How to use LinkedIn to achieve your goals[Storytime Saturdays]
A complete guide to using LinkedIn to accomplish your goals
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On Saturdays, I will cover stories/writeups covering various people’s experiences 📚📚. These stories will help you learn from the mistakes and successes of others. These stories will cover various topics like Leadership, Productivity, and Personal/Professional Development. Use these to zoom ahead on your goals 🚀🚀
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Before we begin, I want you to stand up and T-Pose. T-Pose hard to assert your dominance on the surroundings around you. Why, you ask? One of the best creators for career growth on the internet have just recommended this newsletter to their audience.
To those that don’t know, Tech Career Growth is a newsletter written by Rahul Pandey and Alex Chiou, two veterans in the Tech Industry. They have led countless high-impact projects, and now mentor software engineers and PMs to excel in their careers. I’ve been recommending their work forever. To have their endorsement is a huge plus for our mission of universal domination. Now onto the article-
LinkedIn is one of the most impactful social media platforms to accomplish your professional goals. Using LinkedIn (or any other social media) allows you to connect with many people easily. Your LinkedIn profile acts as your own personal newspaper, allowing you to broadcast information en masse. The implications of this are wayy more powerful than most people realize. LinkedIn can be an effective tool to find your dream job, connect with the top people in your field, and build your audience.
But most people are using it wrong. The approach they take to LinkedIn hamstrings the complete potential of the platform. In this post/email, I will be covering how to use LinkedIn from 3 different perspectives-
LinkedIn as a Job Seeker- If your primary goal from LinkedIn is to find work, then you would fall in this category. This involves optimizing various aspects of your profile to create the most attractive profile for recruiters/hiring managers. No more applying to jobs only to be ghosted, this will start making recruiters start applying to you.
LinkedIn for connecting with people- Some people are looking for mentors /guidance on LinkedIn. However, people go about this the wrong way. We will cover how you can use social media like LinkedIn to build relationships with the right people online.
LinkedIn for building an audience- Lots of people have asked me how I managed to get recommendations and endorsements from the biggest names in AI/Tech when I’m a relative nobody. Today, I tell you how :))
By the end of this article, you will have an idea of how you can leverage your LinkedIn to hit your goals. Are you excited? Let’s get right into it.
Key Highlights
LinkedIn as a Job Seeker- If your primary purpose is to use LinkedIn as a job seeker, then you want to optimize your LinkedIn Profile for search. Recruiters search for the profile they are looking for (“Python Developer”) so you want to ensure that- 1) Your profile ranks highly in search. 2) Your profile is intriguing enough for the recruiter to message you. Last year, I covered the optimal LinkedIn profile in-depth here. Read that if you’re interested in this building a LinkedIn that allows you to get interviews without extra effort.
LinkedIn for mentorship- If your primary goal is to use LinkedIn as a way of connecting with extraordinary people in your domain, then you want to utilize your LinkedIn as a value add to these people. The process is much simpler than you’d think- respond to what they share with 2 or 3 thoughtful lines (atleast) and/or keep sharing interesting contacts/videos/articles with them. Don’t be afraid to disagree with these people. I covered the story of how I networked with Ken Jee before I had any real audience in this article. Use that as a to frame your interactions template.
LinkedIn for audience creation- This is going to be similar to the above procedure, but you will have to put more and time effort into creating your own posts. If your main goal is to build a follower count and gain engagement, then your posts don’t have to be very comprehensive/detailed. They can serve as bridges to introduce people to concepts. If you want to upsell them into signing up for other services/looking into more resources, then you will need to put more effort into creating content outside of LinkedIn that you can funnel people towards. Either way, I’ll cover some insights I have gained in creating posts with you.
Since I’ve covered the two in-depth before, I will be focusing on the third point here. However, keep in mind, you can also blend all three (I do so). I’m only showing these as separate because it’s easier to illustrate the extremes. For example, one thing I’ve started blending the three topics is that when people message me on LinkedIn about how my content has helped them, I ask them to endorse my skills on LinkedIn. This in turn helps with SEO and with recruiters reaching out to me.
