8 Ways to Use LinkedIn To Grow a Blog
When was the last time you reviewed and updated your LinkedIn profile?
How often do you use LinkedIn to help with growing your blog traffic? LinkedIn is a powerful tool, if used to your blog’s advantage. It can help you define yourself as an expert, more effectively grow profile views, and help build your blog’s brand.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a professional networking site geared towards business and employment. Whereas Facebook is more social, LinkedIn was founded on the professional identity principle. In an article for Entrepreneur.com, Assistant Editor Carly Oklye writes, “It takes 20 LinkedIn posts each month to reach 60 percent of your audience, yet only 40 percent of people on the network use the site daily.”
Amazingly, over 80 percent of a business’ social media leads stem from LinkedIn compared to almost 20 percent with all the other social media platforms combined. This factoid is according to a study by TruConversion.
Yes, it is yet one more platform to use in an ever-growing and expanding toolbox of social media platforms, but it can be one of your most powerful attention-getting tools. Curious?
Here are 8 tips to use on LinkedIn to help grow a blog.
Start with a LinkedIn Strategy
Honestly, do you have even five more minutes in your day to spare for another social media platform? Eye roll and heavy sigh, right? I would be losing my marbles if I didn’t have a strategy in place for my social media comings, goings, and everything in between. Every blogger, whether you are a professional blogger seeking to monetize or a hobby blogger, should have a social media plan.
Read More Here: Why Bloggers Need a Social Media Plan
A Profile Page with Precision
Who are you? How do you help people and who exactly is it that you are helping? These are three questions a LinkedIn profile for a blogger should answer. LinkedIn measures the “completeness” of your profile fill each section out in addition to offering suggestions so your profile is stronger.
Bottom line: Create a compelling headline and make it incredibly easy for people to learn about and connect with you.
Examples:
Under the Websites Section:
Let’s Connect on Facebook
Read My Latest Blog Post
Discover My Dog Blog
Note: View the profiles of the people with whom you wish to connect.
Gather Endorsements
LinkedIn describes endorsements as “a great way to recognize your 1st-degree connections’ skills with one click. They also let your connections validate the strengths found on your own profile.”
How to Receive Endorsements
Scroll to the section called Skills & Endorsements on your profile. There, you’ll see the endorsements your connections (what your “LIKES,” or “Followers” are called on LinkedIn) gave you. For example, being endorsed by connections for blogging shows that you have that skill and others recognize it.
How to Give Endorsements
This long-time blogger and social media manager is of the belief that to get you have to give. I am often asked how to get more followers or how to get more people to LIKE or Comment on a blog, social media page, etc. Be a giver. Be social. Put the social in social media. Endorse your connections for skills.
Read More Here: How to Endorse Someone for a Skill on LinkedIn
Ninja Tip: When a prospective client, account, or brand comes perusing to your LinkedIn page, be sure the skills you have with 99+ recommendations are high atop your Skills page. Yes, you can reorder them.
Get and Give Recommendations
Again, we must give if we want to receive. You can and should ask for recommendations to spice up your profile page and add credibility. How often should you ask for a recommendation? Many experts say at least on a month. If your boss or a colleague commends you for a job well done, ask them if they’d write you a recommendation on LinkedIn.
Write in the First Person
On a resume, first person is a no no, but on LinkedIn, this is welcomed, encouraged, and the norm. For example, “I’m a professional blogger who has worked with medium and large brands while helping to raise $20,000 for cats in need over the previous two years.”
Use Multimedia: Words, Video, Photos…
LinkedIn is professionally and aesthetically engaging because users can add photos, videos, slideshows, and more to a profile summary. Why tell the world how awesome you are when you can show them? To add a file, simply edit your profile, scroll to your summary, click the box symbol, and add file. There are a few formats at present that LinkedIn allows, including YouTube and Slideshare.
Setting Your Profile to Public
Who do you want to see what you do and who you are? Under the privacy setting, be sure your profile is set to be visible to everyone. If you prefer, you can set the privacy to your liking, but be aware that the less who can find you, the less traffic and opportunities that come your way.
Algorithm Insights
Like any social media platform, there is an algorithm on LinkedIn. According to the site itself, “LinkedIn uses proprietary algorithms to rank and order the results you get when you search for people on the site. “
You want to be found when people go searching for you on LinkedIn. LinkedIn factors these things in within their algorithm rankings:
- Completeness of your profile;
- Connections you have in common
- How many degrees of separation are between you and your connections
- The groups you share with your connections
So if you are a pet blogger and are connecting with people on LinkedIn who have nothing to do with blogging, social media, pets, marketing, etc., then it’s time to get stepping and make it so.
Bonus Tip
Join and engage in groups that make sense. I’ve seen profiles where the person is in 100 or more groups and they never engage. Join the groups that make sense to you. Be social, be helpful, be involved. Less is more if that less is quality.
Closing Thoughts
How will you know if your strategy and purpose on LinkedIn is working? People and opportunities that are relevant to you will come your way.
Are you on LinkedIn? How much time are you devoting to LinkedIn?
Carol Bryant is the Marketing and Social Media Manager for BlogPaws and runs her own blog, Fidose of Reality and its fundraising arm, Wigglebutt Warriors. When not busy playing with her Cocker Spaniel, Dexter, she stays far away from cooking. Her trademark is her mantra and is tattooed on her arm: My Heart Beats Dog.®
Images: I AM NIKOM, Tatiana Gekman/Shutterstock.com
