For the past 10-15 years I used LinkedIn as a platform to stay in touch with my international contacts. When I was a minion of 22, I interned for 3 months in New York and Facebook was just coming up (Adds a sound of dinosaurs screaming in the back), so I decided to add my NY contacts to my LinkedIn rolodex.
And this was exactly what it was, a rolodex.
Throughout the years I’ve actively added people that I know to my network, right up until the point I hit about 2300 followers and connections.
In the spring of this year, I noticed a change in the conversation on LinkedIn, it wasn’t anymore like: yay I got a new job, or look at that big client I landed, but it was more and more about professional development, free business advice, but the difference with instagram and tiktok is, that it’s with genuine profiles of real people.
So I decided to jump in on the bandwagon, it’s now been 3 months that I've been posting on LinkedIn everyday and I’m ready to show my first results, and advice I can give you, so that you can start your LinkedIn journey with a jolt!
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So I wanna start right off by saying that I believe LinkedIn is ideal for people with a lot of work or business experience, specialised in business to business.
You may or may not have built a strong network around you, but I specifically believe the quality of output is much better on LinkedIn.
It is possible if you’re business to consumer too and also if you’re not experienced, but it’s just the first observation I want to share.
Since August 1st, I have decided to post every day.
Since then I’ve increased my following with 15%:
- my impressions have tripled from 47.097 impressions –> now doubled to 98.362 → 148.609
- 314 engagements –> now doubled to 681→ 1112
- I added 350 new followers in 3 months (and I’m just getting started),
- Profile views: 428 → 1035 views (en wat was het daarvoor?)
- I’ve had countless conversations in the dm’s
- I added 10 new clients in 3 months time because of LinkedIn
- I’ve had my biggest sales months, coincidently because of LinkedIn?
- I’ve blocked 2 annoying people
- I’ve had many many messages of people saying they enjoyed my content and want to work with me and they also told me this in real life
By-catch:
1. You are forced to work on your personal brand
2. You are allowing yourself to find your voice
3. You have genuine conversations with experts in your field
4. You know much better what your ideal client desires
5. You are getting inspired by others
Do you want to increase your following & number of clients too? Follow these steps:
- How to get started?
I first started following some Dutch people that I believed to have good content, especially Edwin Dijkstra, who recently published a very insightful book, Superfreelancer, was one of the top-creators in the field I followed.
And starting from him, I started following more and more people and also people from the UK and the US.
Justin Welsh for example is one of the top creators on LinkedIn, I would definitely suggest you start with some of the topcreators of the platform.
But do not forget to follow some smaller creators as well, who are at your same level, or maybe even start a small accountability group with them to motivate and inspire each other. I didn’t do that, but if it helps you, go for it!
- How to decide what to write about?
At first: try to start with 1 or 2 different topics and then build from there. I started with sales and business mindset, but now I’m broadening it to a lot more.
Try to find content creators that you like and see how they can inspire you (do not copy) to write your own content, specifically coming from your niche.
I am currently writing my posts literally everyday, because I’m used to creating content for 1,5 years now and I have so much up my sleeve, but staring at the blank page before you is never a nice feeling, so be sure to have some back ups in your notion, asana or notes on phone.
- How to find your tone of voice?
I believe that positive solutions posts are the most popular: stating the problem of the ideal client, saying why it’s a problem, saying you can solve it and then showing the solution are the most popular posts in my opinion.
Yes, you can write your opinions on every topic to show your expert status, but try to find the voice that suits you. I want people to feel comfortable and that they can trust me, because unfortunately in the world of business coaches, not everyone is being too positive about my fellow coaches.
- Mix posts with images, graphs, carousels or text only.
Sometimes posts with a personal picture works best, or a personal story, but I honestly don’t want people to follow me for that reason, I want them to follow me for my expert advice. So I decided to share some more ‘light’ content during the weekends and interesting business advice mon-fri.
- I hardly used tags and I put the link in the first comment.
- Have a clear idea of at what time you want to post.
In August I posted every morning between 7-8 am and in October I tried different tactics, but that messed up my algorhythm, so I’m gonna stick to 8.00 am and 2 pm (I want to post twice a day now, starting from next week).
- The biggest trick which you can not plan for is to comment on people every day.
And this is the interesting, but also a little bit the annoying part, yes you can have great content, but if you’re not driving people to your profile, you will hear: crickets.
I created a list of people I follow (on airtable), so that I can see what they post and comment, because I do like to engage with them. Because I’m using a system this is not costing me too much time. And whilst commenting do not commit the ultimate sin to promote your own products at some other creator’s profile… cringe!
How do I continue?
* I am giving myself 2 more months to find my exact voice and niche for LinkedIn.
* To do so, I am diving very deep into the ‘pains' of my ideal client: what do they need? And what can I offer?
* I am going to experiment with video – will challenge myself (want to join? dm me), selfies, graphs, carousels, reviews, tags to see what works best.
* Also I am going to find a planning tool. I sort of have a note on my phone saying which day I am talking about, but it's a mess, posting every morning can be exhausting.
Alright, so that wraps up my advice and plans for LinkedIn for today.
We spoke about: your possible results after posting 3 months on LinkedIn, one of the fastest growing platforms online.
What you can do to start with a jolt, decide what to write about, how to find your tone of voice, experiment with different kinds of posts, have a daily routine of posting and how to attract more people by engaging with others everyday.
Creating content which converts is I believe one of the most interesting things to invest in as a business owner and I have created a training for you for only 33 euro so that you can see my exact method and how I come up with content EACH AND EVERY day.
You can subscribe to the waitlist for the Converting Content training (sales page is getting ready) so you will be the first to know.
Thanks for listening and see you next week!
