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How I Organically Grew My LinkedIn Followers by over 500%

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 February 25, 2019

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In less than 3 years I have organically grown my followers by 560% and after a year’s hiatus in writing, I can finally say, I’m back. My hope is that getting back into writing will help your prospecting efforts, career goals, and ultimately your personal and professional brand.

Here is the formula that helped me grow my followers by 560%. Read it. Absorb it. And remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Write

Writing fundamentally changed my life. If I had not have written my “How I get a 50% Return on InMails” article in 2015 about prospecting on LinkedIn, I would not be where I am today. That article landed me a keynote speaking opportunity with LinkedIn which then allowed me to rub elbows with Shaquille O’Neal and shoot free throws on stage. That article changed my entire career – seriously.

• Write often! It doesn’t have to necessarily be an entire article, but write posts and engage with the audience you do have. When you engage with them, their network will also see it. The more exposure the better.
• What you write doesn’t entirely have to be about work; one of my most read articles is about someone that ignored me in an elevator for 5 years and has nothing to do about my typical topics about sales, marketing and prospecting.
• Be relevant. Ask yourself if it is a topic that you’d be interested in reading yourself.
• “WOW” factors — have a creative title (how did mine do, did it “WOW” you?), use metrics if trying to make a bold statement, post an image, quote somebody or something, or ask a question.
• Tell a story. I tell this to people I coach all of the time. The best articles you read out there are stories. My article about my nervous breakdown was the #7th most read article of 2017 on LinkedIn and it was because a lot of people could relate to my story. Just like that first initial article that changed my life in 2015, this one also did — it landed me a TEDx talk, and it was all because of my article I posted on LinkedIn.

Timing

Timing is everything. If you hadn’t have missed that flight, you wouldn’t have met your wife. If you had called the CMO instead of the VP of Marketing you would have gotten that sale in 5x faster. If you had left your house 5 minutes later you would have gotten into a terrible accident. Timing, seriously, is everything if you’re trying to grow your followers on LinkedIn.

• During the work week is the best time to post. For me, personally, I’ve uncovered that Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon work well for me. That being said, the algorithm is constantly changing so A/B test yourself often.
• When I first began sharing content I would use an app called Buffer to auto-schedule my posts in advance. When I didn’t necessarily have “good” content to post on my own, I would just share my company’s content. Because of this, I was helping my company’s brand acquire new followers. I teach this at the masses to help your company’s brand! Share your company’s content, the marketing team will thank you!
• At the end of the day, it’s not necessarily about the exact time that something it’s posted, it’s what you do with it after to keep it alive, which brings me to my next point.

Engage

This is where people mess up a lot. They post something and it never goes anywhere. Or, it goes somewhere for a day and then it dies and is never seen again.

• When someone comments on a post of yours, comment back! Engage with them even if you don’t know them. Click “like” on their comment! Treat each follower like gold! They might even be outside of your network which is great, ABC: Always Be Connecting.
• Tag people in your posts/shares to engage with them — example: your company has a webinar coming up and one of your prospects has ghosted you (has that ever happened to you? HA!). Tag that prospect in the company share and tell them about the webinar. They will see red notification when they go to LinkedIn and it will grab their attention. Seeing a person on LinkedIn is different than seeing an email address with no picture or context.
• Engage with your Tier 1 connections. I define a Tier 1 connection as someone in your network that has the highest number of followers or connections. If you ask a Tier 1 connection to comment on one of your articles, it will show up in their connection’s activity feed and, well, all it takes is the right person at the right time to engage in your content and then it can go viral. That’s what’s happened to me multiple times.
• PRO tip: if you post something and you get 10 comments right away, do not respond to each comment right away. Pace yourself. This way your post or article stays on top of people’s home pages and feed on LinkedIn for weeks or months. I’ve personally kept one of my posts alive for months at a time simply by pacing out my engagement with my audience.
• Another PRO tip: you don’t just have to engage in your own content. If something speaks to you that someone else posts, comment on it! I can’t tell you how many followers I gained just by engaging that way.
• FINAL PRO tip: Some people identify me as being a Tier 1 connection for them. Almost daily I get asked to engage in a certain person’s content and usually I will — you just have to ask or tag me!

Video and Images

If personal branding is something that is important to you, I highly recommend engaging with your followers with videos and images.

• Create a YouTube channel and start producing content! I had a YouTube channel a couple of years ago and it helped my personal brand tremendously; the more people see you visually, the more of a brand you will start creating for yourself. Remember, you wear your brand every single day.
• Post pictures that are relevant to your audience — like a picture of you with a new certification or a picture of you with your team at an outing. While I love seeing puppy pictures, LinkedIn is not the place to showcase your puppy.
• Engage with your audience with the photo. I once posted a picture of me holding a sign that says “I was wrong, cold calling isn’t dead” and within a day it had over 20K views. It’s all about engaging your audience on relatable topics!

Now, you must put them all together. If you don’t know where to start, just start by writing something somewhere. Maybe it’s in a journal or a Word document. Maybe it’s about a story you’ve thought about sharing and now you want to. Do it! Writing fundamentally changed my entire life and career…and it can for you, too. But remember: crawl, walk, run.

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It feels good to be writing again. Send me a message or comment below on more topics you’d like for me to cover. Anything is fair game! I can’t thank each of you enough for your engagement and for inspiring me to produce content to share.

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