Most professionals I talk to know they could be getting more from LinkedIn. They want to post more consistently, build a stronger network, stay in touch with clients and referral sources, become better known for their expertise and create more opportunities from the platform. The challenge is figuring out how to fit all of those things into an already very busy schedule.
I understand this because I’m busy too, and LinkedIn is a major part of my own marketing and business development. I’ve learned over the years that spending more time on LinkedIn isn’t necessarily the answer. Having a system for how you use that time makes a much bigger difference.
Content, networking, engagement, relationship building and business development all support each other. The people you meet become part of your network. The questions you hear from clients become content ideas. Your content helps people understand what you know. Their engagement gives you opportunities to start conversations. Those conversations can develop into relationships, referrals, collaborations and business. The challenge is getting all of those pieces working together in a way that fits into your actual life.
Start With What You Want LinkedIn to Help You Accomplish
Before worrying about how many times you should post or how many comments you should leave, spend some time thinking about what you want LinkedIn to help you accomplish.
The answer will be different for everyone. A lawyer may want to become better known in a particular industry. A consultant may want prospective clients to better understand a specific service. Someone else may want to build referral relationships, become more visible within their organization, develop speaking opportunities or strengthen their personal brand.
Once you have a clearer objective, you can make better decisions about how to spend your time. If you want to build a healthcare practice, for example, your content can address issues healthcare clients care about, your network can include more people in that industry and your engagement can focus more heavily on clients, prospects, referral sources and industry leaders in that space.
This also helps you prioritize. LinkedIn offers an endless number of things you could be doing, and trying to keep up with all of them can quickly become overwhelming. Your business and career goals can help you decide which activities deserve more of your attention.
Create a Content System Before You Need Your Next Post
One of the biggest time drains on LinkedIn is sitting down every few days and trying to come up with something to say. I see people put enormous pressure on themselves to continually come up with new ideas when they already encounter potential content throughout their workday.
Start by identifying three to five subjects you want to regularly talk about. I call these your content pillars. They should reflect your expertise and business goals while being broad enough that you can approach them in many different ways.
Then think about your content wells, which are the places where those ideas come from. Client questions are one of my favorites. If clients keep asking you about something, other people probably have the same question. Conferences, webinars, presentations, industry news, conversations with colleagues, articles you’ve written, lessons from your career and changes you’re seeing in your field can all give you material.
Keep a running list of ideas somewhere easy to access. I do this myself because I know I won’t remember every good idea when I finally have time to write. Capture the client question, something interesting someone said during a meeting or a topic that kept coming up at a conference. You can figure out what to do with it later.
This also makes batching content much easier. When you have an hour available, you can go to your idea list and draft several posts. You’re starting with subjects that came from your own experiences and expertise, which makes creating content much easier and usually makes the content better too.
Get More Use From the Ideas You Already Have
Another way to make LinkedIn much more manageable is to use your strongest ideas more than once. If you spent several hours developing an article, there are probably multiple ideas inside it that can become LinkedIn posts. A presentation can give you educational posts, a checklist, a carousel and several short videos. Questions from a webinar can become individual posts. An older LinkedIn post can be updated six months later with a new example, additional advice or a different perspective.
Most people in your network won’t see everything you publish, and your network continues to change over time. Someone who follows you today may have never seen the article you wrote last year. Returning to your strongest topics also helps reinforce the subjects you want people to associate with you.
I work with people on finding these opportunities because creating more content doesn’t always require creating more ideas. Sometimes there is a tremendous amount of content sitting inside what you have already written, presented, discussed or experienced.
Build Your Network With More Intention
Content gets a lot of attention on LinkedIn, but your network is just as important. The people in your network affect the relationships you can build, the conversations you can join and who has an opportunity to become familiar with you over time.
I encourage people to think about their network in groups. Look at your clients, prospects, former clients, referral sources, former colleagues, alumni, industry contacts, people you’ve met at conferences and people you would genuinely like to know. Then look at where there may be gaps.
If you want to develop more work in private equity, healthcare, technology or another industry, consider how many people in that world are actually part of your network. If referrals are an important source of business, look at your relationships with professionals who work with the same types of clients you do. If there are specific companies you would like to work with, start getting to know people in and around those organizations before there is a business opportunity in front of you.
You can work on this gradually. Connect with people you meet at events, reconnect with a few dormant contacts each week and periodically identify people you would like to know. Over the course of a year, those relatively small actions can significantly change the quality and reach of your network.
And when someone accepts your connection request, keep the relationship going. Pay attention to what they share, engage when you have something useful to contribute and look for natural opportunities to continue the conversation online and offline.
