Why You Need LinkedIn

If you have a business or a career, you need LinkedIn.

There is really no way around it.

No ifs, ands or buts.

LinkedIn is THE professional social networking platform and you need to know how to make it work for you if you want to be successful.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve had your account.

Or how many contacts/followers you have.

Or how many requests to connect you get. 

Or even how many people like your posts.

You are rocking LinkedIn only if you are able to profit off it.

Not just connections and clicks but actually getting offers for career advancement or business opportunities.

I’ve been able to do both from my Linkedin Profile. When I was employed, I received regular offers from recruiters to interview for jobs that represented a step-up from my position. Now that I’m self-employed as a Professional Speaker, over 90% of my work comes from Linkedin.

I’m not using any special magic or tools. I’m just using LinkedIn as my professional showcase and you can too.

There are 3 things you need to know about Linkedin before you start investing your time and energy into optimizing your presence.

1.    LinkedIn has great SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

2.    Your Profile is where you need to invest time and energy

3.    Have a strategy that highlights what you are “selling” right now

1.    LinkedIn has great SEO

This is the most important thing about LinkedIn that most people don’t know. LinkedIn has great SEO.

The content that you put on LinkedIn can be searched for on Google and within LinkedIn. That means that if you put some effort into writing posts and articles, and if you write your profile carefully with the right keywords, you will be found by the right people.

If you do the same on “hot” social platforms like TikTok or Instagram, then you are reliant on the algorithm to serve up your content to new users. And even if that happens, it isn’t always served to your ideal audience.

On the other hand, with LinkedIn, you can treat the algorithm as secondary. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of grief from many LinkedIn experts about this but this is the best mindset for success on here.

I rarely worry about how many people read my articles or my posts. I know my work has a long shelf life on LinkedIn.

I still get hired based on articles I wrote months or years ago. My name is linked to the subjects that I write about forever thanks to the great SEO that LinkedIn has. The only other platform that can deliver this at the same or better level is YouTube. But if you are not a video person with a subscriber base, then LinkedIn is it for you.

My best advice to not stress about the algorithm and think that it isn’t working for you. If you are writing content that is relevant to your expertise, using the right hashtags and getting just a little traction with it, then it will serve you well in the medium and long run.

The final part of this equation is that it is being served up to people who are looking for it. That's the best kind of audience. People who want what you have to offer right now.

I don't need thousands of followers, I need dozens of paying clients. My guess is that you are probably the same. You're not looking for hundreds of job offers, just the right one. In my experience, LinkedIn is the best place to find the right job or the right clients. And the other side of the coin is that LinkedIn the wrong place to strive to go viral. You don't need virality to profit from LinkedIn. It is so much more accessible than that.

2.    Your Profile is where you need to invest time and energy

LinkedIn profiles are not sexy and I know it.

But the space on Linkedin that you should fill out completely and review regularly is your profile.

The words that you use in your headline, in your “About” section and the skills you list in the skills section are all searchable. If you are looking for career advancement, these are the sections that match you to recruiters.

Make sure you are using the RIGHT words to describe yourself and that it describes you as you are today, looking FORWARD to what you intend to do in the future.

Too many people use words that describe their past instead of their future.

I’m a lawyer but you won’t find that in my headline or in my skills because it does not reflect what I do today or where I hope to grow my business. Aside from listing it in my education section, it is just an aside to my business today.

Use the about section to tell your career history so that someone who wants to introduce you can get everything they need from it. It’s a longform of your elevator pitch. Who you are, what problems you solve and why you are interesting.

Linkedin is the only social media platform to give you so much space to tell your story.

On Twitter you get 160 Characters for your bio, on Instagram 150 Characters on TikTok you get 80 Characters and on Linkedin you get a whopping 2,600 characters in the about section (215 characters before “see more”) and 220 Characters for your headline. Use it to your advantage to tell the story that you want to be known for.

