How I Get Followers & Clients on LinkedIn (+ A 7-Day LinkedIn Post Challenge For You)

LinkedIn is where the buzz is at.

Trying to get your opinions across to a network of professionals? LinkedIn.

Trying to grow your personal brand in the business world? LinkedIn.

Trying to connect with like-minded professionals and even potential clients?

You guessed it.

LinkedIn.

But wait …

Why LinkedIn? Why now? And why am I promoting it?

Because it worked for me.

My LinkedIn Journey: The Turning Point

I signed up for LinkedIn somewhere in 2010.

I know, talk about being an early adopter.

Unfortunately, I didn’t do much with it. I suppose the force just wasn’t very strong with LinkedIn back then.

It was more about being seen on Facebook (and then we all know what happened there).

Sometime during the whole COVID-19 lockdown situation, I decided to finally suck it up and get myself a mentor for my writing career.

My business was slow, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that when there aren’t many clients, it’s a great excuse to use the downtime to upgrade yourself.

Long story short, my mentor, Pete Boyle suggested that we get on LinkedIn. To start posting more regularly. To share what we do, what we learn, and the whole deal.

So I tried.

I wasn’t one of those who could post every day because *insert some lack-of-motivation reason here*.

So I started with two posts per week.

Within one month, I had 15 new followers.

Not bad, I thought.

Two months later, another 15 followers joined.

PLUS, two old acquaintances (one ex-coursemate from college and one ex-colleague) reached out and asked if I was looking for writing stints.

OF COURSE, I SAID YES.

I couldn’t believe it. Was that all it took to make LinkedIn work for you?

I’ll be lying if I said yes. It’s more than that.

There’s a lot of things that could make your LinkedIn profile great. But I found a formula for myself after about 6 months.

3 Ways To Make Your LinkedIn Shine

  1. Stay consistent. Find a frequency that works for you and keep posting (mine’s two posts a week, minimum).
  2. Share your story. Share what you’ve learned, even a personal story (positive or negative), and when you’re tired, curate and add your comments and thoughts.
  3. Engage when you have the time. Like another person’s post, start following thought leaders in your niche and comment on their posts, connect with old classmates, colleagues, people you bumped into, and I don’t know, past Tinder dates, maybe? (Ok, maybe not, hah!)

I’ll be very honest. I have moments where I just don’t feel like doing any of the above.

But that’s just because I’m human.

You’ll feel it, too.

My suggestion? If you don’t feel like a post is authentic/genuine, skip. Consider it a cheat day. Go read a book, eat some cake, do something else. Don’t post.

After more than 6 months of giving LinkedIn some much due attention, I must say it works.

I even got some of my friends to try it. I came up with a bunch of topics and threw together a quick “7 day LinkedIn challenge” for them and their posts got some good engagement, plus their followers and connections soared.

Keep reading if you want the prompts that I shared with them.

What You Should Know About Posting On LinkedIn

Before you go jumping on to LinkedIn, spamming your account with “buy this” or “hire me” messages, there are some things you need to know.

45% of decision makers say thought leadership compelled them to invite an organization to bid on a project when not previously considering them, and 57% of say thought leadership directly led to awarding business. — LinkedIn

So yes, you don’t want to miss out on what LinkedIn has to offer.

Whether you’re a solopreneur, freelancer, entrepreneur, consultant, creative, independent business owner, C-level manager, etc, with LinkedIn, you can:

  • Build thought leadership for yourself or your brand
  • Share your views, corporate culture to get more followers
  • Gain a competitive advantage amongst peers
  • With more followers, you build more career opportunities (companies can recruit better, employees can hope for promotions)
  • With more content, you also improve customer acquisition and retention as people start to know, like and trust you better (for businesses)

Whether your end goal is to improve recruitment or retention, build thought leadership or generate leads or traffic, start by sharing more content on your LinkedIn.

Forget the algorithm and the analytical mess, talk about issues that are relevant and timely. Add your take on what’s trending.

Develop your personal brand.

What You Should Do Before Starting To Post On LinkedIn

Review your profile

Have you updated your profile recently?

