LinkedIn has become an essential tool for professionals across various industries. Whether you're looking to advance your career, connect with like-minded professionals, or grow your business, understanding how to effectively use LinkedIn is crucial. Recently, during a community discussion, LinkedIn emerged as one of the top topics people wanted to learn more about, which led to this exploration of the platform.

Why Focus on LinkedIn?

I’ve spent the past year actively engaging with LinkedIn, documenting my journey by taking weekly screenshots of my profile. Over this period, I nearly doubled my followers with a straightforward strategy. However, while follower growth is often seen as a key metric, it's what I consider a "vanity metric." The number of followers or likes doesn't necessarily equate to success on the platform. What truly matters is aligning your LinkedIn activities with your broader goals—whether that’s landing a new job, staying connected with your network, or finding new clients.

The Importance of a Goal-Driven Approach

Before diving into the specifics of using LinkedIn, it’s essential to identify what you want to achieve on the platform. Are you using LinkedIn to find a job? To maintain connections with your network? Or perhaps to attract new clients if you're an entrepreneur? Each of these goals requires a different approach and strategy on LinkedIn.

For example, a job seeker might focus on optimizing their profile to appeal to recruiters, while a business owner might use LinkedIn to showcase their expertise and attract potential clients. The key is to tailor your LinkedIn presence to support your specific objectives.

Building a System for LinkedIn Success

A systematic approach is vital for effectively leveraging LinkedIn. By developing a repeatable process, you can consistently drive attention to your profile and, more importantly, convert that attention into meaningful interactions.

1. Creating Attention:

• Visual Appeal: Use bold colors, motion, and symmetry to catch the eye.

• Novelty: Share unique or innovative content to stand out.

• Emotional Appeal: Tell stories that resonate emotionally with your audience.

• Relevance: Ensure your content is tailored to your audience’s interests and current trends.

• Simplicity: Keep your messages clear and to the point.

• Interactivity: Engage with your audience through polls, quizzes, and interactive content.

2. Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile:

Your profile is your digital first impression. It’s essential to make sure it reflects your goals and the image you want to project. Some tips include:

• Custom URL: Create a personalized LinkedIn URL to make your profile easier to find.

• Background and Profile Photos: Use professional images that convey your brand.

• Headline: Your headline should be more than just your job title. It should communicate your value proposition or what makes you unique.

• About Section: This is your opportunity to tell your story and highlight your mission. Include a link to your website or portfolio to drive traffic to your personal ecosystem.

• Featured Section: Pin important posts or achievements here to ensure they get more visibility.

3. Driving Engagement:

Use LinkedIn as a mechanism to attract people to your ecosystem—whether that’s your website, blog, or other platforms where you have more control over the interaction. For instance, instead of posting direct links in your posts (which LinkedIn’s algorithm might penalize), you can direct followers to your profile where they can find the link.

Consistency and Authenticity

Staying on brand is crucial, but so is authenticity. While maintaining a consistent message is important, don’t be afraid to sprinkle in personal touches or less polished content. This can make your presence feel more genuine and relatable, which is increasingly important in today’s social media landscape.

LinkedIn is more than just a professional networking site; it’s a powerful tool for personal branding and business development. By understanding your goals and building a system that supports them, you can maximize your impact on the platform. Whether you’re seeking a job, cultivating a network, or growing a business, LinkedIn can help you reach your goals—if you use it effectively.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] One of the topics which all of you decided to learn more about inside of the poll in the community. So LinkedIn was, I think, topic number two. So that's, that's why we do this today. And next week we will go into a leadership topic, having difficult conversations. So that's going to be a fun one as well.

But today, all about LinkedIn.

Before we get started. Why do I talk about LinkedIn? I have documented, funnily enough, without knowing that I will ever use it, uh, my LinkedIn for one year. So I did a screenshot of my LinkedIn profile every, every week. And as you see, Um, I almost doubled my followers in one year on LinkedIn with a very basic strategy.

But in the end, it doesn't matter. That's why I call it vanity metrics. It does not matter how many followers you have. I know a lot [00:01:00] of people are interested in this and how many likes you have and all of that. It does not matter because in the end, it's really all about what is your goal, which we will go into today.

So I just show this that, Hey, I have done this to give you a little bit of, of understanding of, I have worked a little bit with LinkedIn over the last year, so I know a little bit about it. I'm for sure not the marketing guru expert when it comes to this things, but adding, let's say almost 5, 000 followers is not too bad.