Use Engagement to Stay Closer to the Right People
One of the most useful things about LinkedIn is the amount of information people share about what is happening in their professional lives. Clients and contacts announce new roles, promotions, transactions, speaking engagements, company developments and projects. Their content can also tell you what they’re thinking about and what matters to them right now.
I recommend identifying a smaller group of people you especially want to keep up with and turning on the notification bell for them. This might include important clients, prospects, referral sources and other relationships you want to develop. When they share something relevant, you may have a reason to comment, send a message, congratulate them or reconnect.
This can be a much better use of a limited amount of time than opening LinkedIn and scrolling through whatever happens to appear in your feed. You’re paying closer attention to relationships that matter to you and giving yourself more opportunities to stay connected in a natural way.
Pay Attention to Who Is Engaging With You
Your own notifications can contain useful business development information too. If someone regularly comments on your posts, take a look at who they are. If a prospective client starts engaging with your content, notice it. If a former colleague you haven’t spoken to in years keeps appearing in your notifications, consider whether it would make sense to reconnect.
Every like or comment doesn’t have to turn into a direct message. That would become annoying very quickly. Engagement can, however, tell you who is paying attention to your content and help you identify relationships that may be worth developing.
Someone may read your content for months before they ever comment. A conversation in the comments may eventually continue privately. You may meet that person at a conference or have coffee when you’re in the same city. Business may come from the relationship much later, or that person may eventually introduce you to someone else. Paying attention to the people behind your LinkedIn engagement is one of the ways activity on the platform can turn into actual relationship building.
Give Yourself Specific Things to Do
“Spend more time on LinkedIn” is so broad that it’s very easy to postpone, especially when your calendar is packed. I prefer giving people specific assignments they can actually complete.
Connect with 10 relevant people this week. Reconnect with five people you haven’t spoken to recently. Leave 10 thoughtful comments. Identify five people you want to know better. Write down 10 content ideas. Review your Featured section. Look at who engaged with your last five posts and see whether there are people there you should know.
These are manageable activities, and they also help you develop habits. After a while, you start noticing content ideas during your day. You remember to connect with someone after a meeting. You pay closer attention to the names appearing in your notifications. You become more comfortable reaching out to someone you haven’t spoken to recently.
This is something I use in my LinkedIn Mastermind because I want people applying what we discuss between sessions. Understanding how LinkedIn works is helpful, but actually making the connections, writing the posts, reaching out to people and building the relationships is where progress happens.
Have Resources You Can Go Back To
There are plenty of LinkedIn tasks that become much easier when you have a framework or example to work from. How do you reconnect with someone you haven’t spoken to in three years? What should you say after meeting someone at a conference? How should you use the notification bell? What belongs in your Featured section? What should you look at in your analytics? How can you turn one article into several pieces of content?
This is why I create cheat sheets, templates, worksheets and other resources for the people I work with. They give you somewhere to start when you have 10 or 20 minutes available and want to use that time productively.
A template also doesn’t mean sending everyone the same generic message. Use it as a framework and personalize it for the person and situation. Having the structure already there lets you spend your limited time on the part that matters, which is making the outreach relevant and personal.
Learn Alongside Other People
There’s also a lot of value in working on LinkedIn alongside other professionals who are dealing with many of the same challenges. Someone may ask a question you hadn’t considered. Another person may share a content idea that helps you see one of your own topics differently. You may see how someone else approaches networking, follow-up or business development and find something you can adapt to your own work.
I’ve become increasingly interested in this part of my Mastermind because the people in each cohort can be resources for one another. I encourage them to connect, engage with each other’s content, make introductions and look for opportunities to collaborate. I also bring my different cohorts together so participants can expand their networks beyond the people in their own group.
Those relationships can continue after the program ends. People who meet through the Mastermind may stay in touch, support each other’s content, make introductions, collaborate on projects or refer opportunities to one another. The relationship-building skills we’re working on through LinkedIn are also happening within the group itself.
Build a Routine That Works During a Busy Week
Any LinkedIn routine you create has to be realistic enough to continue when your calendar gets crowded. A plan that only works when you have an unusually quiet week won’t be very useful over the long term.
You might spend 15 minutes on LinkedIn three mornings a week responding to comments, checking updates from important contacts and engaging with a few people. You could block another 30 minutes each week for relationship building and set aside time every few weeks to draft several posts at once.
Someone else may have a completely different schedule. The important part is finding a cadence that works with your life and gives you enough consistency to keep your relationships, content and visibility moving forward.
