3 Tips To LinkedIn Networking Success, Plus Our Secret Sauce Not sure you’re approaching networking on LinkedIn the right way? We can help with that – it’s essentially business networking … but online. Here are our three tips to optimise the connecting power of the world’s largest professional network. Think before you share One of the biggest mistakes we see on LinkedIn is people posting the wrong type of content. Posts that are perfectly fine.
Not sure you’re approaching networking on LinkedIn the right way? We can help with that – it’s essentially business networking … but online.
Here are our three tips to optimise the connecting power of the world’s largest professional network.
Think before you share
One of the biggest mistakes we see on LinkedIn is people posting the wrong type of content. Posts that are perfectly fine on Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms, are typically not right for a professional networking platform. Don’t reshare your content from these accounts, too much personal info is not a good look, keep that for your afterwork friends.
Other posts to avoid are those that are political or religious, controversial, negative or simply unprofessional. The litmus test is simple, would you raise the topic with a stranger at business networking event? No? Then don’t post it here either.
And avoid sales pitches, we’ve all been bailed up at a function, juggling a canape in one hand, beverage in the other, trying to escape that over-salesy networker. Professional online networking is the same, no one enjoys unsolicited selling. Connect, don’t pitch.
In a face-to-face professional networking environment, your discussions and topics are business related, do the same online. People are looking for articles and posts that are intelligent, informative and useful. They could be specific to your industry or speciality, topical, educational or posing a question that elicits an insightful exchange of ideas.
Create a community – work out what type of people or businesses you want to build connections with and then curate your posts and articles to attract them.
And the best days to post? Tuesday and Wednesday, generally during commuter hours.
Don’t talk too much
If you’re posting every day on LinkedIn, then two things will happen; first you’ll annoy your audience by being in their face (feed) every day and then the LinkedIn algorithms will start penalising you for over posting by making your content less visible.
Unlike other social platforms, more does not mean better on LinkedIn.
So how often is just right? We recommend once per fortnight, or weekly if you have outstanding, sought-after credible content.
Listen and encourage
LinkedIn is all about connecting and engaging. If you only post and never interact, you’re missing the point.
LinkedIn have a saying ‘people you know, talking about the things you care about,’ and this plays out in the way algorithms reward engagement. The more you comment and engage with other people and their posts, the more often you’ll show up in their feed and those of their connections.
The algorithms are looking for how often people interact with other posts and commenting trumps clicking on the like button. If a back and forth of comments (in other words a conversation) takes place that’s even better. They’re also looking for people providing recommendations, giving endorsements and connecting with new people.
At least once a week, even if you only have 10 minutes, scroll down your feed and comment on the posts you find interesting, relevant and are made by connections you want to support (a post with comments is pushed up the feed). Send out connection requests to people you’ve met, or someone you’ve seen on LinkedIn that you’d like to know more about. Write a message, tell them how much you enjoyed/were intrigued by/would like to know more about an article they posted. You never know where the connection will lead.
And a bonus tip – our secret sauce
Birthdays, anniversaries and promotions. LinkedIn tells you when your connections are celebrating one of these, yet most people don’t use this is an opportunity to comment or send a message.
Wishing someone a happy birthday or congratulating them on their anniversary or promotion makes them feel good and reminds them that you exist, especially if you don’t post often. Win, win. Personalise the message, rather than simply clicking the auto-fill text prompt, and you’re showing you took the time to think about it.
We manage a lot of our client’s LinkedIn accounts and most referrals they get come from the secret sauce.
You pop up in their messages/feed, they remember who you are, peek at your profile and next thing you know they realise they need your product or service.
It’s subliminal marketing at its best.
* Based on a series of experiments by Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov.
