Improving the use of your own communication channels is one of the biggest issues we have been working with clients on in the past couple of years. Whether it is your organisation’s website, social media or face-to-face events, these opportunities are open goals for you to build your voice and engage with your target audiences.
From an individual perspective, LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool to enhance the reach of your work. Here are six tips on how to make LinkedIn work for you and your organisation:
- Review who is in your network– the chances are you’ll be amazed at the reach you already have. If you are just setting up on LinkedIn or don’t have hundreds of followers, don’t despair. LinkedIn is theprofessional social media network – there will be scores of your contacts and clients on there with whom you can connect and build your profile and reputation. Connect with your existing contacts and use the ‘My network’ function from LinkedIn to build your reach.
- Fit it into your working day– on the commute in the morning, during your lunchbreak. Whatever works best for you. And it doesn’t have to be hours at a time – five to 10 minutes a couple of times a day can be enough to keep things ticking over.
- Check your newsfeed– this is your homepage and is LinkedIn posting content from people in your network and also from those that it thinks will be of interest to you. It may not always hit the mark, but do engage with what is relevant to you and your business. This is a brilliant way to build your contacts and your voice.
- Get your settings right– it is absolutely worthwhile clicking on settings in the ‘Me’ tab and reviewing the different menus there to ensure you are happy with how your profile, posts and activity are shared. No-one wants an update every time you change your profile pic, or rejig your profile info. But you do want to ensure you and your posts are visible to the right people.
- Post links to interesting content– as I mentioned, the LinkedIn newsfeed is an ideal starting point for exploring and sharing content that aligns with your interests and/or messaging. As a next step, something I find incredibly powerful is sharing relevant content from other sources. These can be from internal colleagues, or external news and information websites. Once you are confident in sharing content, build your voice further by commenting on posts from you and others. This helps cement engagement and demonstrates your expertise.
- Generate content– this is not always easy, but consider your strengths and what you want to be known for and by whom. What do you like to read? What do those people you follow/admire post – what pointers can you take? Once you have honed in on your areas of expertise, consider what your audience needs are and create informative blogs or posts accordingly. These don’t need to be Plato’s Republic – they just need to contain relevant insight for your audience. This could be a straightforward opinion on a topical issue; or it could be a blog making a small number of concise points (much like this one!).
If you would like to know more about how to make the most of your own communication channels, the team at See Media will be only too happy to help. Contact me or any of my colleagues on hello@see-media.co.uk.
For more hints and tips to enhance your communications visit www.see-media.co.uk. Also, please sign-up to receive our monthly newsletter.
Stuart Macdonald is Managing Director of See Media
