LinkedIn is the Hidden Gem of Social Media

Andréa Jones (00:00):
LinkedIn, the place where we all go to scroll on our phones in our yoga pants while we pretend to work. Well, today I am going to dive into all of the things related to LinkedIn in 2024, and I'm excited to actually talk about how we can leverage this as a business tool instead of just randomly hitting, like hoping that people connect with us and want to buy our stuff. Welcome back to the Savvy Social Podcast. We're all about social media and building community online. I'm Andréa Jones and I'm excited to kick off the new year talking about LinkedIn because LinkedIn is one of those platforms that to me feels like a hidden gem for a lot of online business owners. And you may be thinking the same thing, especially if you haven't really explored the platform yet. LinkedIn has this reputation for being basically a giant resume, and so today I want to talk about how we can leverage this as a business owner, not just in professional spaces.

(01:00):
And one of the things that I absolutely love about LinkedIn is that you don't need to do all of the things that you have to do on other platforms. My clients who are using LinkedIn are posting less, they're seeing a better results. They're actually connecting with quality people and having quality conversations. And because vanity metrics aren't a huge thing on LinkedIn, we can kind of leave those platforms like TikTok and Instagram. So this kind of resurgence of LinkedIn is not new by any means. I've been talking about LinkedIn for five years now, but it definitely feels like 2024 is the year it's going to be the year of LinkedIn. Now, a quick reminder about this topic as well is that one of my belief systems is that LinkedIn is just a marketing tool. Okay, so I'm going to geek out about LinkedIn in this episode, but it's just one tool in your marketing tool belt.

(01:58):
LinkedIn isn't for everyone. If you go to LinkedIn right now, you log in and you go, oh my God, Andrea, it's terrible. I do not like the interface. I do not like this platform. I do not like the people I'm connecting with. Fine find a different tool. I know in this episode particularly I'm going to sing the praises of LinkedIn, but there are so many paths towards success and this is just one of them. Now, as I mentioned, LinkedIn of yesteryear was just one giant resume and it's still skews that way. When you log into LinkedIn, it asks you to start inputting your profile information, which is really a lot about what you've done in the past and what your current job title is. However, as a personal brand, I want you to think about LinkedIn as a networking tool. This is like a digital business card.

(02:49):
I'll give an example of someone who is using LinkedIn right now in a very fascinating way, and that's Snoop Dogg. Yeah, Snoop Dogg is on LinkedIn and Snoop Dogg to me is kind of bridging this gap between LinkedIn being a tool for professional resumes to LinkedIn being a tool for personal brands. And LinkedIn is actually kind of championing Snoop Dogg being on their platform and he's a lot of the same content. So something that goes on Instagram or Facebook for him may also go on LinkedIn, but he's also creating specific posts for LinkedIn or rather his team is right. And so one of his recent posts, he talked about how he's been a rapper for a long time and that's what he's known for, but he's kind of establishing his personal brand as an investor, an entrepreneur, an innovator. And so in his post he says that he's making moves in the business world to talk about tech and cannabis and hustling and building empires, and he wants to showcase that his creative mind goes beyond music and that he's diving into things like venture capitalism and fashion and setting trends.

(04:05):
And so he's doing that y'all on LinkedIn. He says quote, I'm not just an artist, I'm a force to be reckoned with and I ain't done yet, and I just thought that post was so beautiful to me as a representation of what LinkedIn can be as professionals, as business owners. And so I'll link to Snoop Dogg's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Y'all could check it out, see what he's doing. Study up on how Snoop Dogg as a personal brand is leveraging the power of communities on LinkedIn to bring more awareness to the projects that he's working on. So that brings up the question of who should be on LinkedIn if Snoop Dogg's on LinkedIn, should we all be on LinkedIn? And the short answer is yes. I do think many people can find value in LinkedIn to expand upon that. If you are a personal brand like a coach or a therapist or a thought leader, an author, a course creator, a membership owner, and you build communities online, I absolutely think LinkedIn could be potential for you.

