LinkedIn Success Plan

Hello everyone. Ten point plan for LinkedIn success without letting LinkedIn take over your life it’s really important. Every good presentation starts with a story. Mine started actually, great timing, nearly a year ago to the day, when I became a dad for the first time. So, that’s me. I’m wearing the same t-shirt as well, oh god, that’s me.

It’s actually a new one, I bought this one the other week. That is my wife, Laura. So I’m Ryan, that’s Laura. We put our names together. We made Lyara, and she was born 23rd of July, 2023. During that time, I was obviously on paternity leave. I was working in-house, as a social media manager for a law firm.

I was training lawyers on how to use LinkedIn. So I trained about 600 lawyers on how to use LinkedIn. And I managed the companies LinkedIn page and Instagram as well. I was loving it. Enjoyed my job. It was great. And then on the 11th of October, I received this, I had this handed to me, confirmation of redundancy.

You know, my wife’s on maternity leave, what was Lyara? she was three and a half months old, less than three months old, two and a half months old she was at the time. Shit. You know, redundancy, a lot going on or not. This was my face when I was handed that redundancy notice.

Because, rewind before the July in the January 2023. So Lyara was obviously still inside Laura, still growing. I had a little bit of a vision, I think what most people do when they’re starting their own business, they’re not really sure what they want to do. I was like, okay, so set the business up in January 2023, with a little bit of a vision.

But I wanted to work there eventually. I didn’t know when it was gonna happen, but eventually, but I had no clients, you don’t set up a limited company and immediately have clients, as we all know. but two days after I set up the limited company, I posted on LinkedIn, with intent for the first time. So I might have been a social media manager and have been for over ten years.

But my personal social media, just like many of you, probably with your personal social media when it comes to business, it took a backseat. I was posting probably over, you know 50 assets a month for, a company, but none for myself. I posted this two days after setting the limited company up, so, I was going to walk the walk essentially and what I’d been teaching all those lawyers I was going to do myself, not necessarily with a solid aim.

It was just to really grow a network and get to know more people, get more people to know me. but I still had no clients, at that point, no contracted retained clients, should we say. Exactly a year after that first post. So from the January, I’d obviously been made redundant in July, I’d obviously become a dad, 15th of January 2024 after posting for a year solidly.

You can see where lyara was born. I am human, I stopped posting, naturally. but I’d been seen nearly a hundred thousand times on LinkedIn 2500 engagements. Obviously these are just numbers, but we’ll run through them. My followers, my network had grew to 832, it started about 450. Okay. You know, that means nothing, just numbers. What does that mean for business?

I’d had 23 meetings, since been made redundant, from January 2024. I’d sent 14 proposals from those meetings, from those 14 proposals, I had eight new clients. The diary was full for four and a half days, you know, I’d definitely worked more than four and a half days now. But it was technically full four and a half days. The bills were importantly, bills were being paid and food was on the table.

And there was Lyara enjoying her first ever bolognaise. Clearly she enjoyed it. And all of that was through LinkedIn. I’ve never used any other channel for my business, for marketing. Existing relationships that I already had for my ten years as a social media manager knew I was now available. The new relationships that I’d built knew what I could do for them.

So when I was handed that redundancy notice, I had a warm network of people ready to be converted and I was happy about it. As you can see. And I did ten things really on LinkedIn and no more than those ten things, and they are the ten things that saved my ars and put that food on the table.

And that is my 10-point plan for LinkedIn success. So there’s the story of how this came around. Now a well known marketer, entrepreneur, I’m not gonna name him, but he did some research and it was research for the optimum growth on LinkedIn. I’m not sure if you’ve seen this, but it looks like that. Oh my goodness me.

For optimum growth on LinkedIn, you need to do all that. And that made me, this is Lyara to trying an avocado for the first time, that was the first thing she’d ever eaten. And that is the reaction I have for that, because. But we’re not here for optimum growth are we? I’m not here to to get a thousand followers and optimum growth.

