For the uninitiated, LinkedIn, unlike Facebook and Twitter, is a social media platform that is used by professionals and businesspersons for connecting with their colleagues and make new connections in your industry. While Facebook and Twitter are just for fun and spending your free time surfing through them, professional use LinkedIn to connect with new people and grow with them.
Differences between Facebook/Twitter and LinkedIn end here. Just like any other social media platform, you’ll have to be an influencer on LinkedIn either, to reach the maximum people and connect with them. But, the way to do so is a bit different. So how to be a LinkedIn influencer? Let’s check the ways out-
1. Create and Share Quality Content
Mind you, being a LinkedIn Influencer is not at all an easy task, and you will have to invest in much time and efforts to hold a high point on the social media. You have to continuously create fresh content, and your content will do the speaking on your behalf. Make sure that the content is relevant to your followers, connections and is related to your industry.
Also, you can share the content of other people from the same industry, to earn the extra brownie points. And you have to understand that writing and sharing content isn’t a shortcut, and your follower and connection count will spike in just a night’s time. Rather, you have to patiently wait for your content to gain some momentum.
2. Followers are earned!
Gaining followers is one of the most important, and arguably the most difficult thing to do for being a LinkedIn influencer. After all, having a likeminded targeted audience will help your content reach further. The LinkedIn publishing platform lets you interact with your followers and ultimately earn even more followers with similar interest.
While you are expecting to get some loyal followers, you can also follow a few LinkedIn influencers from your industry. This gives you a better idea on how they write and publicise their content, and you can adopt those practices for your content too.
3. Long Form Content is the rule of thumb
Like in the case of website content, it is also recommended for the LinkedIn users to publish longer posts. The original articles on LinkedIn are generally of more than 350 words, but one should try to publish content between 600-1000 words for better reach.
Your content should have relevant content, and you should avoid plagiarism at any cost. Make sure to publish a well written post, that is well structured and should appeal the readers. And don’t forget to engage with the viewers by way of replying to their comments on your posts.
4. Consistency
When you have built a loyal readership, it becomes even more important for you to publish content regularly. For being a LinkedIn influencer, you have to maintain the quality followers and readers, besides gaining the new ones. The followers might love your writing style, and would most probably like you to stick with the same. You can even provide a link to your existing blog, so that people can read more of your thoughts.
Tips to make your profile even better and stand out from the crowd!
You have to know and understand that your LinkedIn profile is the face of your online personality. People will judge you, in a positive way, and form an opinion about you from how your LinkedIn profile looks like. So you have to take extra care of your profile and make it look more professional and catchy. And this will help you be a LinkedIn Influencer too! Have a look at the tips that will help you do so-
1. Everything Should Be Clear, Precise and Formal
All the information you are presenting in your LinkedIn profile, should be just to the point, and nothing more. Your name, headline, profile photo, industry, etc. should be the ones you would formally use in your office. You should avoid nicknames, or humorous references in your profile; you can be a bit creative while writing the Headline, though.
Make sure to clearly and precisely mention your location, and the industry you work in, to get better visibility in LinkedIn searches. Also, you shouldn’t be too fancy with your custom URL. It should be kept simple and short, so that people can reach your profile easily. Doing all these can give you 14 times more profile views! So, it’s worth investing time in.
2. Complete Your Profile
Yeah, that sounds more of a childlike suggestion, but it can prove to be one of the most important aspect on your way of being a LinkedIn Influencer. People with 100% complete profile get more profile views and visibility in search results, compared to those who have an incomplete profile. One has to complete the following heads for an All Star Rating-
- Industry and Location
- Current Position with Description
- Two Past Positions
- Education
- Skills (at least 3)
- Profile Photo
- 50 Connections
The better ranking you have in the search results, the better will be your reach, and you will make more connections and gain followers. So, the ultimate for every person having a LinkedIn profile is to gain better visibility in search results for more number of followers, and being a LinkedIn influencer.
Do check this ultimate Infographic on creating a Linkedin Profile
The search algorithm on LinkedIn is quite powerful, and displays the results in the following order-
- Profile Completeness (100% only)
- Connections in Common (Shared)
- Connections by Degree
- Groups in Common (shared)
Now you know how important it is to complete your profile with an All Star Rating. If the information on your profile isn’t complete, your profile will probably go invisible, and this isn’t good from any angle. Moreover, you should join groups, and be active there to harness the LinkedIn’s networking potential. It has been proven that more active users gain more connections, followers and better search visibility.
3. Some Quick Hacks!
- Tuesdays and Thursdays, between 7 AM and 9 AM are the best times to post on LinkedIn
- Turn off your activity broadcast, so that your current boss doesn’t get to know that you’re looking for a new job.
- Joining and being active in groups makes your profile 5 times more likely to be viewed.
- The users who update their profile regularly get more job offers.
- Avoid mentioning the facts and information on your LinkedIn profile that you wouldn’t say in person.
- Your LinkedIn profile can be used as a sales tool. Like adding a short video about your company to your profile can help grow sales.
- Endorse people you know and respect, and thank the ones who endorse you.
4. Ensure Your Privacy
As said in one of the above mentioned points, turn off your activity broadcast, so that your connections cannot see the changes you make to your profile, what companies you follow, or whom you recommend. Also, you can select exactly who can see your list of connections, public, first degree connections, or they can be visible just to you.
Besides these, you can also select what others can see when you visit their profile. For this, you will have to set the privacy settings to high level, and after that when you visit someone’s profile, they will see you as ‘anonymous LinkedIn member’. You should also turn on two-step verification for an added level of security, and choose a strong password for the same.
Also Read: How to Create Content that Will Be Popular on Social Media
These are few of the many things that can help you, directly or indirectly, in being a LinkedIn Influencer. Your profile needs to be just perfect from all aspects, and the content you post on LinkedIn should be appropriate and to the point.
It would be rather easier to be an influencer on LinkedIn if you carefully and precisely follow the above mentioned points. And yes, never lose patience while being in the process; everything takes time, but the upshot at the end is what actually matters! Infographics are from Searchenginejournal and leisurejobs.com
Hi Karan,
This is a really good post. I enjoyed reading it. But the mainly the liked the infographics you have shared.
Thanks for share.
very informative post with effective tips. liked it.