Just That part. What matters is this. So that's my personal website. Same timeframe on the left side, May to June is the topics I'm looking at right now. Um, 2023 and 2024. And this is my website visits. So people that are going on my personal website, [00:02:00] JensHeidland. com, I took this screenshot this morning.

And I'm now looking at the average of the three months. So. If we look at May, June, July, it's, it's roughly 1000 people, 1000 people looking at my website every month. It's not huge, but it's 1000 people that are in my ecosystem, 1000 people that are exploring my website that get to know me in a deeper way than scrolling through.

LinkedIn. And now we, we fast forward this to now it's double, double sounds better than 2000. I know it's marketing. No, it's too. So it's 2000. And of course there are peaks in between, like you see this month and like you see in January, but this are, this are specific events that I have boosted something like this month is because we have opened the community and that's why people are figuring out like who is Jens and then they check out my website.

And then [00:03:00] some people are binge watching my videos on my website or listening to the podcast and so on. So these are just, just extraordinary events. What I'm after is I care everything about. People in my ecosystem are not on LinkedIn because LinkedIn can decide tomorrow to not exist anymore or switch me off or whatever.

The algorithm is changing similar with all the other platforms. That's just me. I know there are a lot of people who are focusing only on a specific platform. Just for your understanding and everything I talk about, I always care about how do I get people into my ecosystem and how do I get them connected to me and my personal brand and through that to my business, to what I'm about and so on.

So LinkedIn, very, very important tool still to drive this. Let's get into it. So we talked today about the goal and the system and inside of the system, we go into the nitty gritty details because [00:04:00] it all starts with the goal. And with LinkedIn is what do you want to achieve with LinkedIn? There are different perspectives on everyone is using LinkedIn with a specific perspective.

And that's very, very important to understand how you look towards the future. Um, the future inside of this presentation, I mean, so you can look at it from, I use LinkedIn to find a job, which is different than I use LinkedIn to stay in touch with other people, like with my old school friends, with all the people, with people in my, uh, in the company I work in.

Or you use LinkedIn to find clients, find customers. If you're an entrepreneur, if you work in a company. So this three alone are completely different perspectives of how you use LinkedIn and how you cater LinkedIn in all the different functionalities and how you show yourself towards what your [00:05:00] target is.

So your goal is very, very important to understand because. Your profile and the way you interact is different to be successful in finding a job to be successful in finding clients and staying in touch as well. And there might be other reasons as well. I just use this three as an example. So system. Some of you might have heard it.

I'm all about systems and everything I do. I try to build a system because if I have a system I can build mechanics and can help me to repeat what I did. Thank you very much. So, this system, let me just switch this up here, is going from the left to the right. It's, it's like a funnel almost. So you want to create attention and using a magnet to drive attention towards you, which is you as a personal brand.

And then from that, you want to drive attention into an enclosed environment [00:06:00] where you have the control of how people are interacting in your environment. And that's what we go into, and we use LinkedIn as the main driver. For this, and we will have time for questions afterwards. So if you have questions, let's do them after.

So we start with attention. There are a couple of things, how you drive attention, and that's in general for social media, but we focus on LinkedIn today. So visual appeal, obviously, if you use bold colors, motion, and symmetry, that triggers attention of humans. Novelty, share surprising or innovative content that people have not seen.

Emotional appeal. So you trigger emotions with the stories you tell with the content you're posting. The next three. Relevance. Tailor to the audience interests and trends. Social proof. Highlight popular content and endorsements. And then simplicity is keep messages clear and minimalistic. All [00:07:00] very, very simple and things you can use scarcity and urgency, promote limited time offers and use of countdowns.

Obviously that's more, a little bit more towards selling yourself or selling your topics that are towards company. Interactivity, you can use and engage with polls, quizzes, and instant feedback. And then of course, connecting that to content context, which fits to the platform and the audience and the culture of the platform.

So that's just the attention we could do a masterclass only on this to how you do that in different ways. We will not go too much into details right now. Because I'm more going into specifics on LinkedIn when it comes to all of this. So Brand, what are the difference? So you, please let, let me know. What are the difference between left and right?

You can talk. You shave your head. [00:08:00] No, I lost my hair. I got old. What else? Okay. So the second one, um, it has the headlines of what you are doing, not, you know, the personal brand builder, uh, keynote speaker. So it's not just normal or a phrase or a sentence or a paragraph. So it's kind of highlights, uh,

the new one seems just more modern. There's like, it's just the feeling. Yeah. And that's exactly what I wanted to ask to go after. Sure. So. It's, of course, the picture of yourself gives the other person direct an impression. And it helps when you get older as a male, at least. But it's very [00:09:00] important. So the first look, what you see when you look at someone else's picture, Uh, social media profile and in this case, LinkedIn will give you an impression how you feel about the other person.

