LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 722 million users worldwide. It’s a great place to establish yourself as an authority in your industry, connect with like-minded professionals, and grow your business. One of the best ways to leverage LinkedIn is by building your influence on the platform.
When you’re influential on LinkedIn, you can more easily attract new opportunities, partners, and customers. Your content and profile will reach a wider audience. You’ll be recognized as a thought leader in your field.
But becoming an influencer takes time, effort, and strategy. Simply having a large number of connections isn’t enough. You need to engage your network and share valuable insights consistently.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore proven tips to increase your influence and establish your brand on LinkedIn.
Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is the foundation for building your influence. To maximize its impact:
- Use a professional profile photo. It should be high-quality, well-lit, and depict you looking friendly and approachable.
- Craft an interesting headline. Include relevant keywords that describe your expertise and industry.
- Write a detailed summary section highlighting your background, skills, accomplishments, and goals.
- Showcase your experience, education, certifications, publications, patents, courses, projects, honors and awards.
- Collect diverse recommendations from managers, colleagues, clients, and business partners.
- Customize your profile URL to be linkedin.com/yourname for better branding.
- Include links to your website, blog, and other social profiles to cross-promote content.
An optimized profile signals professionalism and expertise to your network. It also helps your content rank better in LinkedIn’s algorithm.
Grow Your Network Strategically
Who you connect with matters just as much as how many. Focus on quality, not quantity.
Connect with:
- Industry leaders who create great content. Engage with their posts and messages introducing yourself.
- Former colleagues, classmates, clients, vendors, and business partners. Strengthen existing relationships.
- People who work at companies you want to learn about or collaborate with.
- Customers and prospects to build trust and familiarity.
Avoid randomly connecting with strangers just to boost your numbers. Instead, focus on forging authentic professional relationships.
Share Valuable Insights and Advice
Position yourself as a trusted resource by consistently posting educational and actionable content. Types of content to share include:
- Industry news and trends
- Expert tips, guides, and how-to’s
- Insights from events and conferences
- Data, research, and reports
- Success stories and case studies
- Advice for professionals in your field
- Relevant articles and resources
- Q&A’s and AMAs with your connections
- Live videos
- Interviews with respected figures
- Behind-the-scenes company/product information
Aim to post daily if possible, and at a minimum 2-3 times per week. Use images, videos, slides, and polls to make your updates more visual and engaging.
Engage With Your Network
Don’t just broadcast content, facilitate two-way conversations to make meaningful connections.
- Like and comment on updates from your connections. Share praise and feedback.
- Reply to anyone who engages with your posts. Have discussions.
- Ask questions to spark dialogue. Run polls to get insights.
- Share and retweet posts by others to show support.
- Recommend connections to each other for mutual benefit.
- Give endorsements and recommendations validating expertise.
- Follow up with new connections and continue the relationship.
Active engagement builds relationships and shows you’re invested in your network. Socializing content also extends your reach.
Join Industry Related Groups
Groups allow you to connect with like-minded professionals in your field. Look for active groups focused on:
- Your particular industry, profession, or specialty area
- Topics you have expertise in
- Professional development and career issues
- Alumni and business school groups
- Local professional chapters in your city
Interact by:
- Commenting on group discussions
- Starting new conversations
- Sharing advice and experiences
- Posting your own content
- Offering to guest post on the group page
This exposure puts you in front of an engaged audience to showcase your knowledge.
Publish LinkedIn Articles
LinkedIn’s publishing platform makes it easy to share long-form articles. Article topics can align with your expertise, interests, company, products, or causes.
Tips for optimizing your articles:
- Choose descriptive headlines optimized with keywords.
- Insert relevant hashtags in the first 150 characters to categorize the content.
- Embed eye-catching visuals such as images, charts, videos, and slide decks.
- Link to external resources for additional context.
- Promote your articles on your profile, in groups, and to your network.
Quality articles establish your thought leadership and influence. They also get distributed in LinkedIn’s newsfeed.
Go Live With LinkedIn Video
Live video is an engaging way to connect with your audience in real time:
- Broadcast live events, webinars, and conferences.
- Host a Q&A or open mic session.
- Share company news, career advice, and industry announcements.
- Conduct live interviews and panel talks.
Promote your live videos in advance to build anticipation. Then craft insightful commentary to position yourself as an expert source.
Curate Content Into Newsletters
Curated newsletters are an impactful way to share bite-sized insights.
Start by creating a newsletter series focused on your industry, profession, or area of expertise. Then regularly curate and publish the most relevant content.
Ways to populate your newsletter:
- Commentary and analysis on latest news
- Post summaries and excerpts
- Interviews with industry players
- Thoughts from your own blog and LinkedIn
- Aggregated social media updates
- Polls and group discussions
- Recommended resources
Newsletters demonstrate your knowledge while directing more traffic to your profile and content.
Partner With Brands
Strategic partnerships extend your message and lend credibility:
- Collaborate with a related brand on an event, initiative, or content series.
- Join forces with an established company to co-author articles.
- Get featured or quoted in content from respected brands.
- Interview execs and thought leaders at leading organizations.
- Cross-promote content with non-competitive businesses.
Aligning with trusted companies makes you seem like an authority by association.
Use LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Content
Paid promotion ensures you reach the right professionals outside your network. Options include:
- Sponsored content to boost visibility of your posts.
- Sponsored InMail for targeted outreach at scale.
- Text ads displayed to relevant profiles.
- Dynamic ads highlighting your profile, content, and company.
- Conversation ads to spark messaging threads.
Invest in paid distribution to amplify your influence and credibility.
Track Metrics and Grow
Measure your efforts and double down on what works through LinkedIn Analytics:
- Monitor post reach, engagement, clicks, and reactions.
- Analyze follower growth and profile visitors.
- See which topics and post types resonate most.
- Identify your top content pieces.
- Assess conversion rates on ads and sponsored posts.
These insights will help you refine your influencer strategy over time.
Conclusion
Becoming an influential voice on LinkedIn requires consistently creating, engaging, and amplifying valuable insights. But the investment is well worth the authority, exposure, and opportunities you can gain.
Focus on serving your network through education and relationship-building. Actively participate in discussions and groups. Strategically partner with relevant brands. Measure what resonates then double down on those areas.
With a thoughtful approach and commitment to delivering value, you can build a highly engaged following and achieve influencer status on LinkedIn.
