Is LinkedIn JUST for finding a new job? Not even close…
In this episode, we talking about LinkedIn and break down everything you need to know in order to grow your network, reach out to people, establish an authority on a certain topic and distribute your content.
The transcript:
Talia: Looking at LinkedIn right now, I have hundreds of connection requests. And when I say hundreds, I mean 820 free requests. I kid you not.
Ross: Wow.
Talia: Right now. Yeah. And dozens of messages. I keep thinking I’m going to go through them, but to be honest, at this point, I’m just deleting them. Unless they really stand out, I’m just deleting a bunch of them, because it’s just too much. The network requests, the messaging. And I know that LinkedIn has a ton of value. I know that I’ve gotten business from LinkedIn and I know that other people around me and you, Ross. I mean, you do a lot of work on LinkedIn, but I see so much abuse happening with this network. And I think it would be wonderful if we could use this short episode to give people an idea, or maybe even a step-by-step process of how to use LinkedIn correctly, to grow your business, to get business and to get really good connections and grow your network.
Ross: I love it. I think that’s a great call and I definitely feel like one of the outcomes that people should have is to essentially get to your level of connection requests, because that’s kind of the goal, is to be in so demand that you have 800 people who want to be your connection, and want to be connected to you and see your thoughts and ideas.
Talia: Is it?
Ross: I think so. I think you don’t want to be so busy that you can’t review your connections, that’s a whole different challenge. But I do think the demand just solidifies you’re an expert and people want to know you and be connected to you. But I’m in a similar boat. I don’t manage my connections well at all, but I think there’s also this misconception a lot of people have, that LinkedIn is just for finding a new job, but in reality, it’s a great place to do Biz Dev, it’s a great place to build stronger relationships, to expand your network, et cetera
Tip #1: Your LinkedIn bio
Ross: So let’s jump right in. I think one of the low hanging fruits for folks who are getting started on LinkedIn is to actually just fill out your bio and upload a photo. I know it sounds basic, it sounds straightforward, but it’s actually something that I see people not do. You want to fill out your bio in full, you want to have a professional photo or even a professional selfie or someone in your house who takes the photo that looks a little bit more professional. You want to upload that to your LinkedIn account.
And if you’re fresh out of school, if you’re an early student, here’s another pro tip, don’t use your graduate photo. I know that you’ve spent probably a lot of money on your graduate photo to graduate, and you’re very proud. And congratulations, well done, you did it. But you want to solidify and show the world that you are someone who has now transitioned out of school and into a professional field. So get a professional headshot and use that, and don’t just rely on that academic photo that you may have took when you were in university.
Talia: I love that tip. And I also think that when you’re filling out your bio, one of the most important things is actually filling out your job title. And you could just say, “Hey, I’m the CEO of,” or, “I am the product manager of,” or, “the marketing manager of,” but a lot of people use that in order to say something, to give it a different kick, or just say what they’re looking for. And I wonder, Ross, if you have any opinion on that. Should you stick to the this is what I do, this is my job title, or can you play around with it a bit and even use that whole sentence over there to say something like what you’re looking for or what you’re hiring for?
Ross: Yeah. I love that approach. I think the idea of just being creative with it is definitely valuable and useful. I’ve seen people update their title to say that they’re hiring. I’ve seen people update to say that they’re looking for work. It’s again, just a great place to communicate to folks what you’re trying to get across.
Tip #2: Leveraging your team
oss: Another tip when it comes to LinkedIn. And this is more for people who may be on a team or within an organization. I think it’s important to empower your team to create. And what I mean by that is, actually, give your team time to create content for LinkedIn. A lot of founders and CEOs and executives will say, “But LinkedIn is just going to be a place where they can find a new job.” Sure. They might find a new job, but if you are able to have them empowered to create content, in the short term, it’s going to provide your company with value. As these people work with you, they work at your organization, they’re going to be seen as leaders in their space. So I encourage folks to really encourage their team and empower their team to create content on LinkedIn as well.
Talia: I love that. And I think it also helps when a bunch of people working on this together, you don’t have to rely just on yourself to grow your visibility on LinkedIn. So I love the idea of empowering your team and getting everyone on board and actually working on it. What’s the next step?
Tip #3 The power of LinkedIn
hashtags is real
Ross: So another tip for LinkedIn is to not ignore hashtags. I know that hashtags might seem spammy and a little bit un-useful when it comes to things like Twitter or even Facebook. But when it comes to LinkedIn, hashtags are actually quite powerful. A lot of people don’t realize, but you can follow actual hashtags. I follow a handful. And a lot of people do. There are millions of people who follow hashtags like marketing or business or technology, et cetera. And when you use those hashtags, the algorithm on LinkedIn increases the likelihood for your content to show up in those people’s feeds. So I encourage you to embrace the hashtag when you are creating content and distributing it on LinkedIn.
Talia: I love that. I love that because I have been ignoring those.
Ross: Right.
Talia: So cool.
Ross: That’s awesome.
Talia: I’ll know to use them next time. I think another thing I have a question about, and I’m sure you were going to talk about this as one of your tips. What about video content? What would you say to, should I use video? Should I go for more copy and text? Or is there room for video?
