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It's 2022, and you set a goal for yourself. This year, you'll finally take full advantage of LinkedIn and use it to amplify your voice and career. Congrats! You’ve already taken the first step.
As a Personal Branding Coach, I can’t insist enough on the importance of LinkedIn. My mission is to help my clients uncover and deliver their message – and LinkedIn is the best place to spread this message.
Are you looking to sell a product or service? Find your dream job? Make new connections and expand your network? Become an influencer on LinkedIn? All of the above?
You’ve come to the right place.
In this article, 7 LinkedIn experts share their tips and best practices to help you succeed on the platform in 2022: Joe Binder (Founder & CEO, WOAW), Ian Moyse (CRO, OneUp Sales), Amelia Sordell (Founder, Klowt), Daniel Murray (Solutions Consultant, Clearbit; The Marketing Millenials Podcast Host), Mike Jones (CEO, Beep2B), Andreas Jonsson (CEO, Shield) and myself, Hannah – a Personal Branding Specialist.
Before we start, remember that success won’t happen overnight. LinkedIn is a great tool to develop your network and supercharge your career, but you'll need to put in the work to see tangible results. Don't worry – it’s worth it, I promise.
Without further ado, here’s how to succeed on LinkedIn in 2022:
Helping people identify their niche and come up with their personal statements is at the core of my coaching practice. I’ve helped countless entrepreneurs, students, CEOs, and humans from all walks of life clarify and deliver their messages. I believe that once you uncover this message and share it with the world, your life changes – and I want this for you.
Before anything else, it’s essential to know who your target audience is and how you can serve them. What is your core message?
This is the foundation of your personal brand. For effective personal branding on LinkedIn, your profile must showcase your message. Who you are, what you do, and why you do it should be clearly stated on your LinkedIn profile – that’s your personal brand statement.
To clarify your personal statement, start by defining your target audience (or ideal client). After that, spend some time thinking about your offering. Is it easy to understand for newcomers? Does it sound appealing?
Once you’re clear on your personal brand and your LinkedIn profile is up to date, it’s time to get your message out there.
Ian Moyse, Chief Revenue Officer at OneUp Sales, has more than 35,000 followers on LinkedIn. To reciprocate his success, he urges you to pay attention to small details. It’s what will set you apart from the crowd.
First, don’t underestimate the importance of your profile picture and LinkedIn banner. When have you updated your picture for the last time? If it was more than two years ago, make it a goal to change it as soon as possible. Better yet: if you can, get a professional shot done. Either way, test your new profile picture with a neutral audience to make sure it’s appropriate (try www.photofeeler.com).
Take advantage of the tools provided by the platform to tell your authentic story. For example, you can use the “LinkedIn Cover Story” feature to introduce yourself and your brand. To do so, click on your LinkedIn picture, select « edit cover story » and add a short video of yourself.
Finally, Moyse recommends taking personal branding to the next level by buying your domain name. This simple trick makes your profile – and yourself – look 10 times more professional. “If you go for a job, it’s often that small thing, that small attention to detail that makes the difference,” says Moyse. For instance, click ianmoyse.co.uk or ianmoyse.cloud and see where it takes you.
Cool, right?
Let’s say you came across a super interesting article that you find relevant and helpful. You want to share it, and contemplate the “publish” button for several minutes…
Minutes turn into days. Now, it’s too late – the story isn’t relevant anymore. But never mind, you’ll find something else.
Sounds familiar?
Eventually, your fear of looking like a fool prevents you from sharing content freely. What if I don’t come across as smart enough? What if people from my network think this is silly or uninteresting? What if my friends make fun of me?
Here’s a harsh truth: even if you say something dumb online, your audience will likely forget about it in no time. Millions of people out there are competing for your audience's attention. Soon enough, another post will make them forget about yours. The thing is… If you don’t share anything, you’re not competing for attention at all.
You won’t blow up on LinkedIn overnight and will certainly never if you don’t post anything.
If publishing on LinkedIn makes you feel awkward and uncomfortable, that’s okay. Don’t only lean into the discomfort – actively seek it. This should be the core principle of your LinkedIn personal branding strategy.
