Twice a year, we bring together around 20 financial services professionals for three hours to cover everything from:

• The components of an effective personal profile
• Sharing engaging posts your ideal clients want to read
• Connecting with the right people to grow your network
• Engaging with other people’s content to build relationships.

If you missed Tuesday’s session, we’ll be back in September.

For now, here are 10 LinkedIn lessons from this week’s workshop.

1. Know your “why” and remind yourself of it often

Until LinkedIn becomes a habit, it can feel like a chore.

Unless you have a clear purpose – your “why”, as Simon Sinek would say – it’ll be hard to find the motivation to keep showing up week in, week out.

Your personal “why” might be one (or a combination) of a few things:

• To attract new clients
• To build brand awareness
• To appeal to potential new recruits
• To keep in touch with existing clients
• To build relationships within the profession
• To start, develop, and nurture opportunities with professional connections.

Whatever it is, it’ll impact everything you do on LinkedIn. From how your profile is written to the content you share, the connection requests you send to the people you engage with.

Without a “why”, your positioning will be confused and you’ll likely lose motivation.

2. Done is better than perfect

Our workshop attendees completed eight exercises, meaning they left with:

1. An optimised profile URL
2. A clear, thoughtful headline
3. A client-focused “about” section
4. A detailed summary of their ideal clients
5. Content pillars to keep their posts focused
6. An engaging hook to get them started with a post
7. A handful of people they can connect with after the session
8. A ready-to-go comment they can leave on someone’s content.

That’s a lot to get through in three hours.

The results won’t be perfect, but they don’t need to be. Getting something out there is always better than nothing. Posts will flop, you’ll want to make tweaks to your profile along the way, and your content will improve the more you practice.

You just have to get the reps in and trust the process.

3. Your banner image is prime online real estate

Before the session, we had a quick nosy at everyone’s LinkedIn profile to make sure we covered the areas people were struggling with. One of those was the banner image.

A couple of profiles didn’t have one at all.

Some had one, but it was just a pretty picture.

Others used an image relating to their business, but it lacked key elements.

Your banner image sits right at the top of your profile. It’s unmissable. Which is why you need to put it to work by including a few key things:

1. Your logo
2. Email address, phone number, and website address
3. A short statement explaining what you do and who you do it for
4. Social proof – for example, an award, VouchedFor rating, or Google reviews.

You can DIY with a tool like Canva, or email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk and our branding & design team can take the reins instead.

4. Consistency above all else

We’ve already hinted at it, but consistency really is the secret sauce on LinkedIn.

Research shows irregular posting hurts your reach and that “visibility is no longer something you get, it’s something you earn continuously”.

The optimal number of posts is two or three per week, but it’s far better to post once per week consistently than every day for a week before burning out.

5. Pick your topics and stick with them

We’ve been big fans of content pillars for years. In short, they’re themes that dictate what you’ll post about. For example, yours might be:

• Monday: Anonymous client case study.
• Tuesday: Education on planning for early retirement.
• Wednesday: Education on tax efficiency as a business owner.
• Thursday: Personal – help potential clients get to know you better.
• Friday: Lifestyle – best walks in the Midlands, tips for a work-from-home setup.

It speeds up the ideation process because you already have a clear focus each day.

Even better, we know that LinkedIn’s algorithms reward people who demonstrate consistency (there’s that word again) on clearly defined themes.

If you jump around different topics, you’ll confuse the algorithm and the humans reading your content.

6. “Once you’ve written your hook, you’ve spent 80 cents of your dollar”

Advertising legend, David Ogilvy, was talking about advert headlines, but the same goes for your LinkedIn posts.

You have one to three lines (around 140 characters) before your audience has to click “see more”. If you don’t grab their attention, they’re going to keep scrolling, and all the effort you put into the rest of the post is wasted.

Here’s a simple structure you can follow for every hook:

• First sentence: a short observation, tension, or relatable situation that makes your audience pause while scrolling.
• Second sentence: a specific promise of value that hints at what the reader will gain from the rest of the post.

It’s worked for two of my best-performing posts:

• “There’s a garage 30 seconds from my house. So why did I drive an hour in 30+ degree heat yesterday just to get my car MOT’d?”
• “If there’s one thing that really gets my back up when it comes to posts on LinkedIn, and copywriting in general, it’s this.”

The only goal of the hook is to make your ideal client sit up and pay attention.

7. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time you post

We often get pushback on this, but repurposing is a hugely powerful tool.

It’s worth remembering that a maximum of 20% (more likely 10%) of your connections will see everything you post. If you have 1,000 connections, that means at least 800 people won’t see all of your content the first time you share it.

That’s just a cruel fact of the algorithm.

Also, if you’re steadily growing your network, some of your connections won’t have been around the first time you posted something.

So, every few months, or when you’re feeling low on inspiration, pick one of your best performing posts, make a couple of tweaks or change the image, and share it again.

I guarantee nobody will say “you posted about this three months ago”.

8. An active network is more important than your connection count

We’re not trying to hit the 30,000 connections limit.

The aim is to fill your network with people who are active and engaged.

It may seem odd, but your reach is partly a reflection of your audience’s behaviour. If they rarely post or comment, your own reach will decline. If they’re active members of the LinkedIn community, your content travels further.

It also makes your own LinkedIn experience more interesting if your feed and notifications are full of recent, fresh opinions rather than tumbleweeds.

In short: network quality matters more than network size.

9. Engaging is just as important as posting

When we asked our attendees if they react and comment on content shared by others, the consensus was “not really”. A few reactions here and there, but very few comments.

Engaging is still an overlooked element of LinkedIn so, if you do it, you’ll stand out.

In terms of hierarchy, commenting trumps everything. LinkedIn loves users who start and maintain thoughtful conversations and relevant discussions. LinkedIn is, after all, a business. Anything you can do to keep people logged in and chatting is music to their ears.

If you find yourself staring blankly at a post you’d like to comment on, remember this format:

1. Add insight
2. Ask a follow-up question
3. Finish with your main takeaway from the post.

10. LinkedIn doesn’t mean talking about yourself, it means listening to others

My favourite takeaway came right at the end as we were wrapping up.

One of the attendees said: “That’s been awesome. I hate the idea of talking about myself, the business, and all the rest of it on LinkedIn. I’ve always thought that’s what LinkedIn is about, but it’s the opposite. It’s actually listening to other people. That’s my massive mindset shift change today. So well done, thank you.”

I loved that. LinkedIn really is about listening to others, sharing ideas, building relationships, and having real conversations.

It shouldn’t be an echo chamber for self-promotion.

From confused to confident

As always, we asked at the start of the session: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how effectively do you think you’re using LinkedIn currently?” The average answer was 3.

Three hours later, we asked: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how effectively do you think you’ll be able to use LinkedIn after implementing what we’ve covered?” The average answer was 8. That’s a 166% uplift, which is our biggest increase to date.

And, while LinkedIn doesn’t need to be all-consuming, it can be tricky to find the time, skill, or inclination to insert it into your busy working week. That’s where we come in.

Our social media team can help with everything from one-off posts to profile optimisation, comprehensive social media management to bespoke workshops. We also have a paid social media executive who’s on hand to help with Meta, LinkedIn, and Google Ads.

Email abi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 896 5300 and we’ll find time for a chat.

PS. Thank you to everyone who joined us on Wednesday – you were so engaged, asked fantastic questions, and produced brilliant work. It was a pleasure!