You don’t have to spend hours every day and week on LinkedIn to have an impact on not only who’s checking your profile out, but how many people are engaging with you and your content. Keep reading to see how I boosted my views by 350% in just two months using six simple steps!
As someone who works full time, I find myself with limited time for social media during the day. To maximize my efforts, I made a conscious decision to focus primarily on LinkedIn. However, I knew I needed to be strategic about my time and efforts in order to get the most value from my networking. To streamline my approach, I’ve boiled my approach down into six key categories:
- Profile Views
- Connection Requests
- Notifications
- Messages
- Comments/Likes
- Share/Repost
It generally takes me about 15 minutes a day, Monday through Friday, to go through all six of these categories. It will take you longer in the beginning as you get used to doing these six things, but you will speed up the more you do it. I like to call it the LI-15 and I put it on my daily To Do list to make it a regular habit and part of my routine.
So let’s break each one down into a simple task.
Profile Views: I used to not really know what to do with profile views other than be happy when somebody from a company I was interested in or doing a job I would like to be doing looked at my profile. It usually ended right there for me. I was too nervous or timid to reach out to these folks, but really that’s silly. Everybody who uses LinkedIn knows that you can decide how much of your profile to show to somebody when you check out their profile and also knows that people know when you look at them. Now, I review all those profile views and decide if I’m going to reach out to them. If they are working for a company and in an industry related to my interests or where I’d like to work, I’ll reach out to them and put in a connection request. Pro Tip: Always add a personalized note! I will add a note to my connection request and say something like, “Hey there Bob! Thanks for checking out my profile. I see that you work in the entertainment industry, a field I’m very interested in. I’d love to connect with a fellow creative and share resources. Have a great day!”. More often than not, you will connect with that person and hopefully start a dialogue with them. The more people you add to your connections, the wider your network gets and the more content you see in your feed from the 2nd and 3rd level connections, so it’s a win/win.
Connection Requests: I try to send out at least five new connection requests each day, each with personalized notes (Ed note: LinkedIn only allows five personalized notes a month as of 6/20/24). There are a variety of ways to find new people to connect with, but the easiest is to check out the suggested connections on your “My Network” page. Pro Tip: Don’t just click on the connect button here. Open their profile in a new window and always select “add a note” option. You have a much better chance of connecting with someone when you include a personalized note instead of just a generic connection request.
Notifications: This area of your profile is a treasure trove of opportunities to engage with your network and also to find potentially relevant articles to share in your feed. LinkedIn will alert you to posts that your contacts have shared that are getting extra engagement or let you know if somebody new has viewed your profile. Trending topics are often mentioned here along with a link to an article typically from a LinkedIn editor, but sometimes from your network. Checking this every day gives you the opportunity to engage with your feed and also be seen as a source of information and a knowledgeable person on certain topics.
Messages: Many folks never check their messages and I think this is a missed opportunity. Sometimes your network will privately message you when it’s a topic they don’t want to discuss publicly in the feed. Other times you can get InMail messages from recruiters or other people looking to hire you for your skills or reach out about a potential job. Sometimes you can move a conversation from the feed into a private messages conversation if you want to get into the nitty gritty of something or talk more concrete details like pricing or confidential details.
Comments/Likes: Once I have gone through my notifications and gone to specific posts to like or comment, I will then hit the “Home” button and scroll through my feed checking for posts or articles that are of interest to me or could be of interest to the kinds of people who could be future clients of mine. I also like to check in on my network and make sure to like or comment on posts that are status updates about new jobs or anniversaries or requests for leads when you’ve been laid off or furloughed.
Share/Repost: I will typically try to schedule a few posts a week that go out in the morning. While I am scrolling through my Home feed and checking out notifications, I always keep an eye out for at least one more article each day that I can share that I think will provide some value to my network and if I can, I will provide some context as to why I am sharing a particular article or post. This shows thought leadership as well as keeping your name out there in the feed as a trusted industry resource.
I know this seems like a lot to take in, but you really can do it all in fifteen minutes a day once you have your routine in place. I have a sticky note on my wall that boils this down to the bare essence. Once you have done it enough times, you can simply just look at your list and go down, ticking each one off and be done in 15 minutes.
Good luck! Leave a comment below if you found this helpful and SHARE if you think somebody else will find this useful.
I am a Copywriter and Marketing Consultant for Tai Freligh Consulting & Copywriting, a marketing agency based in Huntington Beach, California. TFC provides consulting services for copywriting, marketing, branding, and social media. Give our Company Page a follow on LinkedIn.
You can connect with, like and follow me on social media here: LinkedIn, Twitter and TikTok.