3.    Have a strategy that highlights what you are “selling” right now

Most people on Linked write their profile as if they are already dead.

Their profile is like an autobiography about what they have done in the past. What you should do instead is to write your profile with enough from your past for credibility but use most of the space to focus on what problems you are solving now and what’s next for you.

As for content, most people don’t post with any strategy or regularity on Linkedin. When they post, they are posting for likes or they are only posting their company’s PR content.

If this is you, don’t despair. You are not alone. Almost everyone else on Linkedin is doing this too.

The good news is that with only a small proportion of Linkedin members posting engaging content, you don’t have to do anything extraordinary to have your content succeed on the platform.

Content Ideas

If you are feeling at a loss, here are 10 content ideas that have worked for me and my clients. The list is not exhaustive and I only provide it to help you prompt some more content ideas for yourself.

1. Your thoughts on a current news/industry story
2. Celebrate a personal or professional milestone
3. Shine a light on someone on your team or network who has an achievement to share
4. Your thoughts on recent data from your industry that is newsworthy and or surprising
5. Share a quote with some thoughts on how its been relevant to you
6. Share photos and/or a summary of the key learnings from an event or conference you've attended
7. Take your followers behind the scenes of what you do everyday or a special event
8. Mark an event like International Women's Day (8 March) with its relevance to you and your thoughts on it.
9. Pick up on a trending news story that is relevant to your work or profession and share your thoughts in a post that uses the trending hashtag.
10. Thank a mentor/teacher/coach/trainer/friend/colleague who has contributed to your professional growth

Sharing Content

I get asked a lot about sharing content. This is a controversial space on Linkedin. Officially, Linkedin will tell you that sharing works. Anyone who posts regularly, knows it doesn’t. My recommendation is to share the content of people you want to network with.

Use the "Share" function as a networking strategy rather than as a content strategy.

People almost always notice who shared their content and after a couple of shares, it’s perfectly reasonable to reach out and request a connection. If you share industry or news articles, make sure you add some commentary with your views and that you use some relevant & current hashtags.

How to Rock Linkedin

Linkedin has a long shelf life. So make sure you are posting content about your current work and ambitions. If you run a company, make sure its focused on your innovations and not your back story.

What is coming up is going to serve you more than what has been.

Nothing on Linkedin is carved in stone. Use the featured section, the link in your profile, your "about" section and even your profile video to promote what is coming up for you.

For instance, I am speaking at the LinkedIn Rocks Conference on 1 & 2 March 2023 and the links to the conference are in all these sections on my profile. After the conference, I will update them. It really isn’t hard to do at all.

Spend a little time exploring your profile and some of fabulous features that have been added that you probably aren’t using yet.

Your Linkedin content and profile should be dynamic and reflect who you are today and the work that you do now. Set an alarm on your phone to revist your profile every quarter, for instance 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January. Set it to repeat annually. Spend 15-30 minutes just touching up and refreshing your profile. It will deliver so much more value than the same time spent scrolling on any other social media profile. You’ll be glad you did.

Your time is INVESTED on LinkedIn and SPENT on every other social media platform.

 If you want to learn more about how to make LinkedIn work for you, I’m speaking at the Linkedin Rocks Conference on 1 & 2 March. It’s a 24 hour virtual conference featuring over 20 speakers who are experts at different aspects of Linkedin. I’ll be convering “How to Get Noticed on Linkedin”. Your ticket includes access to the recordings after the conference. You can register at www.lirocksconference.com

#LinkedIn #careeradvancement #linkedinforbusiness #linkedinstrategy #LIRocks23

Lavinia Thanapathy is a Linkedin Top Voice and one of the Top 200 Voices in Leadership. She is a professional speaker, trainer and coach.

Follow Lavinia's content on LinkedIn by subscribing to this letter and clicking on her hashtag #linkedinlavinia and selecting follow.

More about Lavinia's Linkedin Training is at www.Lavinia.Club