It’s hard to imagine but LinkedIn hasn’t always been a tool for us to build our brands and businesses.

In fact here’s a photo of me from then. This is from when I used to use just email newsletters and hard copy newsletters (gasp!).

But luckily times have changed and we now have LinkedIn to effectively reach others.

That being said, out of the 850+ million people who have LinkedIn profiles, only one percent of them actually post content and of that number, a small fraction of their posts are actually good.

I used to be one of those people, but I learned with time, trial and error.

People often ask me how I’ve achieved success on LinkedIn.

It didn’t happen overnight. I also was posting on LinkedIn long before I ever needed it as a business owner.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t start today.

In fact, that means you should! Because there’s so much opportunity on LinkedIn as a content creator.

Most people aren’t utilizing Linkedin for their personal brand or business growth. They think it’s just another resume.

So do it better than them. It’s not hard.

Here are some ways I’ve been able to leverage LinkedIn – and you can too.

Tip 1: Post consistently and create your content pillars

Tip 2: Only post helpful content (no self-promotional posts and if you must post about your successes post it in a non-boastful way. Tell a story.)

Tip 3: Answer all comments – especially in the first few hours of posting – to help your posts go “viral” and reach their full potential.

Tip 4: Structure posts to get people to “stop the scroll.” You do this by leaving white space in between your paragraphs, varying length of your paragraphs and making some of them one sentence only and having a strong opening sentence to capture the reader’s attention so they actually click that “see more” button.

Tip 5: Use visuals especially photos of yourself. People connect with people, especially on social media. Don’t be shy or afraid about showing up as the main character in your social media content, and that means using your likeness. Hire a professional photographer to take various photos of you in different environments and outfits. You want your feed to show varying photos of you, not the same one over and over again.

Tip 6: Strategically use hashtags – they can help your content become more discoverable.

Tip 7: Tell stories – stories resonate with people. They bring posts to life.

Tip 8: Reuse and repurpose your content (high-performing posts and the posts that didn’t do great but you thought they should have)

Tip 9: Share at the right time – post during businesses hours, it’s best to post in the morning as people are scrolling on their phones most then and your post has all day to generate traffic. I find that Friday is the worst day to post on LinkedIn especially during the summer. I’ve had a lot of luck with posting on the weekends as people have more time to scroll but this can be different for everyone – sometimes you just need to experiment.

Tip 10: Be YOU! No one has your unique experience so use it to help and connect with others. Share stories as mentioned above to connect with others.

Take some time this summer to map out your LinkedIn strategy.

Come up with your content pillars – the topics on which you’ll focus. Then actually write a few posts.

Create a content calendar to keep track of those posts and measure their performance.

You now have the start of your content strategy!