As we all know, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network for individuals as well as businesses around the globe. It is an online destination to connect, share, and exchange professional content. A LinkedIn influencer is an iconic industry leader who educates and enlightens their audience through curated organic content. The platform allows people to connect with like-minded business folks, follow their updates and content, and stand a chance to work with the influencers.
Being a LinkedIn influencer, you can use your proficient knowledge to stand out from the competition and create a massive network of connections worldwide. LinkedIn has the required features for a small or a big business to network online successfully. LinkedIn has more than 810 million users as of 2022, mostly millennials. As per a recent statistic, 72% of all the full-time employees in major business industries are registered on LinkedIn. With broad coverage of 200 countries and availability in 20 different languages, LinkedIn is undoubtedly the most prominent professional networking platform globally.
What is a LinkedIn influencer?
‘LinkedIn influencer icons‘ are people who have a good number of engaged followers and are leaders in their respective industries. These LinkedIn influencers share regular posts with their audience in the form of rich, engaging, and informative content worth reading and providing knowledge exchange.
Individuals become influencers on LinkedIn through their organic content sharing, celebrity endorsements, and accomplishments. On the other hand, businesses position themselves as industry experts to bag a good amount of followers as an influencer.
Once you show audiences an insightful source of content and rich corporate-related information, LinkedIn may feature your post under its ‘trending topics section.’ Again, this shows the power of LinkedIn influencers.
How important is it to be a LinkedIn content creator?
1. Higher audience credibility: LinkedIn is the biggest social media platform for business professionals and entrepreneurs worldwide. On LinkedIn, you can connect with the people you’ve met off-platform. Hence, building connections on the platform boosts real-life credibility, and you can also exchange skills.
2. Notable reach: LinkedIn has an organic reach of fewer than 10% of your total followers. Increase the same by engaging with the likes, comments, and shares on your content.
LinkedIn algorithm pushes content with a sparkling conversation and engagement rate under ‘trending topics’.
3. Higher conversion rate: LinkedIn followers usually tend to convert into clients and customers, and you can reach people with higher positions in your industry. LinkedIn is an opportunity to connect with ideal leads and grow your brand.
This process can be slow, but as a LinkedIn creator, your network grows, which acts as a catalyst for your business expansion.
LinkedIn Creator Mode
Creator mode helps you grow your reach and allows you to influence your connections. Turn on the creator mode and leverage additional tools and features that help you create content and grow your audience base on LinkedIn.
You can access creator analytics, which provides approximate analytical information to explain how your content portfolio performs with time.
How to become a LinkedIn influencer?
Now that you have understood the benefits of being a LinkedIn influencer, it’s time to understand how to become one. There’s no gimmick behind the success. So, let’s know how to become an official LinkedIn influencer.
1. Begin with a killer LinkedIn profile:
Start optimizing every tiny bit of your account, from a professional profile picture to an impressive banner image, well-structured description (LinkedIn name), certifications, endorsements, and skills listing. ‘Self-branding’ is the key to influencer marketing! Hence, remember to have a highly optimized LinkedIn profile.
2. Do you have a bucket full of connections on LinkedIn?
Never add people offhandedly to your network. As you add people outside your field or area of interest, it can result in spam. In addition, professionals can reject your request, which may lead to account restriction if repeated multiple times.
Connect with people who’d add value to the connection (draft a custom message with each request you send).
3. Does your header image influence your audience?
A compelling LinkedIn header image instantly grabs the attention of the audience. Use this space to hook the audience here itself and make them at least ponder through your profile.
A few best approaches to fill the space are by including:
- Team photographs
- Public speaking, events snaps
- Social proofs
- Professional banners
4. Audiences crave real content:
Audiences are more interested in your views or thoughts about any topic than cliched stories or wordy content. Natural, real-life snapshots or clips interest them more. Likewise, your audience wants to consume content based on pure authenticity.
Eventually, as more and more organic traffic engages with your posts, LinkedIn redirects and pushes that content to the trending topics section. This is how the LinkedIn algorithm works!
5. How to be a LinkedIn top voice?
Follow a ‘niche‘ rather than sharing generic content. Tell a story, be empathetic and keep a warm yet professional tone. Use relevant hashtags to join the public opinion and let them get introduced to you or your brand.
The narrower the niche is, for example, social media management for startups, the higher the probability of your content standing out. People are dying for content that isn’t too mainstream.
6. Short video content publishing:
LinkedIn’s algorithm highly prefers videos. People are more interested in interactive content rather than just static stuff. So unique and eye-catching graphics indeed make waves on the platform.
7. Publish blogs and articles on LinkedIn Pulse:
LinkedIn Pulse is a professional publishing platform for blogs, articles, newsletters, or updates for audiences. This helps in understanding your audience who are interested in your niche.
8. Host giveaways and gifts:
Who doesn’t love gifts? Make people engage in your posts by simply making them do a specific task for which the winner is picked and stands a chance to win the giveaway. It can include anything valuable to your audience, e.g., brand merchandise or signature merchandise.
Learn how to get a LinkedIn Influencer Badge
The influencers list keeps on updating every year. The LinkedIn management invites certain influencers to get a LinkedIn Influencer Badge periodically. A good network, professional connections, rich organic content, and respect from the top community is the pathway to a LinkedIn Influencer Badge.
How to find top LinkedIn influencers?
While getting started to be an influencer, you might want to follow a thought leader. But how to find LinkedIn influencers?
Top tips for finding influencers:
- Define your niche
- Find influencers using related keywords
- Write engaging messages
- Try connecting with influencers on their other social channels as well
Here are some top voices of LinkedIn.
Common Mistakes Many Aspiring LinkedIn Influencers Make
Mistake #1 Keeping a private influencer profile: Your target audience wants to consume your content, so your profile must be easily accessible and available to audiences. A private profile may miss a golden opportunity!
Mistake #2 Being too general and not niche-based: Generic content has a lesser chance of ranking up. Instead, readers want to read organic and niche-based content. In addition, it creates a high probability of lead conversion for your brand or business.
Mistake #3 Drafting the same influencer cover letter to all collaborators: Mind the tone of the message, keep it professional enough, and avoid slang. The same copy-paste messages might result in spam. Instead, it’s better to research the brand or influencer you want to contact.
Becoming an influential personality on LinkedIn is an art. It takes dedication, time, consistency, and influencer marketing skills to rock as the industry leader. However, with sheer efforts and unique content, one can amplify the reach sooner.
In the end, it’s the survival of the fittest! We hope the above article has enlightened you and inspired you to become a LinkedIn influencer. As good as it gets, Happy Influencing!
Written by Ashay Chandekar from Socinova. Images have the copyrights of the respective sources.
