3 Reasons Why You’re Not Getting Any Success On LinkedIn
It can be the most powerful tool for your career — if used correctly.
I’m a huge fan of LinkedIn.
It can serve as a great digital resume, an excellent medium for networking, and a great platform to showcase your latest professional achievements.
A large majority of people underestimate the power of LinkedIn. People will mindlessly scroll through their news feed for a few minutes every couple of days, seeing what’s around, liking a few posts, and then logging off the platform for the day.
Using it like this is missing its point entirely.
A lot of people do not realize that LinkedIn can be the most powerful tool to advance your professional career — if used correctly.
Admittedly, I was not always the best at using the platform.
Initially, I treated it as a digital resume — throwing all of my previous roles and responsibilities and hoping some recruiter would stumble upon my profile and offer me a job.
Eventually, I learned that this was not the most optimal approach to make LinkedIn useful for my career, and through research and trial-and-error, I learned how to better leverage the platform. It has personally led me to numerous networking opportunities and even an internship.
However, not everyone has realized success with LinkedIn. A lot of people may be wondering why they have not been getting those views on their profile.
It comes down to 3 core reasons:
1. Don’t be a passive user
We don’t want to be those people who robotically scroll through their newsfeed.
These are what I like to call passive users — they look through and appreciate the work of others, but they never engage themselves and make their presence known to the LinkedIn community.
We want others to be made aware of our existence on LinkedIn.
Why? So other LinkedIners know who you are.
I heard a great quote from a peer of mine, which accurately summarises why you should stray away from being the passive user: “Nowadays, it’s not about who you know; it’s about who knows you.”
To have a presence on LinkedIn means to have people acknowledge you.
People may have a look at your profile and decide that you could be someone they would like to work with in the future. Often, recruiters will scour the LinkedIn webs in search of their next candidate to fill up their empty roles. It may be your profile that they stumble upon, but only if you make an effort to have let others know you exist — otherwise, how will they find you?
It’s not difficult to be engaged on LinkedIn either.
Did you read a post that resonated with you? Leave a comment. Perhaps share it with your network. Or, better yet, create your own post!
It demonstrates to others that you’re a thought leader and that you’re not afraid to put yourself out there to voice your opinion.
2. Treat your profile like a living document
If you’re a lot like me, you may have a memory of a goldfish. So when the time comes to update your LinkedIn profile, you might rather wait until you begin your next job hunt or your role finishes to amend it.
Instead, I encourage you to treat your profile as if it were a continuous living document and update it as much as you can.
It will play to your advantage if you can update your profile, perhaps right after you finish a particular project, a large work deliverable, or if you’ve just finished a role. Add these deliverables to your LinkedIn profile to showcase to others (e.g., a new marketing campaign you delivered), or update the description underneath your position with your key contributions.
Human beings are forgetful creatures, and you could very easily forget what you did during that particular project or role.
An up-to-date profile is especially useful when you begin your next job hunt or a round of interviews. Having all of the information already on your LinkedIn profile means that you won’t have to solely rely on your memory for what you did during your previous roles. It’s already all accurately written there for you.
As such, keeping your profile and responsibilities continuously up to date not only provides you with an opportunity to showcase your meaningful work, but it ensures that you won’t forget any important details.
Trust me; your future self will thank you.
3. Curate quality, not quantity
I constantly receive connection requests on LinkedIn from what seems to be random people looking to connect with me with no purpose. I don’t know them personally, I don’t know their intentions, and I don’t know how we provide value to each other.
As a result, I always brush these off.
This is a frequent occurrence, where users send connection requests to others for the sake of it or to “expand their network.”
Yet, others do send connection requests because they’re looking to reach out to learn and pick your brain a little. How can you tell the difference between a person who wants a “random add,” or someone who genuinely wants to learn?
The answer: add a note.
There is a function to be able to add a note to every one of your connection requests. It could be as simple as:
“Hi _______, I wanted to connect so I could ask you about your experiences at ________. I would love to chat with you.”
This way, the person you are attempting to connect with can understand:
- why you are connecting with them, and;
- how both parties can add value.
If there’s someone you’d like to connect and engage with, simply adding a note to your connection request will make it more likely that you will have your request accepted.
It is also equally important to consider who you are sending the connection request to, and why?
I’ll be honest; I haven’t always been the best at this.
I have previously been victim to something I like to call network creep — the act of sending connection requests to almost anybody and everybody on LinkedIn, without much thought or regard as to who they are and their value to me. I did this for about my first year on LinkedIn before I realized that making my profile say that I had ‘500+ connections’ was not nearly as important as adding people I thought were valuable to have in my network.
When it comes to networking, it’s quality over quantity.
Treat your network as an exclusive group, and every person in there is a VIP.
Thus, before sending off your next connection request, I recommend taking two seconds to ask yourself two questions:
- Is this someone who can provide important value to your network?
- Is this someone you would ever message?
If the answer to either question is ‘No,’ then don’t send that request.
Curate your LinkedIn network, don’t saturate it.
The great thing about this advice is that it’s simple, and you can start implementing it today.
I’m not suggesting any major overhauls of your LinkedIn; however, improving how you approach and use LinkedIn can help create great results to unlock your professional career further.
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