Tip #4 Embrace the creation of video content
Ross:There’s so much room for video. Video is one of those newer formats on LinkedIn where LinkedIn is introduced video as being a key functionality in a content format. Before you could only just share text posts and then eventually images. And now even video can be distributed on LinkedIn. And because of that, LinkedIn is trying to increase the reach for their video content because they see an opportunity just like Facebook has, Twitter has, all of the other platforms that demonstrates that video is the future. So I would strongly encourage folks to not be afraid to use video content. And there’s tons of examples that you could see out there. If you go to LinkedIn and you start scrolling through your feed, I’m sure you will come across a handful. On LinkedIn, I often share videos with captions, et cetera. So definitely check those out. But definitely creating video content is a low hanging fruit and a big opportunity for folks.
Tip #5 Experiment with different content formats
Ross: And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone’s listening to this episode in 2020, or they’re listening to this episode in 2025. Another great tip when it comes to LinkedIn is to constantly be experimenting with different formats, right? I think it’s often overlooked the value of trying video just because it’s the new thing. If LinkedIn launches a new type of TikTok style content, you might want to experiment with it, right? I think that experimenting on LinkedIn is also a opportunity that exists and to try the different types of content when you were playing on this channel. Have you experimented much with the LinkedIn content and tried different formats or tried different ways of distributing your content and come across anything interesting in your journey?
Talia: I’ve tried different types of things. So one of the things that I like to do, and I haven’t done this in a while to be honest, but I liked in the past to do at least, is to publish a blog post on our website. And then when I start promoting it on different social media platforms, what I’ll do with LinkedIn is actually create a short video, telling people about it. And I actually like to experiment with different types of content. So I’ll use a video and I’ll also use just maybe a GIF or sometimes I’ll just have texts and I’ll try different things. And I’ll also test if having the link itself in the post makes more sense or having it in the first comment, because I see a lot of people doing that. So I’m really prone to testing different things out. And I love it. I also used to use a lot of the LinkedIn groups. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t know how big they are or if people actually use them anymore. But I used to love those too. How about yourself?
Ross: Yeah. So I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different formats over the last few years from video, to groups, to text post, to just simple quick one-liners, to long form essays, articles, et cetera. I do try to experiment with a lot of different things. One thing that I’ve also noticed, and it’s a quick experiment that people can run, but just go to the search bar on LinkedIn and type in your name. And you might be surprised to see how many people are talking about you and how many people are sharing your content that you’re not even aware of. I just did a quick search for your name and there’s a bunch of people talking about your content and sharing your webinars.
Talia: Really?
Ross: Yeah, there’s a bunch of it on there. So there’s definitely value in just scrolling through and seeing all of the people who are talking about the Emotion Sells Masterclass, people talking about this training that you did with lead pages. There’s tons of content that folks can see about themselves if they just do a search for their name. So I think that’s a lot of-
Talia: That’s amazing.
Ross: That’s a quick tip that folks can kind of look at as well.
Tip #6 Have fun experimenting with breaks & emojis
Ross: And then to wrap all of this up, another thing that is worth experimenting with on LinkedIn is just having fun with the approach to experimenting with breaks and emojis and content and GIFs, whatever. I know that it’s easy to get caught up in this idea of, I need to be super professional, but you have to have fun with these platforms as well and show people that you’re human on the other end of the keyboard. So don’t be afraid to use breaks in your text to break it up a little bit. Don’t be afraid to use emojis and GIFs or even show the person behind the keyboard and share some personal photos, et cetera. I know it’s the professional network, but at the end of the day, every professional is a human. So I think you can have some fun with it. What are your thoughts on that?
Talia: I absolutely love it. And the idea about breaks by the way, I used to get emails from my own readers asking me why I create these breaks when I write and if they work well. And they really do. And I used to do this in LinkedIn a lot too. And I think specifically within LinkedIn, because it’s considered, as you said, the professional network, it does help you stand out so much more when you share a little bit of personal stuff or something that’s a little different than all the dry content that’s in there.
Ross: Right.
Talia: So I love it. And 100%, I agree.
Ross: Amazing. I love it. I hope folks enjoyed this episode and I hope that I can actually follow through with it. But if you send myself or even Talia a LinkedIn requests, we will accept it.
Talia: Oh, no.
Ross: We will accept it. All you have to do is say, “We will listen to Action Driven Podcast. We would love to be connected with you.” And yes, even if we have over a hundred connection requests, we will find these ones. Can we say this?
Talia: Yes.
Ross: Are we going to do this?
Talia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what?
Ross: It’s going to be a thing?
Talia: Yeah. Here’s a shout out to Cali. She just sent me a LinkedIn request and it says, “Looking forward to working with you and Ross on the Action Driven Podcast. And I think she’s on your team. So, there you go.
Ross: She is.
Talia: Shout out to Cali.
Ross: It’s amazing. Shout out to Cali. She’s doing it right. I like it. That’s awesome. So yes, folks, if you’re listening to this, feel free to send us a request, feel free to get connected to us. And you know what to do. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us five star reviews only. We would love to get your feedback. And by all means, please feel free to share this episode on LinkedIn. We have all of our content published at actiondrivenpodcast.com. We would be happy to engage with you there. And we would love to see this shared on your LinkedIn so more people can get more insights, more action-driven advice, just like this episode. So thank you so much for listening.
