Most people think of branding on LinkedIn in terms of their LinkedIn Profile, but the other way you can showcase yourself on LinkedIn is through your actions. So let’s talk about what actions you can take on LinkedIn, which ones are worthwhile and which ones are perhaps not worth your time.
There are two broad types of actions we want to talk about here: Publishing and Engaging with others.
Publishing
By publishing I mean publishing content in any form on LinkedIn, whether it be written, audio, video or events. While these vary in terms of how good they are for branding yourself, publishing is the primary proactive way in which you can express yourself on LinkedIn. It is the method which gives you complete control. The benefits are numerous:
- Your content shows you understand your ideal reader’s problems
- Your content shows that you have a track record helping people like your ideal reader with their problems
- Ideally, your content shows the way you think
- Some content – featured content, articles, and LinkedIn newsletters are examples – remain “attached” to your profile where people can find them. This represents an archive people can review
- Content is searchable on LinkedIn
- Some content – again, articles and LinkedIn newsletters are examples – are indexed and searchable on Google
If you are not publishing on LinkedIn – even just a little – you are missing out on a huge opportunity. I remember a prospective client proudly telling me years ago, “Our company is the best kept secret in the industry.” I replied, “Why would you want to be a secret?”
Engaging with others on LinkedIn
This comes in multiple forms, some of which are worthwhile, others that I think should be avoided.
Responding to people who engage with your content
Green light. Go. This is huge for multiple reasons. You want to show the people who comment on your posts or other content that you appreciate them. And it represents an opportunity to expand the discussion past your original content. It is also an opportunity to develop relationships with the people who comment. Some may become followers or connections. There is evidence that LinkedIn’s algorithms “see” such back and forth in the comment thread as proof of the relevance of your content, which results in LinkedIn showing it to more people.
Every one of these is a good reason to engage with the people who engage with you.
Commenting on other people’s content
For all the reasons I listed above, this is a good idea, but only under two circumstances. The first is if the person (or company) in question is one that you wish to develop a relationship with. The second is the case where you want to support a person or company for whatever reason.
The bottom line here? Get involved where you want a deeper business relationship with the other person. Don’t get involved with a stranger who you would be happy to remain a stranger.
Reacting to other people’s content
This includes Likes and all the LinkedIn emoji’s. Use them rarely – such as when you don’t have time to leave a comment – but avoid them where you can. Reactions are confetti, they are too easily thrown around. People don’t pay much attention to them. I know that when I post, I sometimes register how many Likes and other reactions I have received, but pretty well all of my effort is going into responding to the comments I have received.
Sharing other people’s content
Don’t bother. I have mentioned this in the past, but there is evidence that LinkedIn does not reward us for sharing other people’s content. LinkedIn might see this as a sign that the content is relevant and boost its distribution, but that is a nice bonus for the person who wrote the content; it does nothing for the person who shared it. LinkedIn says we should be sharing content, but their actions seem to indicate that sharing helps the writer, not the sharer.
Participation In LinkedIn Groups
Ha-ha. No. Don’t. With very rare – and I mean one in a hundred, maybe one in a thousand – exceptions, LinkedIn Groups have been a wasteland of spam and devoid of meaningful discussion for over five years now. LinkedIn Groups were once vibrant areas but now are places where people just “post and run.” Until we see positive steps from LinkedIn to fix Groups, this will likely remain the case.
Summary
A lot of your “active branding” on LinkedIn comes down to comments and publishing. Add value in both. Ideally you want to spur people to go to your profile and check you out. LinkedIn is largely not a social network, so you want to have content that people can review on their own time, whether they show up later today or four months from now.
I publish a weekly email newsletter on using LinkedIn Effectively for Sales and Marketing. Each newsletter typically contains two articles like the one above, it’s free, and you can unsubscribe anytime. Here’s a link to the sign up page: https://practicalsmm.com/contact/
Obligatory boilerplate: I do not work for or have any association with LinkedIn, other than being a user who pays them for his Sales Navigator subscription every month.