Check your employment history, add more details in your bio. Put up a new and professional looking profile picture.

Clean your account so when you start posting, and people check your profile out, they’re reading your most updated profile and can connect with you if they want.

Ensure your posts are public

I wasn’t aware of this earlier but someone DM-ed me on LinkedIn after reading my posts and told me to do this (thank you, Hanafi!).

Go to your LinkedIn Settings, and go under Visibility to ensure your profile and posts are public. Do also allow Everyone to follow you.

Record your statistics

I’m so glad I did this from the start.

I didn’t want to make it a formal affair since I was the only one monitoring this, so I just opened up a notepad document and recorded my follower count whenever I remembered.

On 18th September 2019, I had 460 followers.

As of publishing this article, I have 598 followers.

No, that’s not a huge jump. But it’s a pretty significant increase for someone who posts two times a day and does it all organically.

But how do I maintain these consistent postings?

The Content Strategy I Use for LinkedIn Posts

Always have a content strategy! So important.

I mentioned this earlier. Pick a frequency and stick to it. Share your story, and engage.

My strategy was simple.

Have a few content buckets.

  • Write and share personal business/content marketing lessons
  • When in doubt, repurpose Instagram/newsletter content into LinkedIn
  • When in a rush, curate an article from the internet and add my words

That’s it. With these three buckets in mind, I would post whatever I felt like for the week. I typically wrote something on the weekend and scheduled it on Hootsuite, but sometimes I just wrote when I felt like it and hit publish on LinkedIn.

Keep it real, yo.

I was sharing this strategy with my business buddies group and they said they wanted to start/restart their LinkedIn progress, too.

They were struggling to think of what to post, even with the strategy above (it doesn’t have topics), so I came up with a list of topics for them.

Here it is for you to use.

Like my content so far? Buy me a cuppa, maybe?

BONUS: The 7-Day LinkedIn Post Challenge (with Prompts)

1️⃣ Post 1: Introduce/reintroduce yourself

New to LinkedIn? Tell everyone who you are, what you do, your personal or professional goals.

Been on LinkedIn for a while but been quiet? Reintroduce yourself with the same structure as above.

Renee tackled this post idea with a short, sweet and straight to the point post:

2️⃣ Post 2: Share why you’re on LinkedIn

Tell people why you’re on LinkedIn. Are you looking to connect with certain types of people? Do you want to learn? Are there people whose progress you want to follow (tag them!)?

I love how Feetri made her post so relatable:

3️⃣ Post 3: Share experience/lessons

Talk about how your working experience has been so far. Share some lessons you took from past experiences that you utilise in your current role/business.

4️⃣ Post 4: Share your first work experience

I found this super fun. It tells people how your first experience was and how far you’ve come along. Some tips to share:

  • When did you get your first client/job?
  • How did you feel?
  • What do you do differently today when onboarding?
  • Ask: “Tell me your story!” (Tag people whose story you want to read)

Liyana was so authentic when she shared her story:

5️⃣ Post 5: “I wish I knew sooner”

Talk about things you wish you knew sooner. A lesson or a process.

Tag the person who shared/taught you the lesson.

Optional: talk about your service/product and how it helps people who help people who have this same problem and how you help to solve it.

Much love to Azurah who used this topic to share her experience when working with me:

6️⃣ Post 6: Share a statistic from your niche

This is a curated post. Find an article from the internet about your niche and some latest statistics.

In the post, share:

  • Why is the statistic is so important?
  • Ask: agree or disagree?

Here’s what I wrote for this topic:

7️⃣ Post 7: Your goal to continue posting on LinkedIn

Tell people how fun it has been to share, and how you want to keep sharing.

Tips about this post idea:

  • Tag people whose posts you always look forward to reading.
  • Ask: what topics from your niche would others like to read about?

Adilah kept it simple when she wrote this post:

Easy, isn’t it?

Drop a comment below and let me know if this challenge worked for you.

Done with your 7 days challenge? Need more help to write out your LinkedIn posts? Let’s chat!

Recent Posts