Wan Li Ann became a LinkedIn Influencer when she created a post that went viral. Over time, she has exponentially grown her following and generously shares her tips to social media success!
By Wan Li Ann
LinkedIn accounts for 17% of all social media users – that’s 850,000,000 people out of 4.72 billion active social media users worldwide.
This data demonstrates unequivocally that the internet has become an integral part of people’s daily lives. So why not take advantage of the fact that we live in an age where social media can be used as a tool?
I will be sharing my journey of establishing a personal brand on LinkedIn and how I increased the visibility of my profile to gain up to 18,000 followers.
1. Know your platform and your audience
To start off, LinkedIn is a professional networking and career development platform. If you want your LinkedIn profile to go viral, you must first have an objective or goal to achieve in mind. Some may create a profile that showcases their professional experience, skills, and accomplishments to connect with other professionals in their industry and beyond.
Some may be using LinkedIn to join groups and communities, whereas some may be searching for jobs or new business opportunities. Nevertheless, LinkedIn is an international platform often used for networking, job searching, recruiting, and building brand awareness.
A core principle we should follow when using social media is to know your audience. To begin with, you should not treat your LinkedIn account the same way you treat your other social media accounts, such as Facebook and Instagram. Remember, LinkedIn is a professional platform for career development, not an entertainment platform.
2. Be relevant and authentic
The next tip to make your profile go viral is to ONLY share content relevant to your industry. Meaning strictly NO meaningless musings to gain attention. Nobody wants to open your LinkedIn profile with high hopes just to look at TikTok videos of yourself or ridiculous videos of your pet dancing. That reflects poorly on your profile and diminishes the value of LinkedIn as a professional network.
Also, value authenticity. Here’s a a piece of advise by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to one of his fans: “If you want to be famous, you have to work hard. Forget about attempting to replicate my success”. Again, people tend to go for the easiest path in front of them. When we see someone else achieve fame, we often want to emulate them. However, attempts to replicate would usually fail.
An example of authenticity gaining fame was when I wrote about being a sales engineer on my LinkedIn page. It was just a quick recollection of how people mocked me in college for wanting to sell engineering instruments rather than study technical engineering like the rest of my classmates. One of my classmates even made fun of me. Assume you put in a lot of time and effort to learn chemical engineering but all you end up doing is working in sales. It certainly hurt, but I persisted in my goal of becoming a sales engineer.
But at the end of the day, I realized that no profession, not even cleaners, are beneath us. We should never judge others based on the work they do. After that post, I gained a lot of attention with more than 9,000 likes just for that one post. This taught me that the key to getting people interested on LinkedIn or on any social media platform was to simply be yourself and make the value of your postings obvious. Remember the golden rule: Be genuine at all times.
3. Last (but not least), don’t self-promote!
Most importantly, LinkedIn is not a place to promote yourself. Many people present themselves online in the same way Darth Vader would if he used LinkedIn. I frequently saw people on LinkedIn bragging about their accomplishments, credentials, and the positions they had held.
But… what is it that distinguishes you from the thousands of other applicants with impressive degrees and titles?
It’s a common misconception that employers and recruiters value our impressive resumes and academic credentials. However, LinkedIn is a platform for you to showcase your skills to the rest of the world, not a place to extol your virtues.
LinkedIn members and “head hunters” don’t want to be sold to, they want to participate.
Above are a few tips and tricks on using LinkedIn and my personal experience on how I gained 18,000 followers. Remember, To get the most out of LinkedIn, you must first define your goals, purpose, authenticity, and relatability.
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