On Wednesday 2 April, I delivered a LinkedIn workshop with Katie Earl, our head of social media, to 20 financial services professionals.
At the start of the session, we asked:
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how effectively do you think you’re using LinkedIn currently?”
15% scored themselves a 2, and a huge 54% scored themselves a 3 or 4.
Over the following three hours, we covered the four key essentials to mastering LinkedIn:
- Building an effective personal profile
- Creating engaging, value-adding posts
- Sending connection requests to the right people
- Engaging with content posted by others.
Here are our eight favourite takeaways from that workshop.
1. Your personal profile matters more than your company page
While company pages have their place, here’s a simple case study to prove our point.
- Both posts are from around the same time
- They’re both trying to sell something
- Sir Branson’s post achieved 1,826% more reactions.
It’s also why Phil has 41% more LinkedIn followers than our company page.
We want to connect with other human beings, not faceless brands. And trust is the foundation of all meaningful relationships. Psychologically, we find trust in familiarity and people we can relate to or feel a personal connection with. That’s far harder to achieve through a company profile.
2. Most people underuse LinkedIn, which presents a huge opportunity for you
If I tell you there are 15,900 UK-based financial advisers/planners on LinkedIn, that sounds quite intimidating, particularly if you’re new to the platform. How are you possibly going to stand out amongst all that noise?
But the research suggests that only 1% of LinkedIn users post content on a weekly basis.
Which means, if you find the time to post every week, you’re sitting pretty alongside only 159 of your peers.
It is, of course, unlikely that the statistic tracks exactly across every profession. But the simple fact is this; if you show up consistently, you’re going to stand out.
3. Reposting is not (reliably) effective
This seems to be one of, if not the, most “F” of FAQs we receive.
“Should I repost on LinkedIn?”
The short answer is no.
The longer answer is that, while we have seen some users generate significant engagement as a result of reposting, we’ve never found it to be an effective strategy.
I spoke with LinkedIn directly and they told me that “duplicates are hidden in the feed” which, in English, means that a repost will reach fewer people than a new post.
LinkedIn is a business, which means it wants to keep users on the platform for as long as possible. If you’re constantly seeing the same reposted content in your feed, you’re quickly going to get bored and log off. In that context, it makes sense why the algorithm deprioritises reposts.
Instead, leave a comment.
- Commenting is the king of engagement as far as the algorithm is concerned. It requires more time and effort than reposting – keeping you on the platform for longer.
- If you’re reposting to push someone else’s content out to your audience, the same thing happens when you leave a comment.
- It’s a far more effective and personalised way to build relationships and show your support for the other person.
4. Act as though your network is in the room
During the session, someone asked where the line is between personal and professional content, as they were nervous about “sharing too much” or coming across as “cringy”.
I encouraged them to think about online networking the same as they would offline.
Imagine you’re sitting across from the person you want to be speaking to on LinkedIn, having a coffee with them. If your post was a snippet from that conversation, would it resonate with them? Would it add value? Writing how you talk, both in content and style, is incredibly effective at crafting an engaging post and building authentic relationships.
Someone else mentioned that they’d recently received a raft of comments congratulating them on a recent promotion, and whether it was necessary for them to reply to everyone, or if they could just react to the comments instead.
Again, I encouraged them to imagine all of those people were in the room when they announced their good news. If they came over to congratulate you, would you give them a proper response, or just a thumbs up?
This analogy has serious legs when it comes to LinkedIn.
- Your profile is your appearance and how you present yourself.
- Your posts are your side of the conversation with people in your room.
- Your network is the people you’d want in the room with you.
- And your comments are the interactions you have with those people.
When I started thinking about LinkedIn like this, everything improved.
5. You have to know your “why”
Time and time again, we kept returning to Katie’s opening comment about knowing your “why” when it comes to LinkedIn.
Katie told us, “When you have that why, your reason for being on LinkedIn, everything becomes easier – content creation, consistency, confidence.”
It’s like anything in life.
If you don’t have a reason to do something, you’re less likely to do it.
Your “why” will be personal to you, but it could be:
- Building brand awareness
- Engaging with potential clients to grow your firm
- Attracting high-quality recruits to work with you
- Learning from experienced advisers/planners.
