LinkedIn used to be thought of as strictly for business snobs and corporate professionals. That could not be further from the truth! In today’s marketplace, LinkedIn has become a go-to social online platform that embraces all walks of life. Here are 7 LinkedIn growth hacks.
I have seen Bloggers, Stay-At-Home-Moms, Wall Street Traders, CEOs of Publicly Traded Firms, College Students, High School Students, and those Unemployed and well the list is endless.
So let’s dive deep as to how you can leverage and grow your LinkedIn before it is too late!
7 LinkedIn Growth Hacks from 6 Figure Wall Street Recruiter
STEP #1: CREATE A PROFILE
That’s the first step – if you don’t have a profile, then no one will find you. Remember when you first signed up on Instagram, or YouTube, or Twitter, it’s the same thing here – you just first have to create a profile. So let’s start there.
STEP #2: OPTIMIZE YOUR PROFILE
Once you created a profile (name, email address and verified that you are a human) you have to optimize your Profile. LinkedIn will walk you through these steps as if they were holding your hand! Just follow their prompts and complete each section. These include Your Profile Summary (like a bio); your heading (like your Meta Title); and then Employment History, Education, Hobbies, Associations, and Groups. Just do what you can – don’t be intimidated. No one is watching you and you can always go back and delete or edit. So relax.
STEP #3: CONNECT WITH YOUR PEERS
When you first sign up with LinkedIn it will automatically pull your contacts from your phone or email list and ask if it can send out “Invitations” to connect with your contacts. My advice is to say YES – as right away anyone in your phone or contacts will get a LinkedIn invite to join your LinkedIn. And the more you have the more networking you get. So say YES! Don’t worry who is on your phone. If they have a LinkedIn profile let them connect with you. That’s how it’s done.
STEP #4: JOIN GROUPS
When you join Groups on LinkedIn you become part of a group with like-minded interests. It’s not like Facebook Groups as that’s more social and personal; LinkedIn is still a professional platform, but it’s still about PEOPLE! Hence you need to be here! I believe the limit is up to 50 Groups so get going and join 50 Groups. Try to comment once a week in each group. I usually just sit down and do all 50 at once. But you can also do 10 a day, Monday – Friday. It’s worth it as it’s part of your direct audience and they will see if in their feed.
STEP #5: POST and POST and POST
This is the most important part of LinkedIn growth hacks.
Posting highly relevant content to populate in your feed. It will show up in anyone else’s feed that is in your 1st degree of contacts. Of course, anyone that sees it can then like it, comment and share it. My goal is daily posting on LinkedIn as it’s so relevant to my target audience. You can take each and every single BLOG article you have and write a small comment about it and then copy and paste the link of the blog and the picture will populate and voila – you have another natural organic traffic source to bring people to your Blog.
So POST away – and you don’t have to create new content when you probably have around 100 Blog articles already populated in your own Blog – so post one Blog a day. It’s a great way to build your following with your already great content.
Here is the biggest problem I have heard from people. They hate to write! And this can be a big issue as this is where you build your expertise on LinkedIn – so you have to write.
The good news here is that I found an incredibly easy and inexpensive platform for you to use to write your Articles and Posts!
You can get all articles done for you!
This will change the way you do all your posting and content creation! Not just with LinkedIn but with your Blogs or any other platform you use!
STEP #6: ARTICLES
This is somewhat confusing as people think it’s like Posting but it’s not. The difference here is that an Article is for ANYONE to see or stumble upon based on search terms and hashtags. The beautiful part here is that all your Articles populate at the bottom footer and once they hit one Article, they can then easily scroll through all of them at the bottom and pick the ones they want to read. Again focus on making these articles a redirect back to your Blog to gain the traffic, conversions and google analytics and of course hopefully to grab their email address.
Posting is in your feed and only for your direct Followers. It won’t be in your Articles. Whereas when you write an Article it also populates in your Post Feed. My advice here: When you write a Post, it’s more natural and flowing; Articles are more serious and educational.
Once again – Articles require content. So you can click HERE to get access to this platform that will write the articles FOR YOU! I honestly recommend you pick the either the Standard or the Premium and stick with 500 words for LinkedIn Post. For Articles and Blogs, you may want to go from 1000 to 1500 words. But honestly, 500 is sufficient. People on LinkedIn are on it during work hours so they are going fast.
Also, a big tip for the WRITING COMPANY is that you don’t have to accept the work. So if you don’t like the Article written, you can reject it and have another one written. If you don’t accept or reject within 3 days then it’s automatically accepts.
STEP #7: FOLLOWERS and CONNECTIONS
There is a difference on LinkedIn between Followers and Connections (aka: Contacts). LinkedIn allows up to 30,000 Connections (those are people you are 1st degree as LinkedIn puts it, where you have access to their direct email and contact information and can message them for free). But Connections have a cap of up to 30,000. Followers, on the other hand, are unlimited! GaryVee has millions. Right now as I write this Article in March of 2019 I have 12,400 Followers and my goal is to get to 20,000 Followers by the end of 2019 and then 30,000 Followers by 2020. At that point, I may decide to remove some Contacts that are not my direct audience to allow me to add Contacts that are more geared to my Avatar.
When someone accepts a Connection request, they automatically become a Follower. But when someone Follows, they don’t become a Contact / Connection. That’s why on someone’s profile you may see only FOLLOW or you may see CONNECT. That’s the difference. Connect allows you to be on 1st degree as a Connection and Contact, whereas as Follower just lets you Follow their posts and activities. You have no access to their personal contact info.
The goal here is of course FOLLOWERS – so first, just connect with people and your Followers will naturally increase.
LinkedIn is much harder to grow than other social platforms. So my advice – just start. It can take you a whole year to get to 2000 and that’s ok. Just start today and you are already ahead of the game.
Before you go…
OK – that sums up my 7 Insider Growth Hack LinkedIn Tips to help you grow your professional presence. Sign up for my email newsletter as soon I will upload a Video on YouTube so you can visually see what to do.
Happy Connecting, Posting, Article Writing and Following and make sure to find me on LinkedIn and invite me to connect. I’d love to do so!
Revi Goldwasser – Six Figure Recruiter, Entrepreneur, Blogger with Find a Job Like a Pro
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