I’m here to create optimum opportunity. so let’s work out why we’re all on LinkedIn or on social media. So 1 to 3 of the 10-point plan is context. And the first one is really defining what is success to you. So it’s a question you should really ask yourself before you use any marketing channel, but particularly LinkedIn because you can waste a lot of time, most people would say success to me is clients, new business, money essentially.

But opportunity is really the currency, I believe Joe Glover posted that on LinkedIn. And it happened just as I was starting my business. So Joe runs The Marketing Meetup and he posted about opportunity being the currency, it’s more than just about clients, and it stuck with me that did, it’s something I use regularly. So what opportunities to you are important?

So I know Sylvia, you mentioned about speaking gigs. So it’s not all about new clients. It’s about speaking gigs, event invites maybe, event signups, could be, podcast, it could be anything. It doesn’t have to be about new clients. So don’t just think I need business. There’s more to LinkedIn than just creating business. It could just be I want to create friends.

That could be your success metric. What friends that leads to, that might be business, eventually, but it could just be, friends. So the action for me on this one is to really write down, put in on a post-it note and stick it to your laptop or stick it to your wall or put it on a whiteboard somewhere. Its knowing what success is to you.

That’s the first thing I do for the plan for LinkedIn. Obviously, you need to speak to somebody to achieve that point one as with any marketing plan, but LinkedIn has this, you know, function feature where you can find people by their industry, by their company, by their role, by their location, and it even has a search filter where you can actually just search for them people so you can go on and say I wanna speak to, you know, people in the United Kingdom who work for Google, maybe, or work for Linklaters, which is a law firm.

So, and then think of the connectors too, don’t just solely think about, right, so for me, I’m a social media manager. I want to be known to marketing directors or operations directors. I think of people like Penni, who’s a web developer or a designer, you know, who could recommend me, they don’t offer social media. So I always think, who can connect me to those people as well and network with those people as well.

So don’t just think target audience, being the end, you know, the person who’s going to hire you, think who can connect you to those people as well. The action here is, I love doing this part, I love drawing a stick man, I’m terrible at art. But draw a stick man or face of somebody, give them a name and, you know, create their persona of what industry they work in, what company they work for, what is their job title?

Give a character to that person, and that is the person you’re creating content for on LinkedIn. That is the character you’re trying to speak to. Three, this is the final one of the context pieces, how do you want to be perceived? Now, this is a big, big one for me because professionally and personally, like, how I am perceived is the only thing that’s unique.

There are so many social media managers out there, but there’s only one me. So the perception I create is really, really important, and it is the only thing that’s unique and it’s created through every action and interaction. So not just posting, every message you send, every comment you do, every like you leave, everything, as in your your everyday life.

This is what is your personal brand essentially, it’s how you are perceived by the people you don’t know, or the people you do know in your network. And the action here is summarise it. I summarise mine in a sentence. At the top level, this is what I want to be known as. Some one who knows his stuff on social media.

But is a good guy, that’s it, if you want to delve deeper, it’s, you know, being a good guy to me is like down to earth, open, friendly, someone who wants your business to be a success. That’s me as a social media manager, I want your business to be a success. So I help you with your socials, and then that’s really important as well.

Like, I want to be the type of person you want to work with, but also have a pint with. So consider that for yourself. What perception are you trying to create with your LinkedIn activity? and everything you do filters towards that. So they’re the three contextual points, right? You know what you’re trying to achieve, you know the people you need to speak to to achieve that.

And you know the perception you want to create of yourself, the personal branding element, how do you want to be perceived by other people and now we need the action to join those three points together. So point 4 to 8 is the action, and you probably know how to do all these things. You definitely do. I’m just going to tell you, sort of hopefully inspire you and guide you on how you can do them better and save time as well.

