6 Things To Stop Doing On LinkedIn
1. Don’t give your job title or job description as your LinkedIn headline
2. Don’t use an unrecognisable profile picture
Yes, I know, it is tempting to use a photo taken when you were a bit younger – less lines and less grey hairs! But that really isn’t a true reflection of who you are.
Ideally you should be looking straight into the camera allowing eye contact to be made, this helps the viewer connect with you on a personal level. You will look less engaged if you are looking away from the camera.
If you usually wear glasses, keep them on. But, don’t wear sunglasses as people need to see your eyes.
For practical reasons it helps to be recognised if you are meeting someone for the first time. If you don’t look like the person in the photograph this can give off a lot of confused messages! And it’s great to be recognised from the picture too – when I go to networking events, people often say ‘Hi Becs’, because they recognise my face. This is a great ice-breaker and gets conversations started with ease.
My headshots were done professionally by Andrew Collier, who captures people’s personalities incredibly well. But, anyone can take a photo for you, just ensure that you make eye contact, smile and there’s no confusing backdrop. And it helps to focus on just your headshot, remember the thumbnail is really small so your face should be prominent in the image.
Check your profile picture. Does it give the right message about who you are?
3. Don’t continually share content from others
I often get asked ‘how do I get my content seen on LinkedIn?’ Here is a mistake you can’t afford to make in your LinkedIn strategy for business.
LinkedIn does not favour ‘shared posts’. Posts that share other people’s posts or articles get very little visibility and will not appear in many of your connection’s newsfeeds. It’s simply poor practice.
Create your own content and showcase who you are, what you have to offer, what inspires you, what great insights you have and more. Even better, use an image of yourself in the post. These 2 simple content techniques will get you better visibility and greater reach.
Did you know that only 1.7% people who are on LinkedIn actively post content? What a fantastic opportunity to get your voice heard!
4. Don’t do ‘sales talk’ all the time
Another question I get asked a lot is ‘how do I increase visibility on LinkedIn’. You need to engage your audience and provide content that encourages interaction.
I’m sure you’ve seen this happen. You connect with someone on social media and from that moment on all you ever see from them is ‘buy this ….’, ‘buy that …’ and ‘my latest offer is …’ etc etc.
Now, this person may have an amazing product, but when someone tries to sell it to you constantly, it is more than off putting – it’s annoying. Within a week you’ll have most likely unfollowed, unconnected or even blocked them!
Yes, LinkedIn is a professional networking site, but it is becoming more informal as people realise the value of getting to know someone and understanding a bit about their personality before making the decision to do business with them or buy from them.
Scan your latest posts, is there a good mix of content? If not, have a go at brand storytelling, give kudos to someone you have worked with or start a conversation and ask for the opinions of others. As long as your content is relevant to who you are and reflects your values – go with it!
5. Don’t put links into your post
LinkedIn, like all other social media platforms, do not like it when a link is placed in a post. Why? Well, because they want people to stay on that platform, the last thing they want is their users actively encouraging others to leave the site and head to another website.
Posts with links in them just don’t go very far at all, they hardly get any visibility. Instead, pop any links into the comments section.
Top Tips for LinkedIn: If you have your own business page and post from there, don’t simply share these posts from your personal profile. You should repurpose your business page’s posts into new posts to be sent from your personal profile.
6. Don’t concentrate entirely on your own posts
Get engaged! Get social! Remember, LinkedIn is still a social media platform, you are expected to like, engage and comment on other people’s posts.
LinkedIn is very sophisticated – it knows if you only ever log on to post about yourself – and you will be penalised by having the reach on your posts limited. Active members who post themselves and scroll to see what others are doing and regularly interact will achieve better results.
Remember when you leave a comment, your fantastic headline will also appear so it’s the perfect way to get on someone’s radar.
And you’re likely to experience reciprocity. When your network interacts with your posts (as you do with theirs), your posts will gain greater reach as a result.
These are just six common things that people who use LinkedIn get wrong, there’s a whole host of other simple mistakes people make on LinkedIn that can significantly reduce visibility.
Understanding how the LinkedIn platform works can significantly increase your visibility and business enquiries. If you can’t make the workshop, I’m happy to do 1-1 training online or in person if you’re local to Warrington.
Bye for now,
Becs
#GetSocial