How to Use LinkedIn for Building an Audience
Here is how you build an audience on LinkedIn-
Start building a trusted collection of sources- The first step to building an audience is to have a lot of different sources that you use to gain your information. This can come from books, newsletters, creators, YouTube Channels, and whatever else you like to consult. If you’re looking for somewhere to start, I have a very extensive list of free resources over here.
Build a backlog of content- It’s important for you to start building a backlog of content. This will be very important as you start reaching out to people. A good backlog allows people to scroll through your work and understand what you’re about. If you plan to make your content based around LinkedIn only/primarily, use the Highlight Feature to make sure people can access the content you want them to see.
You have a silent readership- If you start sharing interesting information regularly, people will begin to take notice. A majority of these people will never like your posts/comment on them. They will just read them and move on. I’ve had tons of people reach out to me and tell me they’ve been following me for months on LinkedIn and they loved what I shared. I would’ve never known because they engaged with any of the content I shared. You too will start to build up a silent readership. There’s a reason I’m sharing this with you- in the beginning your posts will get no likes/shares/impressions. It’ll feel like you’re shouting into the void. You will see LinkedIn influencers copy-paste content and get thousands of likes while you have nothing. This sucks, and can even cause you to start resenting your audience/the internet as a whole (I know I did). The realization that there are people who value what you share, even if they say nothing, can help you stay consistent.
Throw in some engagement bait- For 95% of your content, you want to cover topics that are interesting/useful to you. This will allow you to stay consistent and allow you to create work that you’re proud of. However, the other 5% will have to be strategically based on building viewers/followers. This can be done by covering trendy topics, using polls/other hooks for audience engagement, and sharing content by (and tagging) people with larger audiences than you. More on this now.
How to Tag the right way- Tagging more prominent figures is a cheat code for engagement. For a recent example, take a look at the following post I shared. I didn’t have to put that much effort into it, and it was still one of my most popular posts of the last 28 days. However, if you tag people meaninglessly, it can be very annoying for everyone. Instead, you want to build upon something they shared (in my example, I talked about how that chart was useful in my work). This way, people have a reason to engage with your posts. It also brings you to the attention of the people you tag (which is a great way to open up partnerships).
Create Lists- One of the other cheat codes for baiting engagement is to create lists. For some bizarre reason- lists do very well on LinkedIn. That is why there are so many influencers that are always sharing Best Tools for X etc.
How to get endorsements from the big names- You will notice that a lot of the people who recommend my writing are much bigger than I am. They don’t recommend my work because I can get them an audience. The only reason they share my work is that they think I have something valuable to share. That’s what I would like to stress to you as well. If you’re getting into the content game, focus on your quality. The accolades will come.
Be patient- I have been recommending the Career Growth newsletter for almost a year before they finally recommended my writing. In the meantime, I have been sharing major articles with Rahul and Alex(I would give them special links to let them bypass the paywalls). Most often, I didn’t hear anything back from them. If you believe in the quality of your work, then keep sharing without reservation. However, keep in mind to not overdo it. While I did take a lot of opportunities to share my writing, I made sure that I was engaging with their content the right way. I was still commenting on their posts/sharing other interesting leads with them etc. This way, my sharing my content was a value add, and not me hijacking their posts.
Don’t worry about follower counts/popularity- I recommend lots of newsletters/creators with a much smaller audience because I think they have value. Some of my most popular articles have been on niche papers (the ideas were new to a lot of people). Focus on quality and nothing else. Quality attracts quality. Getting into likes/online status is very easy but it doesn’t help anyone. Focus on quality, and it will allow you to create works that you’re proud of. And your audience will appreciate the recommendations/information you have to share.
Have fun- There are certain things you’ll have to do things to make things fun for yourself. This will allow you to stay consistent, and allow you to reap the rewards. Remember, things like content grow exponentially. The starts are always much slower than the middle or end. More people subscribed to this newsletter in the last week than they did from October 2020 to Jan 2022. And in many ways, my growth has only begun. The partnerships I’m working on will cause my audience to blow up.
I was able to get over 2M Impressions on LinkedIn last year, even though I wasn’t super consistent (I was only figuring this part of LinkedIn out). Use my suggestions, and see if you can top it. Look forward to seeing your results :)
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Stay Woke,
Go kill all,
Devansh <3
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