So this is a ladder, so you can do point 4 to 8 or just point 4, or point 4 and 5. The more you put in the more you get out essentially. So to achieve that point one, first off, have a full and optimised profile. It’s your personal landing page, it is visible on Google. So if someone searched your name, someone see’s you at an event and they then search your name, they can come across your LinkedIn profile, they can connect with you.

And they can then essentially speak to you. I say full and optimised, for me a full profile is a profile photo and a profile photo that you’re happy and confident with. That’s really important. I invested in my profile photo, when I set up my business and it was definitely the best investment I ever made. It’s the only photo that I feel confident and comfortable with, and I think that’s really, really important.

So profile photo, cover photo, headline, about section, call to action. So obviously profile photo is a little photo of you, cover photo across the top, headline, about section. And essentially your profile needs to say what you do, who you do it for, whilst also thinking about that perception you’re trying to create and delivering that through your profile.

And my tip here is to optimise a one call to action. What do you want people to do when they read your profile? Do you want them…Where does your profile, LinkedIn profile sit in your customer journey? Do you want them to visit your website to then contact you? Do you want them to just book a meeting with you?

Do you want them to sign up for an event? Whatever that may be, ensure your personal landing page, your LinkedIn profile is optimised for that one call to action, and it supports what you’re trying to achieve overall. Five is exploring LinkedIn and socialising in comments. LinkedIn is a 24/7 networking event, right? So reframe your thinking of LinkedIn.

It’s not a social network, it’s not an in person, let’s say it’s a sort of, in-person, but it’s an online, networking event. And you can dip in and out as you please. So reframe your thinking when you’re going onto LinkedIn and reframe it as if you’re going to an event, an in-person networking event, and it’s there whenever you want to dip in and out.

Scrolling and commenting on posts is the same as going up to somebody at an in-person event and just saying, hi, how are you having a little chat, getting involved in another conversation. So reframe it. You know, don’t think you’re sitting there, behind the screen, you know, commenting needlessly. You’re having productive conversations with people, just as you would at in-person events and provide value, ask questions and genuinely just socialise.

I don’t think there’s much more to it than that is there? share your expertise, show an interest in the other people and ask them questions and generally socialise and get to know people. And then for me, I streamline my exploring of LinkedIn by segmenting my audiences. And what I mean with that is, here’s this filter box again, you can go on to LinkedIn, if you know your target audience,

So Penni is probably my target audience for a connector, right. She’s also in the marketing scene in Northampton. So there’s people I need to converse with really and socialise with. So what I’ve done is created a filter that just segments out, so this is just me and Penni at the minute, so you could segment all of us in here and have us on one feed.

So instead of going onto LinkedIn on the main feed and scrolling everybody, including ads, you know, company posts, you could literally have a bookmark that says marketing people in Northampton or CoWork Club members. You click on there and it’s just content from just those people. So you don’t need to listen to the noise of the whole LinkedIn if you don’t want to.

If you don’t have time that day, just go on one of your bookmarks, so you can segment your audiences however you wish to segment them. But that’s a really powerful tool that not many people know about, so I’d advise taking a look segmenting your audiences, who you need to get to know, and scrolling just those people to save some time. Connecting.

This is a big mistake that people make, is waiting for connections to come to you. LinkedIn is so powerful, you can literally find your target audience and connect with them and bring them into your network for free. And then your target audience is immediately in your network and they can get to know you. So don’t wait, get proactive and grow your network.

It’s super important. And for me, quality really does matter. Unless, so if they are my target audience, great I’ll connect with them, I’ll try and get them into my network. The only other reason I’d say is if I enjoy them or their content, like if they add a bit of value somewhere else, like entertainment maybe. But if they’re not in my like target audience, relevant network, the relevant people sort of thing, I don’t tend to connect with those people.

That’s just how I am. It doesn’t matter how you go about it, but I’m trying to keep, I’m not here to grow followers. I’m not here for optimum growth. I’m not here for a big network, I’m here for a relevant, valuable network, and I have a quarterly refresh of my network, and I do recommend you do that as well.