Whatever it is, think about it, and remind yourself of it often. Especially when you tell yourself “I don’t have the time!” and contemplate sacking it off altogether.
6. Consistency is your smoking gun
As Katie quite rightly said, “Consistency is always going to trump any other kind of metric.”
We can easily wax lyrical on what the research says.
- Best posting days: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
- Best time to post (for a UK audience): Between 7am and 9am
- Ideal number of posts a week: Between three and seven.
But what’s the point if you can’t stick to that consistently?
That’s probably what’s happened to the 99% of LinkedIn users failing to show up every week. They’ve set stretch targets they can’t reach, become frustrated with the time and energy LinkedIn is taking, missed a couple of posts, and decided to give up.
Instead, start doing a little more than you’re doing now, make it a sustainable part of your working week, and gradually build your strategy up over time.
Don’t forget to allocate time for connecting and engaging as well as posting!
7. The link should go in the comments, not the post itself
People always seem surprised by this one!
We don’t advocate for being obsessed by LinkedIn’s algorithms.
- They change all the time
- LinkedIn will never fully reveal what their algorithms do
- It can encourage you to ignore what really matters: your ideal clients.
However, there are a few little tips we swear by if you want to maximise the reach of the posts you’ve put so much time and effort into.
Research in 2024 revealed that including a link in the caption of your posts can reduce its reach (the number of people who will see it) by between 55% and 60%. That’s huge!
Instead, we’d suggest including the link in the comments of your post. There are some whisperings that LinkedIn are becoming wise to this, deprioritising posts that mention “link in the comments” in the caption or hiding said comment behind the “most recent” toggle.
However, have a play around with adding some text around the link, and think of creative ways to let people know where they can find the link. Regardless, we’ve found this to be the best way of promoting third-party content, such as blogs from your website or webinars hosted on YouTube.
8. Above all, focus on building relationships
When we caught up after the workshop, Katie and I realised that so much of what we shared came back to this simple idea.
One of our attendees shared that they had recently praised someone for an article they published on LinkedIn – “I genuinely thought it was great, and I just wanted them to know that”. That one interaction led to a massive sale for his business.
Equally, I’ve had messages from people who have never engaged with my posts who want to book in a call to see how Yardstick can support their marketing efforts.
It’s important to remember that, if you’re marketing directly to consumers, only 3% of your audience are in-market and ready to buy at any one time.
The other 97% are your silent audience. They aren’t ready now, but they might be one day.
The key is to stay front of mind, prove your expertise, add tons of value, and show that you genuinely care.
You don’t always need an explicit CTA. You don’t need constant cold, hard outreach. Focus on proving you care, consistently adding value to your ideal clients, and showing up reliably.
Yes, relationships are a two-way street.
But some people prefer the scenic route – they’ll get to you when they’re ready.
The workshop is over, but we can still help
At the end of the session, we revisited our question from the start:
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how effectively do you think you’ll be able to use LinkedIn after implementing some of these ideas?”
The average answer had rocketed from 3.7 to 7.3.
It’s our third year delivering this workshop, and we’re improving upon it every time. This was the first session we’ve run as a meeting as opposed to a webinar, so attendees could switch on their cameras and microphones if they wanted.
It made the session feel far more interactive, and it was lovely to be able to see everyone!
We’ll be keeping this format next time, which we’ve pencilled in for Wednesday 6 August between 10 am and 1 pm. We’ve set the event live, so you can register your place today.
In the meantime, if you’re struggling to find the time or inclination to prioritise LinkedIn, we can help. A client of ours attended April’s workshop and, at the end, she told the group:
“I use, as you know, Yardstick to do my posting on my behalf. Because you guys do it for me, I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have the time anyway. Between the posting, connecting, engaging, graphics, photos, making sure it’s compliant – all of that. It’s changed so much about my LinkedIn presence. If you sit down and work out how much your time is worth per hour, it’s over and over again worth it to have you guys do it for me. It’s been hugely successful. I’ve got the engagement – you can see it in my impressions. So it does work. Definitely. Thank you for that.”
If you’d like to explore how LinkedIn can work for you too, email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call the office on 0115 896 5300 and I’ll tell you all about it.
