Dorien Morin-van Dam
Are you active on LinkedIn, or are you (still) using LinkedIn as a CRM of sorts?
If you’ve not checked in on LinkedIn for a while, you might be in for a huge surprise. Things have changed and LinkedIn looks quite different from just a few years ago!
LinkedIn has quickly become my favorite social media platform. I see direct ROI from creating LinkedIn-specific content and engaging with my online community.
Want to know what’s working for me on LinkedIn? Keep reading as I am about to spill the beans.
Where and how to get traction on LinkedIn
Without a strategy, you will not be able to measure the results of your efforts on any social media platform. It’s recommended you create a strategy for each platform, including LinkedIn.
If you are a business owner, topic expert or industry leader, LinkedIn recommends you position yourself as a thought leader on their platform. What does that look like?
According to LinkedIn:
“Executive thought leadership is extremely important for companies of all ages and sizes, but especially for those scrappy young startups seeking to challenge the status quo and prove they’re something new and different. As a startup, thought leadership is your big shot at telling your buyers who you are, why you’re different, and why they should buy for you. When you create breakthrough thought leadership that gets your audience thinking about your category in a new way, you can suddenly make yourself a genuine player to be considered among (or even rather than) the bigger brands. For new companies, it’s all about finding your way to stand out, and thought leadership is how you find it.”
How can you achieve thought leadership status on LinkedIn? By posting content consistently, using all the tools LinkedIn has provided!
1. Creator mode
Introduced to a select group of beta users in March of 2021, one year later Creator Mode is rolling out to users all over the world. Activating Creator Mode on your LinkedIn profile gives you as a user access to several new features including:
- LinkedIn Live
- LinkedIn Newsletter
- Follow button
For me, the most exciting part of turning on Creator Mode has been increased organic reach! By default, my Creator Mode profile is now eligible to be featured as a suggested creator to follow so that potential followers can find me and my content across LinkedIn. This pushes my LinkedIn newsletter content, as well as my weekly LinkedIn Live show, to be discovered by those who aren’t connected to me yet!
Free, increased organic discoverability! What’s not to love about that?
2. The bell
On the right side underneath each LinkedIn profile banner, you will find a ‘bell’. When you ‘ring’ someone’s bell it activates an internal system for alerting you to that person’s latest posts. The notifications will show up in your notification tab as, “Dorien Morin-van Dam shared a post: copy of post is displayed here.” These notifications are clickable, making engaging and commenting with selected VIP connections even easier!
Use this feature strategically to track and engage with the content your mentors, customers, influencers, industry experts and even potential clients share!
NOTE:
Not everyone will know where to find or how to use this feature.
Add a call-to-action to your posts: “Ring my bell if you want to be notified of more content like this!”
3. Documents
Documents are LinkedIn’s answer to Instagram’s carousel posts!
To use the document feature, upload a PDF file with multiple images when you make a post. You will be able to name the document before adding the text copy to the post. When posted, a document can be viewed as a carousel, allowing users to scroll through the images from left to right.
This organic feature has become so successful, allowing users to teach and entertain with multiple images, that this feature is now available as Carousel Ads.
The reach on this type of post is typically greater than a post with a link or single image, as people who stop scrolling to read the document linger for a while, clicking through each page of the document. Documents can be as short as a page or two all the way up to 50+ pages.
Remember, only testing this feature on LinkedIn will give you the answer as to what works best for your specific audience.
4. Longform text
Storytelling on LinkedIn works! You’ve most likely seen more posts about people struggling with cancer, grief, career loss, and burnout than ever before.
These posts hit home for most of us, because these struggles in life are real to us. Feel real to us. Can happen to us. And when tragedy hits home, it affects our work!
Personal storytelling and private storytelling are vastly different; I recommend you stick with personal over private!
Do share stories of success and failure.
Do not share the details of bad money management.
Do share stories of heartache and loss.
Do not share the most intimate details of your health journey.
Do share stories of business insights.
Do not share stories of bad bosses or leaders and call them out.
If the stories you tell inspire, evoke emotions of empathy and recognition, and therefore humanize you and your brand, you are doing it right!
Combining your story with a personal picture is a powerful way to grab attention and reach more people on LinkedIn.
5. Newsletter
As mentioned earlier in this article, activating Creator Mode on LinkedIn allows you to create and share your own personal LinkedIn newsletter.
When this feature was first released to beta testers over a year ago, the results were incredible. Some of my colleagues who started their LinkedIn newsletter early raked in over 100K subscribers within months.
As promised, the LinkedIn organic discoverability is what helps your newsletter be found by people who don’t even follow or know you—yet!
In case you wonder how this works, the LinkedIn algorithm favors original content related to the five topics you’ve specified in your Creator Mode profile.
As of April 2022, LinkedIn newsletters are now also available to LinkedIn Pages, allowing each page to create one newsletter. I highly recommend you launch a LinkedIn newsletter for yourself or your brand if you want to increase your organic reach.
Organic LinkedIn is alive!
When you turn on Creator Mode and use the latest and newest LinkedIn features with killer CTAs (Call-To-Actions) on a few posts per week, your reach will go up.
My strategy includes gaining followers and connections at a steady pace, and directing people (with a clear CTA) to connect with me in LinkedIn messenger to continue the conversation when content I create hits home!
The future of social media is private. LinkedIn Messenger is where I solidify relationships and friendships with colleagues!
My call-to-action for you is this:
- Use a variety of different types of content to find what works for you on LinkedIn.
- Show up consistently to post, and even more frequently to engage.
- Have a LinkedIn strategy in place to direct people to the next steps of how you can grow your business relationship together.
Organic social media isn’t dead
Curious about organic reach on other platforms?
I’ve got you covered.
Check out these other articles in this series!
Organic Facebook isn’t Dead
Organic Instagram isn’t Dead
Organic Pinterest Isn’t Dead
Dorien Morin-van Dam @dorien
Organic Social Media Specialist | International Keynote Speaker | Certified Agile Marketer | Community Manager | Content Marketer #StrategyTalks