It's like meeting someone first time. And that's very, very important to understand depending on your goals. So if you are looking for a job, it's a certain way. If you are looking for generating clients to your business, which in my case is the case, then you need to treat that in that way. So, let's say if you go for a design job, it is different than you go for a consulting job.

Or if you go for an HR job is different than you go for a sales job. So all of this, you need to, to focus on when you have your target. So you, you need to cater for, you need to cater your profile into that direction. So we go now more into details. So this screenshot from today, what I see a lot of people did not know, [00:10:00] or.

Don't use because I work with LinkedIn every day. I see that commonly, you can change your LinkedIn URL so you can have your LinkedIn name because then it's indexed in the internet in a different way. So if you don't have that highly recommend to have a look at that. It's very, very basic. It's just switching it.

Because some people just have numbers there and then people will not find you. Then of course there's a background photo. Because I, I look at least at 100 plus profiles per day, because I'm working with this topic, I see a lot of people don't have at all a background picture. Or have something that's completely disconnected from what they're doing.

So this is a possibility for you to show what you're after and how people are connected to you. So again, if you are looking for a job that is different than if you're looking [00:11:00] for clients, what is good? If you link that to personal branding and what we talked about two weeks ago, you can of course link that to your, why you can link that to your how, depending on what you want to drive.

So that's, that's a critical piece. on using LinkedIn, because everyone that goes onto your profile, it's the first impression they have. If you don't have anything there, then it's blank or it's like greenish and it looks a little bit weird. Then of course your picture. You, you can use different types of picture.

What, what I like to recommend is really focus on having a clear picture, which is a zoomed in picture. There are some people who have A zoomed out picture so people can't see you properly, especially when you then look on a mobile phone, which 90 or 80 percent of the people are using social media on their mobile phone, they can't see your picture.

So. As easier it is for people to recognize you, as easier it [00:12:00] gets to drag them into your direction. Next one is the kind of the headline what you're doing. If you work in a company like I did before, then you have, this is my position. So you're defining yourself through the position, depending on the environment you're in, that's good or bad.

In my eyes. I try. I'm just a rebel when it comes to this, I, I tried since years to come up with different other position names just to, just to stick out because like me writing chief leadership enthusiast got me already the attention of several people that are asking me what is a chief leadership enthusiast.

Um, and, and that's something you can play with, obviously dependent on, on your goal. Do you want to find a job? Do you want to network? Do you want to, um, drive clients or, um, get clients into your direction? What I like to have, give a little bit of flavor of what I'm about so that people get [00:13:00] a very, very clear understanding, obviously, when you have a business, a sentence like this.

I help whomever you help and then do this and this and this will help people to understand. Okay, that's the, that's what the person is about. And if you then link this things together so that it is coherent, if you look at the upper part, which is the picture, your photo, and then this line, it will help you to stand out even more.

all connected to who you are. And obviously when you think about personal branding, then you take the colors and everything that fits to your tone, uh, skin tone and all of that. I will not go too much into that. That's, that's most probably too detailed, but it's, it's just. This is the first look that people have.

Like people see your profile and that's what they look at. So that is something, and I do, I, I'm, I'm changing the, changing this weekly just to see what's, what's happening because I'm measuring all of that. I'm as you, as you might have understood already, I'm a nerd when it comes to [00:14:00] that. Then if you scroll down inside of LinkedIn, then there's your about section.

The about section is a possibility to get people and drag them into your world. What I like to do in this Is, I have there my mission and my story. We talked about that in the, in the, in the personal branding section or call two weeks ago. This is an opportunity for you to really show what your, your mission is and, and give them a little bit of understanding of what your story is and how can, can they experience you?

And of course, what I do, I put as on the top, the link to my, to my website, because I want to drag people into my world. That's You will see later why I do this, but that's, that's critical. And then what you can do as well, you see the top skills. So the top skills, if you have a business, you can change that.

And if you look for a job, you can change that as well. So if [00:15:00] you look for a specific job and you know, these are the top three or four or five in this case, skills that are relevant to the job I'm looking for. You can add this to your top skills. And that means that the people that look at your profile, see them automatically.

