Guest Article: Why every entrepreneur should use LinkedIn

What are the benefits of using LinkedIn for entrepreneurs? Luca Senatore explains.

LinkedIn is an incredible platform, but it was many years until I started using it the way I do today – strategically and, I think, more correctly. If you are growing any business, LinkedIn is a valuable tool which provides big business development, branding and networking opportunities – mostly because it’s super untapped.

LinkedIn for content

As I write this, LinkedIn is still the best platform for professional content. LinkedIn has 500 million users, 250 million of which are active monthly users, 40 percent 6 of whom use the platform every day. What’s more, LinkedIn is still growing: the number of users went from 470 million in 2016 to 500 million at the start of 2018, and counting. This is the best place to show off your best work, add value and get credibility. You write articles and don’t post them on LinkedIn? Mistake. You create video content and don’t post it on LinkedIn because you think it’s only for YouTube? Mistake. You record podcasts and not post them on LinkedIn because you think they belong on Spotify or iTunes? Mistake. Got case studies? They should go on LinkedIn. Won a major account (or a small one)? Shout about it on LinkedIn. Have a webinar coming up? Post it… on LinkedIn.

Quality content needed?

Many people act as if they’re scared of LinkedIn and only post content that’s super-polished, amazingly professional and TV quality. Problem: it’s six months too late! They had the idea when something was topical and hot, but after six months the topic has cooled off and the beautiful piece of content is now irrelevant. What a waste. Other people might get stuff out a bit faster – after two months, maybe even one – but it’s expensive and they put all their eggs onto that video basket (and one month is still slow… one week is slow for video content!).

The thing with content on LinkedIn, or any platform for that matter, is that you almost never know what will work and what won’t. What will resonate and what won’t. I have created pieces of content I thought were going to fly, go viral and get me hundreds of interested eyes. Wrong. At times I’ve had to check that content was actually live because it was getting zero attention, zero interaction, I mean none at all. Then I’d send out a piece of content that was good (I’d never send out something I don’t feel passionate about), but perhaps extremely rough – shot in the car or as I walk Sofia, our boxer dog – and it would get traction as if I was paying people to interact (which, by the way, I don’t).

We never know what will get a good uptake. If you spend a month and a few hundred, if not thousand, pounds creating a polished video, and then get no engagement, the disappointment of the low interaction burns on your skin like lemon juice on a papercut. Discouraged and broke, you throw in the towel, vowing to never used LinkedIn or videos again… But it’s not their fault!

80/20 rule

Now imagine this. Instead of sending out polished, perfect videos, you start sending out 80/20 videos – videos that are only 80 percent of the quality they could be but cost you 20 percent of the time and money. You post two a week – yes, I said two per week, not per month. I can post one a day on a roll, so you can definitely do two a week.

You spend at the very most 15 minutes per video recording and 30 minutes editing. So you have spent 90 minutes a week, and you’ve spent zero pounds. Do this for 11 weeks (one quarter with one week’s holiday) and you will have invested 16.5 hours, zero pounds and have 22 pieces of video content on LinkedIn.

You could ask a member of your team, or pay a freelancer, to adapt the length of the videos to suit each of the platforms. You could also get them to create voice versions of the videos and turn them into podcasts. Finally, get them transcribed and you’ll have 22 articles. With that amount of content, you have a much better chance of getting traction and seeing what works. And it took virtually nothing to produce it all – 16.5 hours. Sound like a lot?

It’s not.

Luca Senatore is the author of new book The Agency and the director at digital agency Genie Goals.