(05:16):
I think it's way easier if you're starting from zero, especially to grow an audience on LinkedIn. The connecting there just feels a little bit more organic when you comment and engage with other people. It shows up in the feed. It just feels a lot more powerful than some of the other tools. Also, if you're the type of person who prefers text-based communication, so you like typing, you, especially those of you who are on X, formerly known as Twitter, if you're looking for an alternative, I think LinkedIn could be it for you. A lot of the content on LinkedIn is text-based. Now there is a video component. Lots of people post videos. I post videos. However, you could easily just post text-based content and absolutely dominate at LinkedIn. To me, it's the top performing piece of content on LinkedIn right now. Obviously, if you're someone who works with other professionals or other business owners, LinkedIn is a huge win for you.

(06:15):
If you're a service-based business owner, LinkedIn feels like a natural next step for your social media suite of awe of marketing attention. Now, people who shouldn't be on LinkedIn, I'm using shouldn't in quotes because I do think a lot of people can find value, but if you are a product based, especially physical product based business owner, LinkedIn may be challenging for you. One way to leverage LinkedIn though is to connect with distributors. So if you are on LinkedIn and you want to distribute your physical product, you could perhaps look at companies and the individuals at those companies and start building connections that way. So you still can leverage LinkedIn, but it's a little bit different than Instagram where you're showing off your product itself. Not everything, but there's a little bit of a nuance there with LinkedIn for product-based business owners. All right, we're going to take a quick break and when we get back I'm going to talk about what's new for LinkedIn and how to navigate it in the new year.

(07:28):
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(08:34):
All right, we're back. So in 2022, LinkedIn dropped some major updates, things like newsletters and creator mode, and 2023 was an extension on what they dropped In 2022, we saw more dynamic capabilities for creator mode. Now we're seeing a lot of these badges on LinkedIn, top voice badges in various categories, and so they're really, really emphasizing creators creating content and creating quality content in their space this year. We also saw the LinkedIn newsletters right at the beginning of the year become public and available for everyone. So last year in 2022, LinkedIn newsletters were just getting off the ground and in 2023 they became available for everyone, even pages, even pages can have LinkedIn newsletters. And so we're seeing a lot of folks create content there. I've been creating content there all 2023, switching it up for 2024 a little bit. So I'll talk about how I'm doing that in a moment, but I think there's a huge opportunity and a huge focus on creating quality content.

(09:46):
We also saw LinkedIn do some interesting things with AI. Now, AI was the name of the game, all of 2023, especially at the end of 2022 when ChatGPT became the conversation of the hour. Every major platform, it feels like added in AI components and LinkedIn is no different. It can actually assist you with things like writing your LinkedIn resumes basically. So crafting your job history, LinkedIn AI can now help you with that. As far as major updates go though there wasn't a lot of changes in the platform this year as far as additional things. LinkedIn instead removed features, and I think LinkedIn is actually one of the best platforms for testing something out and going, Hey, this isn't working, and then rolling it back. LinkedIn stories comes to mind where this was a feature they tested out and they realized people weren't using it and then they just rolled it back and removed it from the platforms.

(10:45):
And I think more social media platforms should do this. I'm looking at you Instagram where we have just way too many features happening. It's way too many things going on. LinkedIn goes, Hey, we're testing this. They test it and they go, ah, it's not happening. So a few things that they did this year in that vein is LinkedIn carousel posts. So to post a carousel post historically, and again now you have to create a PDF slide, 10 slides max and you can upload it as a PDF. Well, in 2023, LinkedIn tested out image-based slides. So your jpeg, your png files, they tested it out as a carousel post, which I personally like because then I could have used the same content on Instagram and LinkedIn, but for some reason it didn't work for them and they rolled that feature back. Now you still have to upload it as a PDF.

