When trying to gain attention on any social platform, you’ll need two things to make sure your strategy works. Content is the first part. Content is at the core of your LinkedIn growth strategy and although it may be difficult to create content, there is something that is even harder to do.
You must also take the time to listen to your audience. Listening and content creation are the two necessary pillars of a fantastic LinkedIn growth strategy. You cannot successfully grow your LinkedIn profile without creating a balance between these two daily tasks, creating content and listening to your audience.
There are many tactics you can leverage, today, to start growing your profile. However, these tactics will not work unless you keep in mind that listening and content creation go hand in hand.
It goes without saying that you cannot gain a following on LinkedIn without creating a complete LinkedIn profile. This doesn’t mean that you simply add a profile photo, create a summary of your career, and add your work experience.
You also need to make sure you get recommendations from your network, add links to outside content, and add any qualifications (certificates and degrees) to your profile. Your profile will change over time. As you post content such as photos and video and as you progress in your career, your LinkedIn profile is going to be the last thing that people see before they decide to connect with you. Keep it up-to-date as much as possible.
Hashtags on LinkedIn are not only useful for distributing your content. You can use them to discover content opportunities. When following hashtags on LinkedIn, you can see which topics are being discussed, who is gaining the most attention using those hashtags, and what questions are being asked.
You can discover relevant hashtags by seeing which hashtags are being used by your network and by manually searching hashtags based on your industry. Once you get a list of ten relevant hashtags to follow, start by reading and watching the posts that are published on a daily basis.
LinkedIn’s primary goal is to keep users on the platform as long as possible. If you are posting links to your website, which you should do, make sure you add a mix of content that native to the platform too. If you don’t like writing articles, try recording videos on LinkedIn. And if you don’t enjoy making videos, you can post images or start a podcast.
Just keep in mind that when posting any type of content that drives traffic outside of LinkedIn, the best way to share links is to post images or text posts that advertise the content and then post the link in the first comment. Posts that aren’t native to LinkedIn generally get more reach if you post the link in the comments section.
You can contribute your thoughts and feedback to other people’s content if you don’t have a consistent posting schedule. You can find relevant posts to engage with by leveraging the hashtags that you’re following. Listening to your audience leads to you creating relevant content and to you contributing to relevant conversations.
If you’re struggling with creating content, just jump into as many conversations as you can. There are other people sharing content on the platform and they would love to get engagement. If you’re consistent in providing value from your comments, you can start growing your profile without having to create your own content.
Growing your LinkedIn profile will take time. As you build a marketing strategy for your LinkedIn profile, you’ll begin to discover other ways to engage your community and to grow your personal brand. Creating content, following hashtags, adding information to your LinkedIn profile, and commenting on other people’s posts is only the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re looking for other tactics to use, the best way to discover them is to start with these four.
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