How to Step Up Your Creator Game on LinkedIn

Every day, millions of posts, videos, courses, and articles are shared on LinkedIn. This generates tens of thousands of comments every hour—and millions of shares and likes. LinkedIn is the perfect place to network and have high-quality, helpful conversations in a relevant professional context to grow your personal brand.

I love building products for creators like you because you are at the heart of the rich conversations our members experience on LinkedIn. As our team doubles down on helping creators succeed, I wanted to share a number of tools and features that can already help you start and engage in these discussions on LinkedIn.

Below are some of my top tips to set yourself up for success on LinkedIn, and grow your audience.

Turn on Creator Mode

If you want to build your following and engage with an audience on LinkedIn, I recommend turning on Creator Mode, a new feature we launched this March that will set up your profile to better showcase content and help you engage your audience and build a following.

By turning on Creator Mode, you’ll unlock the following settings:

• From ‘Connect’ to ‘Follow’: The primary call-to-action on your profile will change from “Connect” to “Follow” – an important differentiation since we recommend only connecting with those you know and trust. By changing to “Follow”, you won’t need to manage connection invites, and people who follow you will instantly start to see your content.
• Lead with Featured Content & Recent Activity: Your profile will also be reorganized to lead with your featured content and more of your recent activity directly on your profile, to better showcase your content to followers.
• Add Relevant Hashtags: You’ll now have the option to choose up to 5 hashtags related to what type of content and conversations you create on LinkedIn. You can choose to have these hashtags show up on your profile header so people can quickly see what you talk about on LinkedIn. This could include hashtags like #careeradvice #leadership #marketing #fashion #management etc.

We’ll be continuing to add new features for Creators as well, and we’ll be using this setting to better inform our algorithms and search tools to help distribute your content across LinkedIn.

 

Diversify Your Content Type

Beyond posts and full-length articles, there are many ways you can connect with your followers and engage your community on LinkedIn. A few tools you might not have tried yet include:

• LinkedIn Stories: LinkedIn Stories launched this past Fall, and provide a number of unique possibilities for Creators to share professional moments. For example, you can share highlights from work events, a behind-the-scenes look at your day, or a swipe-up link to highlight recent work you’re proud of.
• Newsletters: As a newsletter publisher, you can write about a topic you care about on a regular basis. Members can subscribe to your newsletter, and receive updates when you publish something new. The most engaging newsletters specifically address a unique topic on a consistent basis.
• LinkedIn Live: Creators and organizations can use LinkedIn Live to broadcast video content to their LinkedIn communities in real-time. If you don’t have access to Live Video yet, you can apply for access through our online portal.

Join Conversations and Engage with Others

Sharing great content is only one piece of the equation to being a successful creator on LinkedIn. It’s also important to engage with others!

Where we see some of the best magic happens is in the comments and messages after someone shares new content. The most successful creators are the ones who not only create content that will spark a conversation but then actively engage in that conversation and others.

A few of my top tips for engaging with your LinkedIn community include:

• Ask Questions: Sparking a conversation with your followers can be as easy as asking a question at the end of your articles or posts. It can be as simple as “What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.” or something more specific like “Should companies encourage more men to take paternity leave?”
• Post Timely Content: The more timely and relevant your posts are, the more you’ll likely see responses. You can also explore running a poll or even tagging specific people in your content that you want to chime in. It’s amazing how much that simple invitation can spark engagement.
• Join the Discussion: Once you start to see the comments roll in, engage in the conversation and encourage further discussion. You can bring in more people or point to other content where relevant that might stir up a deeper discussion. And don’t forget, we’ve made it easy to start a private conversation through our messaging platform so you can always take the conversation “offline.”

Millions of members come to LinkedIn every day to connect and learn from others. We hope these tips are helpful as you work to create content on LinkedIn and grow your personal brand.

Join the BlogHer Creators Facebook Group to connect with other content creators and entrepreneurs in our community.