If you are not constantly adding new sources of information to your LinkedIn feed, then you are missing out on interesting and useful articles and posts. Keeping your LinkedIn feed updated and modern keeps you in touch with the latest trends as well as letting you know what your network is up to. It takes work, but is worth it, especially if you can get a routine in place to update it every day. Keep reading if you want to see how I do it in a few minutes each day.
There are four very distinct ways to strengthen your feed and help make it work for you by not only keeping a steady stream of information coming your way, but by also putting things in front of you that you can then put in front of your followers. The best part is that they are all collected together on one page for you. You simply need to go under the “My Network” tab and scroll down. Having them all on one page makes it very easy to scroll through the different sections and choose to connect, follow, subscribe or join.
The four areas are as follows:
- Connections
- Follows
- Newsletters
- Groups
I’ll take each one individually, but you can skip ahead to the ones you are interested in if you already do some of these things.
Connections
The bigger your network is, the larger the available selection of people to connect to is. I try to connect with people who are either in similar fields to me or have interesting jobs or that work for interesting companies. I also try to diversify the types of people I connect with so that I am exposed to other industries and other topic areas. Something very important to note here is that you should not just click on the “Connect” button here. If you do that, you will not have the opportunity to personalize your note and your invite will head into the ether as a generic connection request. It’s not the end of the world to do this, but your chances of being accepted are much, much higher if you take the time to personalize your invitation. I write more about it HERE in my article on crafting the perfect connection request. The more people you are connected to, the wider your 2nd and 3rd level connections will be and the more variety you will have in your choices for people to connect to.
Follows
This section is particularly useful for keeping up with the news on your favorite company or brand. Oftentimes, company updates will prove useful for folks in your industry and should be shared into your own feed, adding in your own knowledge and experience as it relates to the topic. In this way you build up your reputation as a thought leader and someone who shares useful resources. Much like you want to connect to interesting people, you also want people to connect to you because they find what you have to say interesting or useful to them. This is also a great opportunity to follow some companies or brands that you know some of your more high-impact connections would find useful. You might assume that someone in banking would be following The Wall Street Journal, but even if they are, sharing an update and tagging them shows them that you are paying attention and trying to add value to their feed. If you are in marketing and a company you follow shares an update about a new campaign, you can reshare it into your own feed and add comments about why you think it’s a clever idea or even offering up some suggestions to make it pop even more. The point is to add value to your feed and to your network by following quality companies and keeping up with their updates.
Newsletters
Newsletters are a great targeted way to learn more about a particular topic. If you are job attracting, it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to newsletters around that, like ‘Get Hired Now’ from Susan Peppercorn. This weekly newsletter would be a good source of information to power up your job search. And where there are a lot of people on LinkedIn looking for work right now, anything you find particularly useful could be shared into your feed for your connections to read and benefit from. If you find a newsletter particularly interesting or useful, you can always find the author on LInkedIn and see if they can be followed or even connected to. This puts their content right into your feed, rather than your email.
Groups
Groups are a little less useful lately, but there are still some ones that are active and engaged and you can find a group for most every topic you could ever imagine. My advice is to search for the keywords you are interested in, like “digital marketing” or “social media management” and see what pops up. You’ll want to look at the results and pick a few groups to look further into. If it is a public group, look at their feed and see how often new content is shared and by how many different people. You’ll also want to look at how many people are members of the group. If the latest content is outdated or if it’s one or two people posting everything, you’ll want to avoid those groups. You want highly active and engaged groups, so you’ll need to do a little sorting to get a list of groups to join and then start asking to join. The best groups will be sharing fresh content and engaging in discussions that might be beneficial to reshare into your own feed. This once again serves to build on your reputation as a thought leader and source of new and trending information.
If you spend a few minutes each day looking through these sections under your “My Network” page, you will find that your feed gets better and better all the time and you will find no shortage of good content to share and comment on.
So, how do you curate your LinkedIn feed? Let me know in the comments below if you found this useful or if you have your own tips on beefing up your feed.
Tai Freligh offers digital marketing and social media services through his company Tai Freligh Consulting, as well as tips, exclusive entertainment interviews and the occasional dog and cat picture. Catch me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on my Tai Freligh Consulting company page. You can also drop a connection request to me on my LinkedIn profile. Interested in a free 15 minute Zoom consult? Email me today!