Top 5 mistakes you could be making with LinkedIn
1.Tagging people who aren’t directly involved in your post.
We have this lovely feature on LinkedIn that allows us to tag people. Ideal if you’ve been to an event and want to connect and follow up that relationship that you began at the event.
But have you noticed how some people indiscriminately tag you, just to get your attention?
If this happens to you on numerous occasions, you may find that you feel irritated by the notifications interrupting your day, especially if the post concerned has nothing to do with you.
Notice that feeling and reflect on how you want others to feel about you when you tag them in.
If it’s something you know they won’t want to miss, or something that relates to a conversation you recently had with them, for example, it’s relevant. If, on the other hand, it’s merely to grab their attention, be wary about overuse and relevance.
You want your audience to know that you’re sharing useful, helpful information.
If you get a reputation for spamming people, that’s going to make relationship building an uphill battle.
2.Using hashtags in the body of your post
Hashtags – they’re a source of confusion, aren’t they?
On Twitter they’re essential; on Instagram it’s about quantity of searches; Facebook? Yes, it uses them, but slightly half-heartedly. So what about LinkedIn?
It’s true, they offer a search function but before using them it’s worth checking to see whether the hashtag you want to use is being searched for already. You may notice some users will copy over their posts from Instagram and paste into LinkedIn with 30 hashtags – not only does that look “messy“ but you’ll find most of those hashtags irrelevant on LinkedIn.
One top tip regarding hashtags on LinkedIn is once you’ve checked that the ones you want to use are being searched by others, is ensure you placed them at the bottom of your post.
If you placed them in the body of your post and your audience clicks on them, they’ll be taken off and shown all the other posts that have used that # …… and then you’ve lost them!
Their attention has been snagged by someone else, and they may not have even finished reading your post!
3.Not including an image or video
Images, images! How often has your scroll been stopped by a post with no picture?
Have a little think about that for a second, because if you haven’t stopped, how likely is it that your audience will stop to look? A slight exception may be a poll, but the poll itself creates an image of sorts.
A good clear picture, or even better a video, will give your post some context and colour.
Needless to say it does need to represent what you’re talking about….. unless of course you want to “click bait” with a dog picture - almost guaranteed to get someone to take a peek! Honestly, you try so hard to create meaningful, marketing posts, yet someone can add a picture of a dog and they’ll go viral! :-)
Full disclosure, I’ve shamelessly used my gorgeous dog Jack, once or twice!
4.Creating posts for your peers
One of the biggest mistakes I see made on LinkedIn is writing posts for our peers rather than our customers.
Hands up? Who’s done this?!
I know I have in the past, it’s almost our need for validation that finds us doing this.
Being worried about what our colleagues past and present think about what we’ve posted.
Does it matter what they think? Are they likely to buy from you?
Let’s consider what our audience needs to know from us, and about us, that will help move them towards us either as part of our community or as a customer.
This is a big one for so many, as it’s human nature to want to show how much we know.
If we can turn that around and consider showing how much we understand our audience’s challenges and how we can help them with those challenges, we’ll draw those who resonate with our content towards us.
5.It’s not all about you!
And finally, it’s not all about you! When we think about our audience and what stage they may be in their business, we need to create posts that show empathy with their situation and offer ideas and support which lead towards solutions for them.
We do need to throw in the occasional post about how brilliant we are at what we do! Having that real connection surrounding ‘meeting them where they’re at’ though is far more meaningful to your audience.
One of the biggest challenges facing my clients is knowing what to write, because they don’t think they’re very interesting!
But it’s not about you. It’s about what’s in it for them.
What are they going to learn from you? Are you creating a post that will evoke an emotion in them? Perhaps your post will be the one thing that makes them smile that day!
Do your posts help your audience feel like they could work with you one day?
So to sum up, here are the five things to avoid when you’re posting on LinkedIn
Tagging people who aren’t directly involved your post is a no-no.
Using hashtags in the body of your post should be avoided.
Not including an image or video with your post is risky
Creating posts for your peers, rather than your audience won’t bring you leads
It’s not all about you!
If there’s been a lightbulb moment, whilst reading this blog, get in touch with me and let me know, or leave a comment in the box below.
I aim to help business owners, whether coaches or consultants, reach their ideal audience and create new leads from using this amazing tool we call LinkedIn.