Because the amount of, you know, the amount of content that is on LinkedIn now and social media in general, it’s so swamped. If you’re seeing content that isn’t relevant to you, it’s going to waste your time scrolling through that content and looking at it and with LinkedIn, if you have one first degree connection, who isn’t necessarily relevant, if they’re then interacting with somebody else, their second degree connections can appear in your feed as well.

So your feed is becoming swamped by somebody who’s irrelevant, and then more people who are irrelevant to what you want to achieve and what you’re there for. So you have a quarterly refresh of your network, and this is another reason to have a quarterly refresh, because you might go through your network and say, oh, I haven’t spoke to that person for a while, maybe I’ll message them and see what they’re up to.

Relationships. Just like at in-person events, if you are at an in-person event and you wanted to grab a 1-1 with somebody, you’re going to take them off to a little room on the side and have an informal chat, coffee maybe, a bit of a catch up, treat that the same as direct messaging on LinkedIn. You are allowed to message people on LinkedIn.

People I think are worried that it may come across as, you know, like seedy or whatever it may be like, LinkedIn is a safe space to message people, you can do that in the right way. And I try to normalise messaging somebody to say hello, I did it. This is a head of comms, I’ve obviously blurred his name out, but this is a head of comms.

Admittedly, I do know this fella, but this could be the same as if it was somebody I didn’t know really. “Hi, how’s things? Big congrats on the recent award win”, they posted an award win, “very much enjoyed seeing that on my feed”. He complimented me on not trying to sell him something. I mean, how crazy is that?

I stood out because I didn’t try and sell anything. Yeah, like I said there, I’ve made it a bit of a mission of mine to break the cycle of people just trying to sell shit, because just say “hello”, It’s fine, we just need to build relationships, right? And just saying hello, I couldn’t believe how powerful that was that he complimented me on

not trying to sell him something. But you know if he’s the head of comms, right? So if he ever needed social media, I can guarantee you he’d be popping back in my messages. So as a minimum, what I encourage is messaging your profile viewers, so people who view your profile, you have the ability to see that, the last, think it’s like ten, five, ten people on a free LinkedIn profile, who’s viewed it, message those people and say, you know, I see you looked at my profile,

let me know if I can help with anything but hopefully everything is good with you, something like that. The people engage with your content, message them, commenters, people who comment, and then your followers. Story about somebody who viewed my my profile, it was about, what was it, about eight months ago? No it was longer than that, it was over a year ago.

He didn’t connect with me, just viewed my profile. But he was an operations director at a local company, I thought, perfect. I just messaged him, so he didn’t connect with me, so I just messaged him and said, I saw you look at my profile, saw your company, looks great, never really heard of you before,

I’m from around here, but I’ve never heard of you. He said, I’m on holiday at the minute Ryan, but I’ll message you when I get back. So fine. So he messaged me, after I’d been made redundant, we caught up again. That retainer has now, just short of ten grand i’ve earned off that client, and we’re still going, it’s a retainer, so.

But that was just from somebody who’d viewed my profile. They didn’t even connect with me. So I just, you know, sent a message, said hello, and it’s now resulted in a retained client. So it’s possible, that someone might not connect with you, but if you just reach out and say hello, that it could result in business or an opportunity more generally. I think this is said so often, but no cold selling.

You don’t need to do it. You really don’t. And it’s so off putting. You’ve probably all received sales messages on LinkedIn and it’s so off putting, just be the person that says hello and you stand out immediately. so that’s point seven and that’s a massive one for me. And I’ve got to point 7 and I haven’t even mentioned posting. Point 8. Posting less than,

well, the last time I looked at the stats, it was between 3 and 5% of people, UK LinkedIn users post regularly on LinkedIn. That’s insane. So 95% of people don’t even post. So immediately if you post your own content, you’re in an elite crew of under 5%, which is crazy, and you can approach content in so many different ways,

it’s got to work for you. But I do two things with my content. It’s either getting to know me or how I can help. So it’s either about me, my life, what I’ve got going on, or it’s about how I can help a business or a person with their social media. That’s it. I don’t really think too much beyond that.