Having an idea bank, templates, a list of priority relationships and specific assignments makes those shorter periods of time much more useful. When you have 20 minutes available, you already know what you can accomplish with them.
Making LinkedIn Work With the Time You Have
This is a big part of why I created my LinkedIn Mastermind. Most of the people who join already understand the value of LinkedIn and are already doing some things on the platform. They may post occasionally, have a large network, engage with other people’s content or use LinkedIn for business development. What they’re often missing is the structure to do these things more strategically and consistently without spending hours figuring everything out on their own.
In the Mastermind, we work on content, profiles, networking, engagement, relationship building and business development, with specific assignments that help participants put what we discuss into practice. I also give them templates, checklists, cheat sheets, content ideas and other resources they can use between sessions and after the program. They can bring me their questions, posts, profiles and situations they’re dealing with so we can work on things that are relevant to their own goals.
There’s also a relationship-building component that has become an important part of the program. Participants get to know the other people in their cohort, and I bring my cohorts together so they can expand their networks even further. I encourage them to connect with each other, engage with each other’s content, make introductions and look for ways to collaborate. They’re learning how to build relationships on LinkedIn while also building new relationships through the program itself.
For someone with a very busy schedule, having this kind of structure can make LinkedIn much more manageable. Instead of spending time wondering what to post, who to engage with, how to follow up with someone or which LinkedIn feature is worth paying attention to, you have a plan, resources to use and someone helping you figure out where your time is best spent.
My hope is that people leave the Mastermind knowing what to do when they open LinkedIn. They have topics they can write about, people they want to build relationships with, a stronger profile, ways to turn engagement into conversations and a routine they can realistically continue when work gets busy. They’ve also had the opportunity to actually do these things during the program, ask questions when they get stuck and get feedback along the way.
What This Can Look Like in Practice
Once you have that foundation, LinkedIn can fit much more naturally into your workday. You might spend 15 minutes engaging with a few clients and prospects before your first meeting, save a question from a client call as a future content idea and connect with the people you met at an event later that afternoon. When it’s time to write a post, you already have an idea bank. When someone interesting comments on the post, you notice who they are and consider whether there’s a relationship worth developing.
You can also get much more use from work you’re already doing. A presentation can give you several posts. A conference can introduce you to new people while also giving you content ideas. An article can be included in your newsletter, shared directly with a client and turned into shorter LinkedIn posts. A comment from a prospect can remind you that it has been a while since you’ve spoken and give you a natural reason to reconnect.
These activities become easier when you know what to look for and have a plan for what to do with the opportunities you find. Content, networking, engagement and business development start supporting each other, which can make the time you spend on LinkedIn much more productive.
Find the LinkedIn Approach That Works for You
There will always be more you could do on LinkedIn. New features will come out, the algorithm will change, different content formats will become popular and there will always be someone telling you what everyone needs to start doing immediately.
Trying to keep up with every piece of LinkedIn advice can take a lot of time and make the platform feel much more complicated than it needs to be. I would much rather see someone identify the activities that make sense for their goals and become consistent with those.
Your priorities may also change. At one point, you may want to focus on becoming more consistent with content. Later, you may realize you’ve built a strong audience but haven’t spent enough time getting to know the people engaging with you. Your network may need attention, or you may have thousands of connections but very little contact with many of them. Your LinkedIn strategy can change as your business and career change.
That’s also why everyone in my Mastermind doesn’t follow the exact same LinkedIn routine. A lawyer trying to develop a new practice area may need a different approach from an executive building a personal brand or a consultant looking to develop more referral relationships. We work on the same fundamentals, but how each person applies them depends on what they’re trying to accomplish and the time they realistically have available.
Over time, LinkedIn can become a regular part of how you work. You know how to turn your experiences and expertise into content, how to find and stay connected to the people who matter to you, how to use the platform to support relationships and how to recognize opportunities that might otherwise pass you by.
Someone may read your posts for months and eventually reach out. A former colleague may remember what you do and make an introduction. Someone you meet through LinkedIn may invite you to speak, collaborate on something or refer a client. A relationship that begins with a comment may develop into something much more meaningful over time. There is no way to predict exactly where every post, conversation or connection will lead, which is one of the things I love about LinkedIn.
For busy professionals, having a practical way to use LinkedIn makes all of this much more manageable. With some structure, a clear sense of what you’re trying to accomplish and resources that help you use your time well, LinkedIn can become a regular part of how you build relationships, share what you know, stay visible and create opportunities for your career and business.
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