Creating Consistently on LinkedIn is a Double-Edged Sword
Yes, you’ll get leads and build a solid personal brand, but at what cost?
Yes, you’ll get leads and build a solid personal brand, but at what cost?
You’ve heard Linkedin is the perfect platform to get inbound leads and build your personal brand as a creator and entrepreneur.
Excited, you hop onto the LinkedIn bandwagon and start posting consistently.
The first few posts don’t do too well, but you know consistency is a long-term game. You’re prepared to put in the grind for the shining results promised to you.
And so, you keep creating.
A month turns two, then three; before you know it, half the year is done. You’ve had a few unexpected hits, but your stats look more or less the same as they did when you started.
The bright prospect of building a business doesn’t look so encouraging anymore. Your motivation drops, and you slack off on posting. The gap between posts keeps increasing, and your journey on LinkedIn is over before the year ends.
If this sounds relatable, then welcome to the club.
Many creators I know and have mentored fall into the same trap.
What are the mistakes they make while trying to be consistent on LinkedIn? How can you move past them to ensure you reach the level of success you envisioned?
This post discusses precisely that and more. Read on if you want to learn how to leverage LinkedIn to build a consistent writing habit and launch your business.
Scattered ideas lead to no goal
When you think of consistency, the picture that comes to mind is that one needs to post every day.
But as I wrote in 3 Popular Pieces of LinkedIn Advice I Don’t Agree With,
HubSpot recently pulled together data and evidence from a wide variety of different sources to build a comprehensive guide to the best times to post on LinkedIn. According to their findings, the best days to post content on LinkedIn are between Tuesday and Thursday, either early in the morning, lunchtime, or early evening, with an additional, bonus sweet spot between 10 am and 11 am on Tuesday.
Even when you post three days a week, it’s still easy to run out of ideas. When writers hit this block, they resort to posting content simply to maintain consistency, without thinking about how their post adds value to the readers.
This leads to a ton of scattered posts addressing various topics, which ultimately leads nowhere.
The solution?
Building a content strategy that aligns with your long-term goal can help you avoid resorting to scattered posts.
The next time to feel pressured to post on LinkedIn to maintain your daily streak, ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this post fit in with the brand I’m aiming to create?
- Will this educate or inspire my readers in some way?
- Do I feel proud of coming up with this post?
If your answer to any of these questions is no, then hold off. You don’t need to post a mediocre post just to maintain your streak.
You’re allowed to take breaks to keep up the quality of your work.
The trap of turning yourself into a “brand”
Creating a personal brand builds recall value and makes you more memorable to your target audience.
But a brand is like a cage. If you fit yourself into it too tightly, you’ll find it hard to release from the confines and explore the endless possibilities residing in your soul.
To illustrate this, let me share an example:
- Raveena creates a LinkedIn profile thinking she would become one of the country's most well-known names in fintech.
- She sets up a content strategy tailored to her goal and starts posting content on LinkedIn.
- After a few months, Raveena feels she has said everything she had to say on the topic. She wants to take a break and talk about the insights she learned from her recent vacation. Or about her experiences taking up a pottery class. Basically, just about anything else other than fintech.
- But since her brand is strictly focused on personal finance, she finds it hard to deviate from it and talk about anything else.
- She’s burnt out and can’t find the motivation to post anymore on LinkedIn.
- As her motivation dwindles, it starts showing in her work. Her posts are half-hearted, and her hard-earned audience senses the disconnect. Within a few weeks, all her efforts of the past few months are rendered void.
Did you notice the issue here?
If you bind yourself too tightly within the confines of your “brand,” you’ll miss the “personal” element that makes endears you to your audience.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, don’t only focus on talking about work.
Sure, LinkedIn is a professional network and eventually, you’ll only be adding value if you talk about work and the professional world. But you must remember that as a human, you’re allowed to have more than one facet to your personality.
Show your authentic self at times. Talk about your hobbies and interests. Share the life lessons you learned from your Uber driver (irrespective of how cliched it sounds).
Show up as you are, and you’ll notice how much your audience loves it.
How to find the right balance between the personal and the professional? I’ve talked about it in detail here.
Closing thoughts
With more than 850 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, LinkedIn is undoubtedly one of the most powerful platforms in the world to build your business and reach your target audience.
Starting in mid-2021, I’ve built a successful writing business relying majorly on my LinkedIn presence. Since there are still so few people who create on the platform consistently, it’s relatively easy to start today and build a thriving business. This is true irrespective of what your niche is.
Consistency on LinkedIn pays off in the long run. But very few people are able to leverage its full potential by posting regularly there. I hope this article gave you some clarity on how best to leverage LinkedIn without burning out or compromising your personal brand.
At the end of this post, I’ve linked a few LinkedIn resources that might be helpful. Do check them out and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Intrigued about LinkedIn but not sure where to start or how it can benefit you? Grab The Ultimate LinkedIn Guide and start building your business on LinkedIn today.