Get out of your comfort zone and stop comparing yourself to others. As Joe Binder (WOAW) puts it, “one post isn’t going to break you or hurt your brand. Click publish on whatever it is you’re concerned about.”
Binder goes even further: you must embrace discomfort to succeed on LinkedIn in 2022. “People who perform best on LinkedIn are okay with trying new things, even though that means their friends will make fun of them on the group chat. This allows them to test a lot of different styles and types of content.”
Don’t overthink it. Did you find something interesting and relevant that matches your personal brand? Share it.
“Quality over quantity” doesn’t work on LinkedIn.
According to experts Amelia Sordell and Daniel Murray, aim for “B+ content and A+ consistency.”
You don’t need to share groundbreaking advice or white papers every day, but you must show up for your audience consistently and frequently.
Sordell recommends posting roughly at the same time and days every week, so your audience knows when to be on the lookout for your posts. Based on her experience, posting early in the morning and during lunch increases the likelihood of getting views, as people usually scroll their feed while boarding the train or eating lunch.
Sordell, who has over 80,000 followers on the platform, uses a simple trick to capture and publish more content: dictate your thoughts on your phone and use this content on LinkedIn. Just copy, paste, and hit publish.
Based on her experience, posts written in a more conversational way – as you would speak – resonate with people more than formal posts. “A lot of people think LinkedIn takes a lot of time, but if you dictate your thoughts into your phone and make it a habit, you end up with thousands of posts. I don’t think about writing content, I just have these notes in my phone, drop them in and it’s done.” So, write as you speak!
When a post doesn’t perform well, don’t blame the algorithm. “The algorithm’s purpose is to personalize your feed, not to punish you unnecessarily,” says Amelia Sordell. Instead of trying to learn how the algorithm works, focus on the content you put out there.
Is it relevant to your audience? Is it authentic?
According to Sordell, authenticity is key: “You need to be authentic. Sometimes, it means posting a picture of your kid interrupting your zoom call. Such post might not tell people you're an expert in your field, but a CEO may read this post and decide to reach out because it resonates with them.”
Experiment with different types of posts and see what works best. Based on Joe Binder’s experience, using a picture of yourself can be extremely powerful – although one-sentence posts work very well. How about you give it a try? It requires little commitment and it’s a great way to start building your personal brand on LinkedIn.
Andreas Jonsson, CEO of LinkedIn analytics tool Shield, emphasizes the importance of measuring success on LinkedIn. To measure success on LinkedIn, study the data and analytics from your posts.
Top athletes and content creators both study past experiences to build on them. That's how they become better at what they do, and that’s what you should do, too. “There’s no reason not to be data-driven when using LinkedIn to build, shape, and amplify your career,” says Jonsson.
Knowing what works and what doesn’t will help you create better content and learn about your audience.
Using analytics and data to decide on the type of content to post removes some of the ambiguity. It increases your chances of getting noticed on LinkedIn.
Even though the algorithm shouldn’t be your primary focus, Sordell found something interesting: liking and commenting on your post increases its chances to succeed on the platform. Indeed, LinkedIn rewards content that shows early engagement, so like your post and comment with a question to get the conversation started.
Daniel Murray treats every post like “a mini networking event.” Try hosting conversations whenever you can, rather than just publishing content for the sake of it.
Remember to interact with other people as well. Do your research: whose content is similar to yours? Who are the experts in your field? Make sure to follow them and interact with their posts. Join the conversation.
Mike Jones’ advice to be successful on LinkedIn in 2022 is to keep doing what worked way before the platform was even born: focus on building genuine relationships. Make the extra effort to consistently build relationships with people you connect with.
To help you do so, Jones suggests trying the LinkedIn Events feature. For example, you could develop and host a LinkedIn for your network event directly on the platform. “LinkedIn is clearly investing in events,” says Jones, “so the Events feature will probably have more additions in 2022.”
Remember: there are real human beings on the other side of your screen!
1. Make sure your target audience and message are clear
2. Update your profile picture and banner
3. Use the features available to you (i.e., LinkedIn Cover Story)
4. Post B+ grade content regularly rather than A+ content occasionally
5. Study your data and analytics to find which type of content performs better
6. Interact with others and with your own posts
7. Develop genuine relationships with people from your network
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