(11:37):
Other features that were rolled back on your LinkedIn profile, you had the ability to create a welcome video as your video on your profile. It goes where your profile photo is. So if you go to someone's profile, actually if you go to my profile right now, you'll see my photo for maybe a couple seconds and then it flips over to a video of me in that same spot. Well LinkedIn remove that feature, so if you already have a video there, it's there, but new users or people who want to explore that feature now don't have it available to 'em. The other feature that they rolled back is LinkedIn sticker. So similar to an Instagram story sticker, you could tag people places and links on your images on LinkedIn. They tested it out and then for some reason rolled it back. And again, I really think this is a great move for LinkedIn because it narrows down the focus of what the platform is for.

(12:34):
It makes creating content actually easier on the platform. As I mentioned earlier, text-based content is the name of the game for LinkedIn and it makes it easier if everyone's showing up in that way and not adding complicated layers to things. And it makes it easier for their development team at LinkedIn to focus in on what works, which is the final update that I want to share for 2023 is their algorithm. LinkedIn is spending a lot of time and energy on their algorithm because they want the top content to be seen. They want amazing, excellent content to be seen. And that's the running thread through all of their updates is that they want amazing content to be seen and found. And so they've improved their algorithm. The LinkedIn algorithm is a little bit unique in the sense that it is based on the people that you connect with, but then also their connections as well.

(13:32):
So for instance, if person A comments on person B's post and I don't know person B, I'm still going to see that post in my feed because I know person A, and so now it gives me the opportunity to explore new people, person B, who I never knew before. And so LinkedIn is actively working on balancing your feed with various content types from profiles that you connect with. I also notice that pages are showing up more in the feed now, which is excellent news. I always recommend if you're going on LinkedIn, you're using it as your personal account and not your brand account, your page, but LinkedIn's kind of testing out having more pages come up in the feed. So I'm going to talk more about how you can leverage that in 2024. But LinkedIn is improving their algorithm, which I think is just a huge win for business owners all around.

(14:30):
So as you head into the year, I want to talk about three big mistakes that I see on LinkedIn because I do think there's this assumption for any social platform, but especially LinkedIn that you can post and ghost. And that's the biggest mistake that I see on LinkedIn for people who are starting off on the platform. Just posting does not work on the platform unless you already have a community, you already have a thriving community. Let's say you already have 10,000 people following your page, absolutely post don't comment anywhere else, you're fine. Most people though need to spend time networking to build their community. So just like I said, when person A comments on person B's posts, I'm now seeing person B in my feed. So if you're person A, you're helping to expand your content and the same comes back to you, you're helping expand the reach of your content.

(15:26):
So the biggest mistake I see on LinkedIn is posting and ghosting. The second biggest mistake I see on LinkedIn is not optimizing your profile. You're leaving it as that old school yes or year resume. And it frankly isn't converting for you. There's so many different levers that you can pull on your profile to actually optimize it so that if someone new lands on your page as a business owner, they can look at your profile and go, oh, this is exactly the person that I was looking for. And then the third mistake that I see on LinkedIn is showing up on the platform and saying something like, I posted a new blog, check it out, or Here's my new service that I'm offering. And LinkedIn is a powerful tool in the sense that it's driven by humans and human nature. And this works for all social platforms.

(16:17):
And so when we're dealing with other humans, we're dealing with very human emotions. And when you say something like new blog posts, our human brains go, I don't care frankly, and I don't want to leave the platform. So instead of doing that, there are two human emotions that are working really well in LinkedIn posts right now, curiosity and controversy. So instead of leading with new blog posts, you're leading with how can I spark curiosity on this topic or how can I strike controversial conversation? And so the people who are winning at LinkedIn right now are leading with those two things. So as we head into 2024, what I recommend you examine is looking at the humanity and storytelling side of your content and see how you can infuse curiosity and controversy into your content. How can you spark that initial connection with someone before diving into what you have to offer, what you have to say, what your expertise is.

