Strategic Engagement on LinkedIn: How to Become Top of Mind for Right-for-You Opportunities

The more you engage on your LinkedIn homepage, the more you’ll be top of mind for opportunities that are ideal for you. When you are consistently active on LinkedIn, you’ll show up in more LinkedIn searches, too. In this month’s article, I share some strategic principles to power your online engagement.

1. Consistently engaging online is key to becoming top of mind.Develop a cadence that you can keep (daily is best, but if you can manage only once a week, start there). Because it is easier to comment on what others post than it is to initiate a post yourself, ramp up your practice of engaging on LinkedIn by responding to posts that you find particularly interesting or thought-provoking.
2. Use tagging whenever you mention a person or company. When you do so, LinkedIn notifies the person or company you’ve tagged via email. This ensures that your efforts will be noticed. To form a tag on LinkedIn, use the “@” symbol followed by the name you want to mention. Start typing the name and finish by selecting the correct name from the drop-down options that will appear.
3. Pay attention to what your customers, clients, and colleagues post. Everyone enjoys attention. Responding to a person’s posts is a way to nurture a relationship. Amplify the posts that come from your company’s communications department. Find people whose posts consistently are thought provoking and worthy. Every response you make creates insight for others into your personal brand. When you start paying attention to specific people consistently, LinkedIn will reward you by making sure that their posts show up more often in your LinkedIn feed and notifications.
4. When you respond to a post, you add value three ways. You add value to the original person who posted, value to other people that read your comment, and value to yourself. Your LIKE and COMMENT should be thoughtful; it should be the beginning of a conversation between you and the original poster and potentially other readers as well. It takes some time to craft a worthy response, but since every response is a reflection of your personal brand, it’s worth it.
5. But know that not all responses are created equal. A LIKE by itself is a very small token of appreciation and will generally not get a response from the person who posted. (This includes all “flavors” of LIKE: celebration, support, love, insightful, curious.) In contrast, a LIKE and a COMMENT are more likely to get you noticed. But, comments of fewer than five words are not acknowledged by the LinkedIn algorithm. That means that comments such as “Great article!”, “You go girl!”, and “Congratulations” will NOT result in the post lasting any longer on the homepage feed than if the post had not received those comments.
6. Never respond on the homepage to material that makes you uncomfortable in any way (i.e., material that is sexist, racist, etc., etc.) If you do respond, you will be sharing that material and uncomfortable feeling with others. Take action instead: click the three dots in the upper right corner to report the post to LinkedIn.
7. When you have mastered the art of responding thoughtfully to others’ posts, you’re ready to craft your own posts, too. You might curate an article written by someone else or share your own thoughts (in 1,300 characters or fewer). Looking to share at length? Write an article on LinkedIn – but please, only do this if you write well. Everything you post and write online represents your brand and is retrievable into the future.

When you consistently and thoughtfully engage on LinkedIn, people will notice. You will begin to create a network of existing and new friends on LinkedIn. And since every response you make on LinkedIn represents your personal brand, people will begin to associate you with what you do – and recall your name when right-for-you opportunities arise. Being active consistently is a practice I recommend to all my clients.

Named one of six top branding experts in 2022 by The American Reporter, over the past ten years, I’ve helped countless C-level clients use LinkedIn to frame conversations, impress suitors and customers, and introduce themselves before their first conversation takes place. If you are a C-suite executive or senior leader, I can make this easy for you. Based on my knowledge of how LinkedIn works and how people respond to what they see there, I can ensure everything is ready and your profile conveys exactly the message and impression you’re aiming for. Let me help you attract the talent you want to hire, increase your visibility and influence, and steer your career.