And I do that through thoughts, expertise, experiences, work, life, whatever that may be. I said you can approach it in so many different ways, your content. But I ask myself this, on every post I do, does it do any of this? So does it show me as a go-to social media manager? If it does, great, I’ll post that.

Does it show me is a down to earth, open, friendly person or does it help my target audience be successful on social media? If it does any one of them things, I’ll post it, and that is my perception that I’m trying to create back at the start. And I don’t think like, like I say, you can approach content in so many different ways.

But this is mine. Does it help you achieve your goal and create your perception? If so, post it. And my tip here, I’ve not really said you should spend this amount of time on something, you should do this amount of anything but this one, block 30 to 60 minutes out on a Friday. Friday you’re in the best mood of the week, right?

No doubt about it, we’re all happy on Fridays. So your content is going to flow, you’re going to do a post, I’ve put 30 to 60 minutes, you can write a post in five, I guarantee it. You’ve had all week to think about ideas or note ideas down, you’ve got a week coming up that you can look ahead to.

If you’re stuck, you’ll be like, oh, I’ve got CoWork Club coming up next week, I can post about that. So Friday is, good mood, you’ve had a week, you’ve got a week, and yeah, it will just work, it just happens. And then you’re ready for the next week, you’ve got 1 or 2 posts ready to go. 9 and 10. Tools. I only use two tools, for my content.

And the first one is Trello, project management tool. you may use a different project management tool like Notion or something like that but, organise on Trello. So what I do is manage all of my content through Trello. I’ll show you how that looks. This is my LinkedIn profile, so essentially months, each card is a post. You click on the card, it has words.

It has a visual. This is a post about bacon and it did do really well. Yeah, you can see me, you know, essentially that is my Trello board, that’s how I organise my content, and it’s really, really powerful. I can collate ideas on the go, so on my app, note an idea down on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, come back to it Friday and write the content on a Friday.

Easily reuse your best posts, so I could take this post and then duplicate that card put it up here, change the visual on it, make it a video maybe, make it a text only post, whatever it may be, but you’ll have some great performing content here. Say you’ve published in January that you should then publish again in June or July whenever you want to publish it.

So just duplicate the card and you can go again with it. It’s so easy to duplicate content, reuse it, and repurpose your best performing posts. And you can also collaborate on Trello. You can invite somebody else. I think it’s great to buddy up, I really do. So I’m very fortunate that my wife is a marketeer, so she reads all of my LinkedIn content.

If you have someone close by you can buddy up with, add them to your Trello, or do a joint Trello and ask them to check your posts, and give you a second opinion. I think that’s really powerful. So if you do have anyone in your network, if not, it’s an initiative for the CoWork Club to buddy up and do LinkedIn posts together.

I think it would really help. Designers, do not kill me, but I use Canva, I do use Canva. Essentially you can use any design platform, right? Illustrator, whatever. Photoshop, but I use Canva. Add some visual spice to your posts because posts with visuals perform better, more or less, so and it also makes repurposing content easier.

So like I just said then, if I’ve done an image post, wording with an image six months ago, I might make that into a carousel PDF with multiple images. In six months time, I then might do that as a video in another six months time. So it makes repurposing content easier if you have visuals. And the visuals I create as a minimum, would be a title page and a carousel template.

So here’s mine. That’s a title page, just has a bit of information on it essentially, a carousel, this is essentially me saying to my audience, here’s what I do, but it looks much better designed as a carousel rather than a load of text. so they’re the two as a minimum. You don’t need Canva for this, but creating a library of images like, so good, even like for presentations. I’ve got a library of images that I paid a photographer to take of me.

I use them on my LinkedIn posts, to create that perception, but I also use them in presentations, which is great. So I’d advise creating a bank of images, working with a photographer on those, and then video.

