The Power of LinkedIn as a Personal Branding Tool
Building your professional brand online has never been more important, and a great place to start is LinkedIn.
Many people still perceive LinkedIn as just a digital resume, disregarding the social media component of the platform. However, by publishing consistent, engaging content on LinkedIn, we can harness the true potential of this platform and become people of interest to thought leaders in our respective fields.
When used in this way, LinkedIn can become a powerful social tool that will allow you to leverage your personal brand and market yourself to those in your professional network.
Let’s get started!
Optimising the LinkedIn algorithm
Before we post on LinkedIn, it is important to know what type of content is likely to succeed on the platform.
The LinkedIn algorithm is constantly changing, but in general, it uses the following signals to filter and rank the posts that show up in your feed:
Interest relevance: The algorithm measures a post’s affinity to your interests, based on the hashtags, people, and pages that you follow.
Engagement probability: The algorithm rewards posts that receive a high amount of initial engagement after they are first published.
Personal connections: The algorithm considers who you’ve interacted with directly, through comments, shares, and reactions, and will show you more of their posts.
In short, the LinkedIn algorithm rewards posts that are interesting, engaging and relevant to your specific audience.
Tips and tricks for posting on LinkedIn
So, given this information, how do we use the LinkedIn algorithm as a vehicle for success when posting on the platform?
Choose your audience wisely. On LinkedIn, quality connections are king. Build up an engaged audience by connecting only with people that you know and trust, or those who you would like to get to know further. This will increase the likelihood that your audience will be receptive to your content.
Engage, educate, inspire! It’s time to become a thought-leader. Have a think about how your personal experience, professional expertise and general worldview can come together to provide content of value to your network. Consider sharing an experience that recently inspired you, comment on current industry news or offer some thoughtful advice to others in your sector.
Write long-form content. Contrary to the short, sharp nature of copy written for platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, LinkedIn actually promotes longer posts over short-form content. This is the perfect opportunity to weave in the details that usually get cut for social media – tell a story, engage your audience!
Use strong imagery – Goodbye bare walls of text, hello imagery and video content. The stats don’t lie – posts with images have been shown to receive twice as many comments as text posts, and videos are five times more likely to get comments.
Use hashtags – Hashtags extend the reach of your post and allow your content to be found by others. Before you post, search a few hashtags on LinkedIn to see what’s trending, and pick a handful of the most highly followed hashtags that are relevant to your post.
Pick your moment – Aim to post up to three times per week to keep your audience engaged. In terms of timing, it makes sense to post when your primary audience is likely to be online. For LinkedIn, this usually falls between the hours of 9am-5pm, usually when people are having their morning coffee or winding down for the day.
Keep an eye on metrics – After posting, check back in on your posts and note which ones tend to perform better in terms of reactions, shares and comments. After a few months of posting, you will be able to supercharge your engagement by applying this analysis.
Done right, LinkedIn has the power to transform anyone’s personal brand. Are you interested in speaking to social media specialists about improving your LinkedIn? Contact Arize today.
Written by Genevieve Paxinos, Senior Account Executive
