What a Past Job Experience Has Taught Me About LinkedIn

Hi everyone!

Today’s blog article is the last one I write as part of a beautiful project done in the framework of my studies. I really started using LinkedIn during a past professional experience, during which I was taking care of the account of my department. My LinkedIn tasks mainly consisted in creating posts and monitoring the account. Then, through this blog, I got to learn even more on the networking platform and how to use it the most efficient way possible, so not only to publish posts, but also to gain more visibility, to use sponsored content and great tools to help run a LinkedIn business account as well as how to find the perfect employees.

That’s why today, I’d like to share some tips I learned along the way and that will, I hope, also help you for your own LinkedIn experience.

Tip n°1: Don’t take too much time thinking of how to create the perfect post

When I started to create posts for the company I used to work for, it took me ages to write them. I was quite unfamiliar with LinkedIn and even though I was shown the types of content that could be published, I was still a little hesitant. The reason why is probably because I wanted to create the perfect post, the one with a topic that no one had thought of, the one that would give a good impression of my work to my managers. I was just overthinking. Looking back, I realize that I should just have started with some simple content.

If you are facing the same problem, here is my little advice: just look at what your predecessor did and take one post you think could still be relevant today and adapt it a little so that your audience still learns something new. And if the post is old you can also simply take the same content and just rephrase it a little bit. While I wouldn’t recommend to do that too often, it can still be a good way to gain the confidence you need to then start creating your own content without putting too much effort into it. And if you are in the situation where you just started your business account, start by simple posts as well. You could post for instance a group picture of your team and present the members. Also, think of what could be relevant to the audience you want to reach. What would they like to see about your company on LinkedIn? And for more ideas on what to post, I let you check here one of my previous blog article where a little video will help you.

Tip n°2: Create a content plan

This will help you to get a structure and an overview of all of your content. That way, you can check easily if your content is coherent for the audience you want to target. Also, if suddenly you aren’t inspired anymore, you don’t need to go through all your LinkedIn profile to see what has already been done, but can just quickly check on the plan and see which subjects could be more deeply talked about. Moreover, it could be nice to integrate a little list of themes you want to communicate on to your audience. By categorizing your content with these themes, it will help to share a coherent content.

Another thing that would be interesting is to keep track of your posts performance in that same overview. That will help you to realize what worked well and why it did, so that you can incorporate the successful factors you identified into your next posts.

And don’t forget, what is great with using social media platforms to communicate about your business, is that you can continuously adapt your strategy and your content according to the reactions of your audience. That’s something you can’t or difficultly do on regular communication channels, such as the printed ones. So what I’m saying is: don’t hesitate to experiment on social media.

Tip n°3: Whenever relevant, don’t hesitate to tag other organizations or people

If it’s relevant, and only if, tag other people or companies in your posts. That’s a great way for your posts to gain more visibility. Indeed, to respond to you, the people you tagged will probably like, comment or share your post. Their connections or followers will then see it in their own LinkedIn feed, and that’s a very easy way to gain more visibility outside of your first connections/followers. But pay attention that the people you tagged will probably respond to you only if they see that you didn’t tag them just to get more visibility, that’s why the question of relevance is so important.

Personally, when I started using LinkedIn, my issue was more that I sometimes was hesitating to tag people and companies, thinking that for whatever reason I should maybe ask them first their permission to do so. Well, now I can tell you this: most people are happy if you mention them as it also gives them visibility and if they don’t like your post, worse case they’ll just ask you to delete their name from it (which you can always do after publishing your posts).

Also, let me tell you a little story that happened to me in my past job. While this happened on Twitter, it’s still relevant to LinkedIn, as it can also happen there. The only time I really hesitated a lot to publish the post I had created, is actually the time that we got the most visibility and engagement we ever had. I was promoting a music festival and tagged some of the singers that were going to perform there. And one of them, Rita Ora, retweeted on her account the post and it helped gain so much visibility and engagement, that was crazy. So the point I want to make with this story is, don’t be afraid to tag relevant people, that could help you massively.

Tip n° 4: Don’t use LinkedIn only to post, but figure out what other options available on the platform could be helpful for your business

Before starting writing blog articles about LinkedIn for business, I meanly knew the platform as a way to share content to a professional audience or at least I didn’t see many other advantages than communicating to professionals. I didn’t really realize how many other options are actually available for a company. But, while making research for new articles, I realized that it was way more than just posting.

With LinkedIn, you can be part of professional groups in which you can share and exchange about your experience and give or receive tips and so on. You can build a professional network, gain a reputation and be seen as a leader of your industry, but also find the perfect candidates to your company’s open positions, as well as get inspired by others and so much more. The options are endless and if you plan to invest time in LinkedIn, don’t just think about the “publishing content” part, but also of all of these other possibilities.

If you have any questions or tips regarding LinkedIn for business, please feel free to ask/talk about them in the comments below.

In the meantime, don’t hesitate to check my previous blog posts and share them if you liked them or think they could be helpful for someone you know:

• 6 Reasons Why You Should Use LinkedIn for Your Small Business
• Everything You Need to Know About LinkedIn Posts
• 10 Free Ways to Gain Visibility on LinkedIn
• Best Practices of Small Companies and Startups on LinkedIn
• Pros and Cons of Using LinkedIn Paid Ads for Small Companies and Start-ups
• 4 Life-Changing Tools To Become A LinkedIn Expert
• 6 Common Mistakes to Avoid on LinkedIn
• Hootsuite: A Very Useful Tool to Schedule and Monitor LinkedIn
• Find the Perfect Job Candidates With LinkedIn

I truly hope you enjoyed my blog articles about LinkedIn for small businesses and startups and that they could be useful in some ways!

Take care!