by admin - 11 Aug 2021

Social media has become a gold mine for businesses and content creators. The lifestyle and the decisions of Millennials and Gen Z consumers these days get highly inspired by the social media trends and the popular content creators on these platforms who are known as influencers. Influencers have the skill and the power to drive awareness and interest among the audience for a particular product/service.  

If you consider business networking, the best platform would be LinkedIn that accounts for 80% of B2B leads. Thus becoming an influencer on LinkedIn could be highly lucrative for your brand and your business. But becoming an influencer on LinkedIn is not as easy as said. It takes time, effort and brilliant strategy to become an influencer. Here is a detailed guide to become a thought leader in your industry and establish yourself as a LinkedIn influencer. 

These days you will find influencers on all social media platforms like Instagram influencers, TikTok influencers, etc., as influencer marketing has become mainstream. Earlier, the LinkedIn platform had selected a few industry leaders as the influencers, including them in the influencer program. However, a few of these profiles were not quite active on the platform, and the LinkedIn audience started following new influencers who created brilliant content consistently. So here are the steps that will help you propel your LinkedIn profile as an influencer. 

1.LAUNCH A RIGHT PROFILE 

As you know, LinkedIn is primarily a business social network, hence your profile must align with business goals. Keep your profile updated with your profession, expertise, career hierarchy, achievements and contact details. In the ‘About’ section, include a crisp overview of your services and expertise while removing the unnecessary fluff.  

Include a professional-looking profile picture and your services or your business card in the banner. Your profile should be such that whoever visits it gets a quick overview of who you are, what you do and how you can help them. Do not forget to attach the links to your website or portfolio. 

2.BUILD A PERSONAL BRAND 

Branding is not only associated with a business; a personal brand is something that works wonders on the LinkedIn platform. Whether you are a CEO of a reputed company, startup founder, employee or freelancer, it is necessary to build a personal brand for yourself to excel on this business network.  

A personal brand is building a unique identity of oneself that makes you stand apart from the crowd. Your brand must speak of your excellence, your personality, and it must be something that people look up to and love to interact with.  

While building your brand, the foremost requirement is to identify your niche. Initially, explore diverse fields and settle on one that you find the most interesting and aligning with your passion. Once you find your niche, create valuable content and establish thought leadership in that particular niche. The work you do, the results you put out speak about your brand.   

3.ADD VALUE TO THE AUDIENCE  

After you find your niche, it is time to create content. The content you create should be something that imparts value to the audience. Do not create salesy or promotional content in the initial stage. Share value-driven content like how-to, the challenges you encountered, the mistake you made, the lessons you learnt, etc.  

Your content must reflect genuinity and appeal to the audience’s emotions and personal experiences, striking the right chord. When people relate to your experiences, they will further take decisions as per your advice.   

4.INCORPORATE STORYTELLING 

Stories have fascinated the human race for ages. Stories build a connection with the audience by leveraging nostalgia, emotions and shared experiences. Even when you try to market your product, blend it into an engaging story that entertains the audience.  

Content that shocks, surprises, entertains and educates the audience is always known to succeed. Share stories of how your career evolved and how you tackled the challenges on your way. This type of content is relatable and also seen to drive more engagement on LinkedIn.   

5.DRIVE ENGAGEMENT VIA CONTENT 

Did you know your content on LinkedIn can act as a lucrative lead magnet? Yeah, it’s not clickbait but a proven reality. There are several real-life examples of how people became influencers and popular freelancers by posting highly engaging and value-driven content on LinkedIn. Engagement is a priority on LinkedIn because when someone likes or comments on your post, the reach of your post expands to their connections and followers, as well. Thus your post reach can become twofold or threefold with every engagement.  

Once someone interacts with your content, they will visit your profile, and there are chances for them to become your prospects or make informed conversions. A tested trick to drive increased engagement is to post value-added content and then leave a question for the audience that is easy and relatable to the maximum of the audience. Occasionally conduct surveys in terms of polls or post entertaining memes that relate to your brand and add some light humor to bring engagement.  

6.BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE AUDIENCE & FELLOW INFLUENCERS IN YOUR NICHE 

When you receive engagement in terms of comments on your posts, reply to those comments and take the conversations ahead. When you interact with the audience, provide them with solutions via comments, a bond of trust gets established, as you end up building a community.  

Conduct polls and try to find out what type of content your audience would like to see. Interact more and more with your audience to comprehend their pain points and address them. Once you build a trusted relationship on LinkedIn, you can then drive your community outside the platform, increasing the sales. Hence we had earlier marked that LinkedIn acts as a lead magnet. 

Along with responding to audience comments on your post, interact with the posts of other influencers in your niche. Interaction does not mean leaving a like on their LinkedIn post or posting a single-word comment for mere formality. Add more valuable points to their posts or share your perspective of the shared scenario in the comments. When you add value in the comments section of other influencers’ posts, their audience will navigate to your profile as you prove your expertise in the niche.  

7.BE CONSISTENT 

After trying out all the above steps, the highly essential thing to follow is being consistent. You cannot become a LinkedIn influencer overnight. It takes days of hard work, consistent content creation, audience interaction and networking skills to become an influencer. Having said that, your content creation journey does not end when you become an influencer. All the above-mentioned steps are recurring events, hence keep following them to keep up with the coveted position of being an influencer. Once you establish yourself in the social business network, you can drive leads and sales conveniently unless you take it for granted.  

If you do not find results after a few days of effort, do not lose confidence and give up in the mid-way. It may take few months to a couple of years to gain the status of an influencer, and your patience and consistency would be the key ingredients of the recipe. Keep experimenting with content styles, make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, rectify your mistakes, network with people and one day, you could be someone who drives the decisions of thousands of people. 

Becoming an influencer on LinkedIn could be lucrative, but the process might be demanding. It is not a place where one viral post would be enough to establish your identity; it is a place where your consistent efforts and consistent value-added, excellent performing posts will drive your success. If you wish to build your brand on LinkedIn or boost your business via LinkedIn marketing, connect with Entitledarts. We have helped people double their revenue by leveraging the LinkedIn platform.