(17:23):
If you can think about your posts in that way, I think it'll help you create content that will actually please the algorithm which wants to please the end user. At the end of the day, I next I want you to post fewer links on LinkedIn. The fewer links the better. And this comes directly from LinkedIn's content creation team. When they're looking at labeling someone as a top LinkedIn voice, they're looking at people who keep their community on the platform itself. So this again plays into LinkedIn's desire to be a hub, to create an experience of really high quality content. And if you can fit within that experience, fit within that hub, then LinkedIn will reward you by showing your posts to more people. So instead of thinking about posting a link and getting someone off the platform, which they don't really want, think about how you can start a conversation and keep people on your post for longer.

(18:23):
The longer they're on your post commenting and connecting with other people, the better. And LinkedIn will give you a huge thumbs up for helping them achieve what they want to do as well, which is keep people on the platform and ultimately sell more ad face. Like let's be real. At the end of the day, I've seen a few people, and I've tested this out as well, post a link in the first comment that could work as well. But my favorite way is to just let curiosity lead the way. So create your content, create high quality dynamic content. You can talk about what you do in your offers, and then LinkedIn does now have the link in bio functionality so you can have a link in your profile and let your audience or community members get curious about what you do and go click that link themselves.

(19:13):
This way you're not posting links in every single post. The good news is your link in profile will show up with your post as well. It's kind of small, but with your posts now on LinkedIn, they have your profile photo, your headline, and then right under your headline they have your link in bio. So if someone gets curious, they can kind of click a few times, navigate there. Lastly, I did mention pages are having a little bit of a resurgence right now. I'm starting to see more pages in my feed. Two specifically that pop up a lot for me are the marketing millennials and the Saturday solopreneur. And I think the reason that these pages work well on LinkedIn right now is that they're not the I'm the expert talking down to you style posts that used to work really well on LinkedIn. They are very much pulling on the human emotions of the heartstrings and really, really connecting with their audience.

(20:14):
Honestly, it's memes and it's a lot of reposting top content. And so as you think about your page strategy for the year, think about how you can again still remain personable and use your page as a personality itself. Both of these brands work well because they each have their own personality. This year on LinkedIn, I am gunning for one of those top voice badges. I am recording this about a month before it comes out. So hopefully by the time this episode comes out, I will have, one of the ways that I'm doing this is participating in LinkedIn collab articles, which is one of their biggest focuses for the year. They announced in November of 2023 that they had over 1 million contributions to these collaboration articles, and they're tripling down on that as a feature. So I'm participating in that way this year. I'm also going to post a little bit less this year focusing on high quality text-based content and repurposing a ton from this very podcast.

(21:23):
As I'm walking the walk over here, I won't be leveraging my pages this year much. If anything, oftentimes if I have something like a job opening or something like that, I will be posting to the pages and I'm shutting down my LinkedIn newsletter. My goal is to grow my email list, and I've been reflecting the content in my email list over to the LinkedIn newsletter, but as the year goes on, it became even more valuable for me to focus on my main newsletter. We have over 16,000 people, community members in my email list, which is my highest platform community ever. So we're tripling down on that community this year. So that means all the custom content will only go in the newsletter. I'm no longer reposting it over to LinkedIn as well. And next year's episode, I'll tell y'all how that works out for me because I'm really excited to test out just driving everyone over to the newsletter this year.

(22:28):
I would love to know what your LinkedIn strategy is for the year. Head on over to my LinkedIn. You can find me by searching onlinedrea or Andrea Jones, and you'll see my beautiful face connect with me there. Send me a note. I do love voice notes. I love voice notes, and LinkedIn has that feature, which makes it so personable and not scammy spammy. So connect with me and tell me what you're working on LinkedIn this year, and I'll be back with another episode next week. So next week, I have the amazing Natalie Lucier on the show to talk about her LinkedIn strategy, which is just, I just love talking about what other people are doing as well. Like I said, many paths can lead to success. So stay tuned for that episode next week. In the meantime, head on over to Apple Podcasts and Spotify in my Spotify wrapped this year. Y'all are really digging Spotify. Leave a five star review there. Really helps Keep us in the top 100 marketing podcast. I'll see you back soon. Bye for now.