The #1 thing that pisses me off about LinkedIn

Read time: 2 minutes

Every marketer will tell you marketing can’t possibly work without data.

By now, you’re probably aware that what you’re doing on LinkedIn IS marketing.

Regardless of your goal: whether it’s brand awareness, getting more clients or fostering new partnerships, you are essentially marketing yourself/your services.

And this is where LinkedIn is making our lives really difficult:

Let’s take one aspect of LinkedIn: engagement.

If your ideal client or simply people of interest are active on LinkedIn, engagement in the form of commenting is the quickest way to get to know them.

I know some people would argue with this, and they’d say “Why not jump straight to DMs?”.

I’ll tell you why:

Unless you’re a DMs pro who’s done networking and outreach their entire career, it’s very hard to get people to open up in the DMs. One of the reasons for being coy when it comes to DMs is their existing experience with being shamelessly pitch-slapped.

But I digress.

Engagement is crucial. The question is:

How do you know who to engage with?

This is exactly where we need data.

Most people have a time slot for engagement and go to the main feed. Whoever shows up first, they engage with.

This tactic is inherently flawed. Because the algorithm is flawed.

It’ll show you the people you interacted with most recently. The result:

You’re in an echo chamber.

An echo chamber that doesn’t reflect the voice you want it to reflect.

Because your LinkedIn engagement strategy should be structured like this:

In an ideal world, you’d have the following tools:

• Data to recognise your closest supporters

• A CRM to keep track of them AND the ones you want to get close to

Having this structure allows you to make premeditated decisions when it comes to LinkedIn engagement.

You’d know exactly who you need to engage with and track progress in building new relationships.

All that—in half the time you were doing it before.

So, how do you feel? I know for a fact most creators are burned out from spending so much time on LinkedIn without any tangible ROI.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Having an informed strategy you stick with is the #1 thing that’ll make all the difference.

I hope I made you think about this,

Dana