LinkedIn is a great place to build your personal or business brand in 2020. While originally it was seen as the place to stick your online resume (not true at all), its reputation has grown to be one of the best places to network, share your work, and land ideal work or clients.
If you want to start using LinkedIn today or improve how you show up there here’s the top 2020 trends from a LinkedIn Top Voice.
1. Change your LinkedIn headline
Unless you have a job as a recruiter, HR, or executive team member at a reputable company, it’s best to change your LinkedIn headline instead of using the default job title.
Why? When people see your comment or your LinkedIn thumbnail, they see your title. Your title gives a few clues about what you do or how you help others. Try this, what do you think of when you see this title:
Kerri Twigg: Owner of Career Stories Consulting
What does it tell you? It tells you I own a company you have never heard of. It would be different if I was the CEO of Pepsi – that’s different. Almost everyone knows that company and how big a role that would be. But, if the company you work for is largely unknown, you’re better off describing what you do and who you do it for.
Change your headline to one to describe your niche, how you help, or your top skills and sector.
Some examples:
- Scrappy developer with integrity & off-the-charts communication skills,
- Lawyer dedicated to making law services more accessible for all.
- Author of “The Best PR Book” & Tech Entrepreneur
- Communication Clerk |Loyal| Wizard with data | Plans great events
All of these headlines allow anyone to get an idea about who they are and how they work.
2. Get on LinkedIn live
In 2019, LinkedIn introduced LinkedIn live, a new feature that allows people to live stream their work. Some people use it to live stream from conferences; some people make it like a talk show. I host a show on Thursday nights called the Career Stories Live, plus I do lead daily morning meditations. Wanna be a guest, send me message about it.
#LinkedInlive was released to a small number of LinkedIn users by invitation. You can apply to have LinkedIn live. But, you don’t need to have a Linkedin live to participate in this feature.
- Research who have access to this feature (a simple search of #linkedinlive on LinkedIn will show you who uses it)
- Make a list of LinkedIn live users whose show topics relate to your work or targeted work
- Reach out to them with an idea for a show topic, segment, interview or collaboration
Being a guest on someone else’s show is powerful. It allows you to be seen by a new audience while demonstrating you have something to share and say. A quick tip: if you get asked to be a guest, don’t think of it as a place where you sell, show up as you and share stories about your work. This will resonate better with your audience. I would update your profile and create some content before reaching out to a LinkedIn live user so that when people check out your profile after the stream, you’ll be proud of the profile they see.
3. Pods are dead, conversations are not
LinkedIn pods were a big deal in 2017-2019. Pods are where a group of people would agree to like, comment and share each other’s work on LinkedIn. For example, I could write a post, send a message to my pod and they would all like the LinkedIn post or make a comment. This would send a signal to LinkedIn that it was hot content and the post would be shared more widely. People started realizing that a lot of people who were popular on LinkedIn were not as popular in other places like Twitter or Instagram, which signaled that something was off. They were cheating the system through pods.
Pods still exist. If you do have a few contacts that you want to share content with, go ahead. But it’s not your #1 strategy. I know plenty of people who might get hundreds of likes on their content, but they aren’t getting hired or landing clients. Ideally, you want to be creating content to help people understand your work and value. And then the content leads to private conversations. Popularity does not equal sales.
4. Be you. Professionals come in all styles
LinkedIn is a place for professionals to connect and share ideas. In the olden days of LinkedIn, it was mainly people in suits creating content for other people in suits. It’s very different now.
Now, people from all industries, including creatives, are using LinkedIn. A common misstep people make when they first get on LinkedIn is they think they need to be corporate or ultra-serious to be credible. Not true.
So, while you may leave dance videos for someone else, the more you show up as you, the stronger your voice is. Remember we live in a time of constant content and information overload. What is the most interesting part of you? Work on sharing that.
5. The two most important questions to ask yourself about your LinkedIn strategy
The one trend that will never change is the two most important questions to ask yourself about being on LinkedIn. The two questions are, “why am I using LinkedIn? And what do I want to have changed in my career from being on LinkedIn?” The answer to these two questions is the foundation of your LinkedIn brand.
Why are you using LinkedIn in 2020? Are you using it to land a job? Start a business? Start establishing yourself in a new sector? Meet new people who work in your industry?
What do you want to have changed from being on LinkedIn? Do you want a job offer? New clients? Speaking gig offers? To be known and trusted in your industry? To be named a thought-leader?
If you know why you are using LinkedIn and what you want to have changed, you can start planning a strategy that gets you that. The answers to these two questions will determine:
- your headline
- what you say in your profile — the words you use and what you call to action are
- the content you share, including the type and frequency
- how often you comment on other people’s content
And if you’re new to LinkedIn, read this article to learn how to write to people on LinkedIn that you don’t know, but what to know.
Need help figuring out what story you’re telling on LinkedIn and how to be intentional about it?
Join the Career Stories Masterclass (currently on sale for just $10/month) to get access to course, Your Intentional LinkedIn Presence, plus other classes to help you know your career story. This class covers:
- How to use the acting/directing trick of determining “action” to build a profile that people read & take action on
- How to create a content strategy that is right for your goals and attracts the right kind of attention
- How to identify other amazing content creators to follow and chat with that builds your career brand
- The LinkedIn algorithm game, what content gets noticed and what does it say about your career story
- how to connect with the right people and expand your network to meet your goals
- My #1 trick for getting into the right mindset before I write, comment or connect on LinkedIn.
- How to identify the three-character traits you want to consistently model
As a Your Intentional LinkedIn Presence student, Kyle described it:
