82: {Solo} The Power of Engagement on LinkedIn

Do you feel like you are spinning your wheels when it comes to social media and growing your business? Trust me, I've been there! Which is why I'm here to talk about about the power of LinkedIn! 

Today I share my personal LinkedIn journey and encourage you to get active on the platform. I discuss exactly how I started using LinkedIn to build my personal brand and audience, and share tips for posting content and engaging with others.  LinkedIn is a long game and not a quick solution for marketing and that all of my growth has been organic- no ad spend. So if I can do it, you can too!

Takeaways

• LinkedIn is not just a professional networking site, but also a social media platform.
• Consistency is key when posting on LinkedIn, start with a frequency that works for you.
• Engage with other accounts on LinkedIn by liking, commenting, and providing insightful comments.
• Building a community and audience on LinkedIn takes time and is a long-term strategy.
• Optimize your LinkedIn profile to attract attention and opportunities.
• Being active on LinkedIn can lead to entrepreneurship and speaking engagements.
• LinkedIn is a valuable platform for female entrepreneurs to start and scale their businesses.

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Transcript

Caroline Pennington (00:01.401)
Today I want to talk about my own personal LinkedIn journey and hopes to inspire you to get active on the platform. I just got back from speaking to a business mastermind in California. It was a room full of female entrepreneurs and I talked to them about LinkedIn. We optimized their profile and their minds were blown with the activity and the engagement that you can actually get on LinkedIn. And a lot of people don't think LinkedIn is a social media networking platform and it is.

Yes, it's largest professional networking site in the world, but it's also a social media platform. So I wanted to deep dive more to my personal journey and hope so inspire you to do the same. So in 2023, I was an executive search recruiter. I was a corporate employee working in corporate America. I had children as a side hustle still going on and my employer knew I was doing that. But I really decided to hone in and get active on LinkedIn.

with the goal of building a personal brand and audience on LinkedIn. I was already using LinkedIn daily and a good chunk of my day for my corporate job. That's where I found 100 % of my candidates that I was representing. And this was C -suite candidates, CEO, CFO, COOs, and vice president candidates. So I decided to start my LinkedIn journey last year in 2023. I was actively using the platform daily.

I wanted to build an audience but had no clue what I was doing. I was literally starting from zero. So I made a commitment to start posting on LinkedIn five days a week. Five days a week is what worked for me. If you are deciding to get active on LinkedIn and listening to those podcasts now, and maybe five days is too much for you, I would start with three days a week. And with the three days a week, I would start with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, because engagement falls off on Thursday and Friday on LinkedIn.

So for me, it was five days a week. I don't get on LinkedIn on the weekends. I don't touch the platform on the weekends. It's just a Monday through Friday thing for me. So I started putting content out there of recruiting. I wanted to be known as the thought leader and the go -to recruiter. So I started posting and my post, I literally got ghosted. Nobody was liking my stuff. Nobody was engaging, no commenting, but I continued doing it. It's just like building a muscle. You have to continue doing the

Caroline Pennington (02:23.531)
And so once I hit the three month mark, I started actually building and gaining some traction on LinkedIn. And one thing that's good about LinkedIn, I would highly suggest if you're listening to this podcast, is to start engaging with other accounts. Start liking their posts, start engaging in their polls, start doing comments on their posts, and do insightful comments, not just great or I agree or one word answers. Actually say something that's insightful.

You don't have to write a book and write multiple sentences, but say something that means something or the ads value. So about the three month mark, I really started ramping my account up. I had just passed the threshold of 3 ,000 followers at that time. So at that time, after three months in, I started getting content that was going viral. And I will say that going viral on LinkedIn is not the goal here. The goal is to build a community and an audience of your ideal customers. And so for me,

I continued doing that so between the three and six month mark my LinkedIn account really started exploding. So if you're listening to this podcast and you are trying to find a solution to market your personal brand or your business and you're looking for something to blow up quickly, LinkedIn is not for you. LinkedIn is the long game. So for me about the six month mark I really started blowing up my LinkedIn account and I had a huge group of individuals I was actively engaging with and I had

large customer base there that was interested in my recruiting content at the time. So fast forward to January of this year, 2024, and I had enough engagement and large audience and enough people that were engaged in like what I was doing, that I was able to quit my corporate job. So what getting active on LinkedIn did for me was it enabled me to leave my corporate America job and to go full into entrepreneurship.

And if you're listening to this podcast and maybe you're an entrepreneur or you're a corporate employee, you want to identify and create a profile on LinkedIn that's number one optimized and number two that makes you the thought leader and the expert in your field. So what that means is that will attract opportunities to you. It'll attract clients to you. You have less than three seconds to get your someone's attention on LinkedIn.

Caroline Pennington (04:47.514)
And so you want to make sure your profile is optimized before starting content, putting content on LinkedIn. So what does optimized profile mean? It means having a banner that communicates exactly what you do, what are your products, offers and services, how to reach you. Do you have a professional picture uploaded? You need to have the about section complete. Do not write it in third person, write it in first person. Have your exact work experience filled out as well.

On the part where you have the education, if you have higher education degrees, definitely have that filled out as well. And the skills section too. So what being active on LinkedIn has done for me is it's allowed me to go full on into entrepreneurship. So now I just teach female entrepreneurs how to start, and scale their LinkedIn accounts. I have been invited to speaking engagements, to speak on stages. And now I have a book of clients.

who are investing in themselves and their business and see the actual importance of LinkedIn. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're curious about it or want to talk more about it, send me a direct message and let's chat. Until next time.