So very important section for everyone to look at and then you have featured So the posts that you have done in the past and you want people to see more often You can pin them to your featured section. Like I have this rewrite now visible I change that quite often as well. I try to have at least one video so that people I can feel deeper who I am because video is one of the most powerful, um, ways to experience the other person.

And then I have, in my case right now, a blog post, which is the one on the right where people can read more about what I'm after and what I'm doing. And then I have something that's always current. Like this one is the personal branding [00:16:00] masterclass we did in the past. So it's an easy way to have people figuring out what you are about.

And with just one snapshot. And then of course comes all the CV section. This. super important because that's what people look at as well. They scroll directly down and look into what are you doing. And that's important for if you're looking for a job or if you're building a business and, and you want to attract clients because everyone is looking at that.

You can use that to your advantage. What a lot of people don't know that you can move the things. Like in a CV, normally you go from the newest to the oldest. Like you see here right now, the newest is the community host of rising stars. And then it's the next one. If you look further down for me, at least right now in my profile, I have changed the order.

So I want things to, to, to get to the top where, where I want to attract the attention to. [00:17:00] So, let's say if you're applying for a role somewhere, you can use that to boost one role that you did in the past to the top, or you, you have something that you do on the side and you want to get the attention to, let's say you are the community host of a community.

You help people in a specific topic and you want people to see that. And the skills as you see, so what I did here is I'm the community host of this and then I put leadership as, as, as the, as the first skill, because I want people to understand this is about leadership. And the second one is branding. So it's easy, easy way to get you understand what the person is about.

And that's something you can fine tune. Obviously, when you. Look for a job when you use LinkedIn to primarily find a new job. Then you you can go more into details I didn't want to go too much into that here because that's very specific if you if you [00:18:00] look for a job But just so much what I like to see because I've hired quite a lot of people in the past I like to see what they did And what they achieved as more and you can, if any one of you is interested, you can look into, into my sections of my LinkedIn and scroll down, especially to the IKEA time.

I always use this, what I did, and this is what we achieved in everything. I don't do that too much right now anymore. Because I'm not looking for a job. Okay. So how do you get people then into your hub where we go a little bit on how do you use LinkedIn? Again, uh, an example that I use, I have this daily thing that goes out.

Um, it's just to, to illustrate. Why I'm doing what I'm doing and why do I not care too much about how many people, uh, like my things or how many people are, um, following me [00:19:00] as an example. Obviously that, that helps, but in the end for me, it's more important that I drag people into my world. So LinkedIn is a mechanism for me to get the attention of people, but then I want them to go into my world, which I curate 100%.

So what I do is this is the example with my daily posts. So we are posting the thumbnail, which is the picture because people are attracted more by picture than text and more by video compared to, to pictures. And then inside of this, I'm not dropping the link because LinkedIn, at least right now, it's not, not featuring you in, in, in the most prominent way if you're adding links inside of the normal post.

So if you use a normal link, If I would use that link to the episode straight away, then LinkedIn would lower my, my reach automatically because every platform like I do as well, every platform wants to keep me on the platform or the users on the platform. So I [00:20:00] go, uh, this way because I'm just saying you it's available on Apple podcast, Amazon music, Spotify, YouTube, and the link is in my profile.

So now comes the fun part. I go back. A couple of slides. Look at this. So thousand people look at my profile. So how do you, how do you get people looking at your profile? If you, if you just see the bottom left corner here, analytics, how do you get people looking at your profile, getting them into your world by telling them, Hey, the link is in my profile.

That's an easy trick I've used over the last year just to get people on my profile and get them into my world. And then it's maybe less people, but in the end is, I mean, it's thousand people per month. It's not too bad. People look at my stupid LinkedIn profile. Um, so that's just one [00:21:00] of the tricks.

Obviously you can use all the different, um, attention methods to do posts in different ways. What I always like to do, everything needs to stay on brand. Everything. I try to be as much as possible, possible to stay on my brand and what I'm after. But having said that I, I throw in some pebbles in between.

Just because if it's too perfect in it, it's not, it's not feeling authentic. So, and people that follow me for a long time, they know that I do a long distance walking and then I'm doing videos of me talking into the camera and talking about something that I'm posting on LinkedIn, which a lot of people would never do.

I do this just because I want to sprinkle in a little bit pebbles. But in the end, this is really about how do you build a system that helps you to, to post and that attracts the attention of people and you use LinkedIn as a tool. [00:22:00] One way for people to approach you and one way for people to discover you

questions.