LinkedIn is pushing video. So if you can create video, go for it. I’ve been creating some video recently with my little girl and me and my work and stuff, and they’ve gone really well. So LinkedIn is pushing video. So if you have the ability to create video, do so. Recap of the 10 steps. What is your definition of success?

So understand what you’re trying to achieve. Who do you need to speak to, to achieve that? That big one, I really like that one, I really think it’s important, how do you want to be perceived? Have a full and optimised profile. Explore and socialise in comments like you’re at a networking event, in person. Connect with relevant people at that networking event, bring them into your network.

Start conversations in DMs. Say hello. Stop trying to sell things. Just say hello to somebody, you don’t know where it could lead to. Become in that elite club of under 5% and post your own content, organise that content and organise yourself on Trello. And then create in Canva. Those are the 10 steps I’d advise. And time, I don’t think is the issue.

Right? It’s about what you do with the time that you have because everyone definitely has some time. Look this optimum growth thing, that’s not happening. I don’t even, 17 comments a day. I don’t even think I speak to my wife 17 times a day, like that is not happening, three to five videos a week. Okay, but we’re not here for optimum growth are we?

This is what I try, and I say try, because I don’t do this every week, I don’t, I’m human. I’m a business owner. I have other things to do. So there are some weeks where I don’t really do any of it and that’s fine. But it’s about doing, I think it’s about doing like just something, even if it is, if you’ve not got time to create a post, you should have because you got that 30-60 minutes on a Friday, even if you haven’t, just message somebody, just pop a message to me or to yourselves or whoever, Penni or Jo, whatever, you know, just pop a message to somebody relevant and say hello.

And that could make all the difference. And that’s a bit of activity, right? Or just connect with somebody, connect with somebody new. So yeah, that’s what I try and do on a weekly basis, and then I reflect on what I’m trying to achieve every month. Am I achieving it? Am I moving the needle at all on what I’m trying to achieve? Quarterly

refresh of my network and I’m going to review my whole plan, like my content I’m creating every half a year, to see where I’m at. But the key thing, right, for me, when I was employed, it was don’t wait until your boss makes you redundant to post or be active on LinkedIn. And for most of us here as business owners, it’s don’t wait until you need your next client.

It’s not about you know, getting to that point where you’re desperate for a client and now I need to post on LinkedIn. Just start today. There’s no better time. So a challenge for everybody here. Everyone loves a challenge. Post on LinkedIn about today’s CoWork Club. There’s some prompts. I’ve written half the post for you, but you could use some of those prompts if you wanted to, to create a post for LinkedIn about CoWork Club, which I think would create a good post.

Do you want to take a photo of that?. take a picture or a few pictures, of us, you, the cake, the space, all of the above, take your pick, at least one tag, so tag at least one person or company. So it could be the CoWork Club company page, could be the sponsor Digital Northants, Penni, Jo, me, the person next to you, or all of the above,

at least one tag. All set? we can do that challenge can’t we? And I don’t mean to like, have fun, but like, LinkedIn right, you’ve got to enjoy it, right? If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it. So create content that you enjoy, like just, yeah, do things that you enjoy Have conversations that you like being involved in, don’t like force it.

If it’s not, if it’s not enjoyable, you’ll just stop doing it. So whatever you do, enjoy it. I enjoy making those little videos, so that’s what I started doing, they’re time consuming. But I enjoy, like they do help my business for sure. I’ve, skipped along there. I’ve messed that up by pressing that, but yeah, have fun on it.

Enjoy it. And then the last one is literally just ask me anything. sorry, I’ve messed that right up, haven’t I. The last slide is literally just ask me anything, any questions, I’m happy to answer. I’m going to block my diary out a little bit this afternoon, so I’m happy to spend some time 1-1.

If you want me to look at your profile, I will do, if you want some advice on whatever it may be related to LinkedIn, I’m happy, I’m here. So yeah, questions are welcome now, in the group, if you have any?