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The Art of Speaking  

Using your LinkedIn account to post more than just an online resume

Make an impact on LinkedIn

YouTube Wade Paterson

The catchy slogan “set it and forget it” was coined decades ago by infomercial star, Ron Popeil.

While the phrase was used to describe the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ at the time, it is also accurate when describing the way most people approach their LinkedIn accounts.

For many, LinkedIn is treated like an online resume, only visited periodically to update major career milestones. But the people who take the time to post content on LinkedIn often see a great return on investment in terms of the number of people who end up consuming their content.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are more competitive when it comes to the amount of content published by users. That means it may be more difficult to cut through the noise and catch your audience’s attention on those platforms.

When it comes to LinkedIn, fewer people post on a regular basis, therefore, the LinkedIn algorithm is more likely to put your content in front of more eyeballs than many other social media platforms.

LinkedIn also periodically sends e-mail alerts and push notifications to users when their connections post an article or other relevant information.

In the video at the top of this article, I give two suggestions of how you can leverage LinkedIn in a way that most others don’t (disregard the third suggestion of using “LinkedIn stories,” as that feature was recently disabled on the platform).

Give LinkedIn recommendations

Recognition feels good. A simple compliment has the power to turn a bad day into a great one.

LinkedIn has a built in “recommendation” tool, which allows you to write a short testimonial for your connections that will live on their profile page.

Perhaps you have a former co-worker who is great at what he or she does. Maybe you’re a manager in an office and you want to recognize your hard-working staff. Whatever your motivation, giving someone a recommendation via LinkedIn will mean a lot to that person (especially because these aren’t typically given out often) and may help build your professional relationship with that person.

A side benefit of doing this is that, in some circumstances, the individual who you give a recommendation to may return the favour, without you ever asking them to do so.

Publish long-form posts

Short text posts on social media are great, but if you want to take your LinkedIn game to the next level, you should experiment with publishing articles via your profile. Every time you publish a long-form post on LinkedIn, it will automatically trigger an announcement post, which will be visible in your connections’ news feed. Because these types of posts are less common than short posts, they are more likely to capture the attention of your audience.

But perhaps most importantly, publishing long-form written content establishes you as a thought-leader in your area of expertise. That blog-style piece of content will live on your LinkedIn profile for all to see who land on your page.

If you’re already taking the time to produce video content, consider transcribing the videos you’re creating into text posts as well. This is a great way of taking one of your ideas and stretching it across various mediums to maximize your reach.

If you’re not currently using LinkedIn very often, I challenge you to post consistent content to LinkedIn for a month and monitor the results. I suspect the level of engagement you receive will exceed your expectations.

The video attached to this post is one of an eight-part series on Impactful Communication on social media.

If you want to learn more about making the most of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even TikTok, check out the full series: here.

If you’re interested in learning more about Impactful Communication in general, subscribe to my YouTube channel

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.



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About the Author

Wade Paterson is an award-winning Toastmaster who is passionate about Impactful Communication.

His columns and accompanying YouTube videos are focused on helping others become more confident public speakers and communicators.



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The views expressed are strictly those of the author and not necessarily those of Castanet. Castanet does not warrant the contents.

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