There are different types of cringe.
There’s the healthy kind of cringe, where you look back at your old work and feel embarrassed.
For example, I often feel this when I read my old blog posts. Seeing these now obvious mistakes and how they don’t meet my current standards. This is a healthy cringe because it lets me appreciate my growth.
But then, there’s the other type of cringe. The bad kind.
This is how the average LinkedIn experience looks like:
- Open the app.
- See one of these “I’m a LinkedIn Top Influencer, and here are my 5 keys to success…” posts.
- Proceed to close the app.
I had a tough time too at first because every post I saw in the platform felt so…fake and obvious cry for attention. But hat stopped once I curated my feed. I actually enjoyed what I saw there and gained a better signal to noise ratio.
The good news is you can grow your business on LinkedIn without sounding salesy, fake, or needy.
Here are 5 tips to help you post without looking just like another pseudo-guru on the “Facebook for Millennials.”
Content creation tips to grow your business on LinkedIn
- Repost your best content
Kieran Drew, creator of the course High Impact Writing, has made over $800k thanks largely to his large social media audience. He recently crossed 26k followers on LinkedIn simply by reposting his best tweets. While he posts three times a day on X, he only posts once a day on LinkedIn.
Interestingly, Kieran didn’t start engaging with people who commented on his posts until he hit 20k followers. This shows that the key to growth is consistently posting high-quality content that resonates with your ideal audience.
- Leverage individual accounts for growth
Mario Velichkov, CRO of Ora.pm, a project management software, says that “without a strong personal social presence, building your startup’s business presence on social media is tough.”
According to Mario, the best way the best way to speed up your company growth on LinkedIn is is by boosting your team’s individual profiles and networks. When he started, Mario grew his LinkedIn network from 400 to over 10,000 by focusing on target accounts his company wanted to engage with, including billion-dollar businesses. Start by building a small following, and over time, more people will follow you organically.
- Balance your content pillars
Karthik Sridharan, founder of the freelancer marketplace Flexiple, bootstrapped his company to $3 million in revenue. Nearly all of their business in the first year came from their LinkedIn network.
One of the key factors that helped him grow to 86k LinkedIn followers was balancing the types of content he shares, or his “content pillars.” Karthik explains: “Educating alone can be boring, and entertaining alone may not be taken seriously.” He recommends balancing self-promotion with valuable insights and entertainment to keep your audience engaged and interested in what you have to say.
- Build relationships beyond customers
Biron Clark, founder of the six-figure job search advice website Career Sidekick, found LinkedIn to be a ‘blue ocean’ with “less competition and more opportunities than other big social platforms like Facebook and Instagram.”
LinkedIn was incredibly valuable for Biron. Besides sharing valuable content, such as practical advice for job seekers, he focused on building connections with industry peers. These relationships led to article features, podcast appearances, partnership opportunities, and more.
- Engage with others
Katelyn Bourgoin, who earns over $300k annually from her Why We Buy newsletter and digital products, has grown her LinkedIn following to 63k by prioritizing engagement with others.
She spends 30-60 minutes a day interacting with people on the platform. As she says, LinkedIn “is a “social” media—you’ve gotta invest time engaging with your social network.” While it can be time-consuming, building personal connections is one of the best ways to grow your presence. Nothing beats the impact of 1:1 interaction.
I want to give one last tip that I didn’t see anyone else giving: curate your feed.
If you hate what you see on LinkedIn, it’s a sign you’re following the wrong people. When enjoy what you see on LinkedIn you’ll feel intrinsically motivated to participate and open the app more often. Nobody needs a second (or third) job.
So, go ahead, open LinkedIn, curate your feed, and start posting some not-so-cringey content.
Let’s make LinkedIn great again.