Advanced LinkedIn Strategies: How To Build Authority And Drive Engagement

Having authority in the LinkedIn community is not something that can easily be measured in likes or connections. ‘Authority’ can be hard to define and, ultimately, you want authority to be rewarded in lead generation and business growth, rather than the brief vanity buzz of a post or profile building up numbers.

So how do you achieve ‘authority’ on LinkedIn and how do you use this to help with engagement?

These tips will help you build a profile that showcases your expertise and influence, and in the right way to help benefit your career.

What Are Your Goals?

First and foremost, as we have discussed above, it’s important to define what ‘authority’ means to you. For some people it might be likes on an article or connections through a profile, but more meaningful targets could be new leads and clients, so set a target as your first step. This allows you to monitor how you are progressing and gives you something to aim for.

Identify a Target Audience

The next step is to optimise your LinkedIn profile to resonate with the prospects you want to engage and connect with. There are various ways you can tweak your profile to show up in search results and to promote specific skills and qualities, as discussed in our recent blog on 10 LinkedIn Profile Optimisation Tips To Attract High-Quality Leads.

Put The Time In

Becoming an authority within the LinkedIn community and truly engaging your prospects won’t happen overnight. As with all aspects of growing your business, it’s important to put the work in and stay consistent as it may take time to see tangible results.

In addition to showcasing the skills and experience you already have, attending virtual and in-person events, networking both on and off LinkedIn and hosting and attending seminars are great ways to boost your profile and provide authoritative content for your LinkedIn profile. Essentially you need to get the experience that demonstrates you are an authority when you add it to your LinkedIn profile. This then nurtures what you can talk about with articles and interactions.

Join Groups

LinkedIn groups are an effective way to share insight and discuss topical industry issues with likeminded individuals. By being active in these groups, the community becomes aware of your expertise, as well as your personality and demeanour, so you should research relevant and credible groups to join, or you can even start your own. Creating your own LinkedIn group offers you instant credibility and authority, but make sure you promote it as a vehicle for sharing knowledge and with a positive, communal message, i.e. it’s not for your own agenda.

Content Strategy

A content strategy is a tried and trusted way of ensuring people see you and are engaged by you. You want to produce content that prompts interactions and encourages people to share it, but ultimately it also needs to establish you as a thought leader. Pick a range of engaging subjects, make sure it is quality, insightful content and also ensure there is variety to it and that it is the type of content that gets people talking. Mix regular articles up with video content, polls and infographics for example.

Communicate

Producing content and sharing it is a great way to demonstrate and articulate your knowledge, but that’s not the be all and end all of it. Responding promptly to comments and interactions and having live conversations with people who have read your content makes you affable and engaging too. Being easy to talk to gives you personality and a human side, which people respond to. Anyone can research and write an authoritative article, but applying this knowledge to everyday conversations demonstrates authority in an engaging context, and shows you aren’t aloof and superior.

Frequency

To become an authority and to fully engage people, you can’t afford to go into hiding. You need to produce content that has people anticipating more, so your content frequency needs to be regular and consistent so that people know when it is coming and look forward to it. This can include reacting quickly to new developments, such as innovations, news and regulations, and people will start to look to you for your views and reactions when something happens. But the key to this is making content fresh and with variety, so if you are producing regular content, be careful not to become too predictable.

If you want specialist help and expertise with building engagement on LinkedIn, then contact our team at Bee Social today, we can help you with thought leadership and methods for becoming a recognised authority on LinkedIn.