How to produce content and network the right way on LinkedIn? 🔓

Last week, I wrote about how to unlock the true potential of LinkedIn. There is so much to uncover on LinkedIn that I thought a sequel piece would make sense. In the 2nd part of the article, I will discuss how to produce endless content and give actionable advice on meaningful networking to get the best out of LinkedIn. 

🥅 What type of content works?

In the previous article, I wrote about finding your niche as ideas about different types of content that works. To recap, you can write 4 buckets of content: Education niche content, Personal stories, Trending topics and Case studies of your work or breakdown of someone else's work

One thing that I have observed: is which content gets a lot of attention, which one does not is hard to predict. Sometimes a very well-thought-out piece I wrote gets very less interaction. And when I wake up and write something random without much thought goes viral.

The trick is to be consistent: keep writing and keep shipping. Let me also share some insights from the LinkedIn algorithm pov (originally pointed out by Richard van der Bloom):  

• Keep your content publishing frequency at roughly 24 hours. If a post is published within ~18 hrs of each other, the growth gets reduced by around ~15%. 
• The first 1.5 hrs after publishing a post is crucial. Keep engaging with comments during this period. 
• Keep the length of the post between 1200 - 1600 characters. 

‍

👬 How to build the right network?

Linkedin, at the end of the day, is a networking site for professionals. Be extremely choosy about whom you allow into your network. In the initial days, it would be tempting to accept requests, avoid that and only accept people who form your ideal audience - entrepreneurs, fellow operators, sales leaders, content creators in the same niche etc. 

Engage with only a few people in your niche. Go for ones with moderate audience sizes in the beginning. For example, go with a creator who is having 10k-20k followers, if you are at 1k. Add helpful comments and views instead of a simple ‘agree’. Build it for 10 posts and then go into their DMs and build a relationship. 

These moderate creators might go big - also, they are more likely to respond and offer help. 

The cardinal rule of networking is: Give. Give. Give. Ask. Much of my growth is from the deep friendships I have built during my initial days. 10 deep friendships >> 1000 connections on Linkedin. 

‍

📔 How to produce content consistently?

The only way to produce content consistently is to prepare the content way in advance. Prepare atleast 2-3 weeks worth of content in advance. 

Your content can be:

• Actionable: tips to help others based on your experience
• Analytical: tearing down a company’s business model or report.
• Opposite: An opposing view to a popular viewpoint. 
• Observation: your POV on a past or present event. 

Say you have 2-3 topics you would like to write on: block some time in the weekend, write various posts. For example, if you are an entrepreneur in the healthy food space:

• Tips on how to choose the right healthy breakfast/lunch/snack for you
• Look at other food companies - what they are doing right & wrong
• Take a popular health fad and provide the opposing view.
• How the current food trends are changing. 

If you keep expanding in this way, you will have tons of topics to write about. If you don’t have the expertise yet, keep learning and share the learning journey openly - like talking to experts and sharing their insights. 

‍

 ✍️Overcoming the writer’s block

The biggest roadblock to consistent production: writer’s block.  To get clarity, you must first empty the bad ideas. 

Let the bad ideas flow and produce improper output. With the feedback, our minds self-correct to give better output. There are no shortcuts. 

Start with a dumb idea, and write a stupid essay. The ones who do it are still greater than the ones who haven’t yet started.  A good hack for refining dumb ideas: Think why the dumb idea would work and write a piece defending it.  

We get a new angle which we can expand.

The harshest critic to overcome is ourselves. Let’s be a little kinder and overestimate our work's importance & urgency. 

When we think we have done something important, imperfection takes a backseat. When you save a life, you don’t think about the sloppy CPR you did. A little overconfidence in ourselves also helps. Confidence in our abilities helps in handling the criticism well.

Still unsure! The best way is to find a group of like-minded people and start a group challenge. Working in a group provides a support system that keeps us on track. Use the deep friendships with fellow experts and do it together. Consistent output definitely leads to quality output.

Consistently offer value in every interaction on Linkedin (and life). With unwavering dedication, the results you seek shall follow.

‍

Tool of the Day

Publer

This tool will help you schedule your LinkedIn posts in advance. It allows you to cross-post on other platforms and even add comments to your posts like adding a link etc.