LinkedIn has a feature that allows you to import an email database and connect with those accounts. While not everyone in the list may fall in your intended target audience, it can act as a solution to the cold start problem of bootstrapping your initial audience.

Here’s how to do it.

You can also export your contact emails which is an insane growth hack if you’re trying to run a lookalike audience via paid marketing or something else off of the platform.

Here’s how to do it.

7) Content & Community Management

The final (and most important) step in the process is developing a sustainable content strategy.

Here are some prompts for when you’re feeling stuck

Share a hot take.
Share a personal story.
Share something you learned in the past week.
Share a trend you're noticing in your industry.
Share media you've enjoyed (and why).

Aside from sharing great content, do your best to reply to your comments — this acts as a flywheel since each additional comment will help resurface the original post back into the feed.

If you need more help with content, check out Justin Welsh’s free Content Matrix — I thought it was super well done and simple to use.

More LinkedIn content tips:

• Don’t add links in your posts because it’ll hinder your organic reach (drop them in the comments instead)

• Encourage discussion on your comments instead of just using your posts to share your perspective

• Your first 3 lines in the post are arguably the most important. Use these to share a problem that your post helps to solve for or what the reader will get if they keep on reading. Keep it succinct. Every word matters here since you don’t have a ton of space. I think of these 3 lines as my pitch to people scrolling through the feed. If the pitch works then they will click “see more” and read the rest of the post")

• Test out different formats like short 1-line posts, long form posts, screenshots from your IG/X content, carousel posts, videos, polls, etc. You will eventually find a format that comes easier than the others, then you can optimize for quality. I personally love short and long form written posts since they require no design, video, or external support — but I’ve seen people crush it in every format.

Bonus

If you’ve done all of the above and still aren’t seeing the traction that you want on LinkedIn then I’d suggest doing much more outreach.

Make it a daily goal to comment on 20 feed posts or reach out to 20 other creators in your field. (remember to add value with your thoughts/perspective, not just spam people)

Building 1v1 relationships with people every day, over the course of a few months will compound in terms of the engagement that you see on your content. You’ll become more recognizable and people will begin to associate your name/face with your specific niche. This isn’t the most exciting thing to do but it is one of the few elements of social that is 100% within in your control.

Outputs are directly correlated to your inputs.

If you need help getting started, connect with me here and drop me a personalized note saying that you read this piece.

Some of this may seem simple and obvious but at the end of the day, all sustainable growth strategies for social are simple in theory (but tough to repeatedly do over sustained periods of time).

It’ll take lots of testing along the way, but if you follow these steps above then you’ll be headed in the right direction.

If you enjoyed this piece, I’d really appreciate a share!

Cheers,

Ish

Something I loved this week:

Creator Science Episode #172 - Behind the Scenes - What I’m Planning for 2024 by Jay Clouse

And a classic LinkedIn meme to close out this edition: