How To Become a LinkedIn Influencer? Ultimate 10-Step Guide

Do you want to dominate LinkedIn?

I’m sure you do.

Now think about this.

You’re already spending the time, resources, and energy on LinkedIn, why not take it to the next level?

It’s probably time for you to raise the bar a little higher, set bigger goals, and bring in growth that you’ve never seen before.

In this guide, we’ll go through the basics of how to become a LinkedIn influencer. I’ll show you what it takes to rise to the top, give you the list of things you need to do to start prepping, and even invite you to our influencer academy.

Join our LinkedIn influencer academy today and take your growth to the next level.

1. LinkedIn Profile Optimization: Getting It Together

LinkedIn profile optimization is important.

And, it’s even more so with a LinkedIn influencer profile.

Look at it this way.

If you’ve managed to hook people in with valuable content and they’ve managed to see some of your social proof via likes and comments, where’s the next place they’ll go to?

Your LinkedIn profile.

It’s pretty much your very own piece of virtual real estate that serves as a landing page for people who are interested in what you do.

Being a landing page, it also acts as a passive funnel for interested prospects. This is where you can convince people that they can trust you by helping them grow.

I’ve written a ton of articles and even have sections of my books dedicated to profile optimization, but let me list down the basic sections that you need to get right:

Header Image

Don’t just put a group photo in here. Spend some time tweaking your header image to turn it into a conversion tool. Add some CTA here and there, add your social media handles, and tell people why they should trust you!

You can even add photos of your products and services in this area, or promote you next big thing.

There are people who even use this as a bulletin board.

I created an extremely detailed guide on creating header images that you can check out here. We break down the design process, teach you how to use design tools, and

Profile Picture

I’ve had it with people advising that you should smile. You don’t. Your pose has to be believable, pick a profile picture that embodies the values that you bring as an influencer.

Make sure the crop is right and that you’re close enough so that people can recognize you, don’t forget to use a non-distracting background.

Headline

Since this is one of the first things your prospect will read about you, make sure your headline is powerful. There are different headline creation techniques, but the quickest way to do it is to list down reasons why people should believe you.

Here’s a quick example:

Growth Hacker | Founder of Blabla.inc | Consultant to Fortune 500 Companies | Amateur Beekeeper

Keep your headline fun by including some information about yourself – like what I just did in the example above.

Why don’t we automate your headline creation process? Click on the link to check out our LinkedIn headline generator tool.

About Summary

Your LinkedIn About Summary isn’t a resume, don’t treat it like one.

LinkedIn about summaries doesn’t have to be boring.

Instead of telling people what you do, tell them why you do it. Instead of listing down your skills, tell them how you’ve helped other companies. And, most importantly, instead of a boring list of facts, tell them a story.

Storytelling is all the rage right now because they draw people in and make difficult concepts easier for everyone to grasp.

Resume-turned-about summaries don’t work anymore because they don’t stand out.

Do you want to be average like everyone else, or do you want to join the 1% that are influencers on the platform?

Here’s a guide on how to create summaries that you can use to convert customers. (Yup, we’ve included a lot of examples)

Experience

Here’s a quick rule that you can follow with the Experience section on LinkedIn:

List down only your top 5 experiences.

If you find that 2 or more of those experiences are with the same company, e.g. different departments, create different company pages for each of those.

This section lets you show a prospect your journey into becoming an influencer. Your “story” in your about summary should be supported by your experiences to create a more streamlined profile.

I love the fact that they’re divided. This allows you to organize your experiences along with relevant links and photos for each section.

If you can optimize just these five sections on your profile, you’re 40 percent on your way to becoming a LinkedIn influencer.

2. Make The Right Connections

How to become a LinkedIn influencer?

Check out your connections.

If you’re into B2B healthcare, it would make absolutely no sense for your connections to primarily consist of astrophysicists.

Your posts won’t get any traction because the bulk of your reach is not your intended audience.

At the beginning of your road to influencer status, you want to start connecting with people that are in the same industry as you. This gives you an audience that understands what you do.

They will be able to relate to your content and you will be able to provide content that gives out value – we’ll talk about this some more in the next section.

After you’ve built a good base of followers, I’d highly recommend that you turn on your “Follow” button on your profile.

Why?

Because nothing screams “influencer” than that button.

It’s one of the things that separates a normal marketer from a bonafide influencer on the platform.

3. Create Valuable Content

Influencers add value.

And, one way you can add value on LinkedIn is through the release of valuable content.

This is content that influences people to do something about their current situation. It’s actionable, emotional, and full of actionable insights.

There are different content types that you can play around with on LinkedIn:

• Plain Text Posts
• Giveaways
• Slides
• Videos
• Articles
• Polls

However, there’s always this notion that you have to release original content.

That’s not always the case.

Sometimes we find that using templates and repurposing content – even video – can do a lot of good in generating views and engagements.

If your content has no value and is just content for the sake of content, you’ll lose followers. People don’t want to read about or watch things that do nothing for their lives.

At the very least make them smile.

4. Make Sure That Content Has Engagement

Apart from releasing content, you need engagement.

Here’s what.

Engagement is the foundation of virality.

According to the many studies that we’ve done in-house, we’ve found that the more engagement that you have in the first couple of hours, the more likely it is for LinkedIn to put your post in front of more eyes.

The reason behind it is simple.

LinkedIn wants more people glued to their site, and the more engaging your content is, the more people stay on the site. In effect, they want to promote content that’s engaging.

However, the initial engagement you get highly depends on you.

What you do to make sure that your content gets engagement in the first few hours is vital to your influencer status.

Look into improving CTAs to get people to engage, or using LinkedIn pods to get that initial boost you need.

5. Talk to The Right People

It’s not enough that you’re getting engagements, you want to be able to engage with people, too.

Why?

Not only does it build on the engagement that’s on your post already, but it also allows you to show your followers that you’re someone who’s easily approachable.

This opens the doors to new clients and mentorships.

If you find that you can’t talk to everyone given the size of your following, make sure you at least talk to people with intriguing questions.

Offer them help and make sure that you cater to the needs that they have. Remember, talking to you audience is also part of providing value.

6. Collaborate With Other Influencers

I personally love collaborations.

I’ve worked with a lot of influencers, industry leaders, growth hackers, app developers, and entrepreneurs, and it’s led me to create more growth than I didn’t think was possible.

The more people that you can get on your team, the better, not only do you get access to their existing markets, but you get to multiply your efforts.

Another great thing about collaborations is that it also makes for good publicity. Imagine if two of your favorite thought leaders got together and started building, no matter how small that project would be, it would still pique your interest.

This creates a buzz and is a new stream of content and projects you can work on.

However, this still comes with a caveat.

You still need to be able to differentiate yourself from your partner and have a brand that you can market yourself.

7. Create a Multichannel Approach

You can’t obsess on how to become a LinkedIn influencer if you’re not doing something about other platforms like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, etc.

This creates the impression that you have a wide network and that you’re legitimate, regardless of the platform being used.

You’re also going to need the likes of Facebook if you’re launching a hyper-targeted campaign. It allows you to have custom audiences that you can subtly market to and increase brand awareness before you reach out to them on LinkedIn.

If you don’t want to bother with other platforms, at least be on Facebook. It’s the largest social media network in the world and almost everyone you know is on it.

Multichannel campaigns are highly recommended in most B2B campaigns. However, what’s critical is for you not to saturate your target audience.

8. Keep the Momentum Going

After you’ve built up your foundation, you need to keep your momentum going, and that’s where repurposing, automating, and streamlining come into play.

It’s a given that you have to post at least three times a week for you to stay active, but what happens when you just want to go on holiday or if you’re creatively dry for a month?

Here’s what you need to do.

Always have a system in play, whether it’s a post scheduler or an assistant, to help you keep your social pages and lead generation working even when you’re not around.

This makes your growth sustainable and keeps the momentum going.

It also helps if you can track and monitor your progress.

At BAMF, we have a saying, “you can’t growth hack if you don’t track”, and you need to constantly check your stats and drive actionable insights from them.

You need to A/B test, know where your traffic is coming from, design better, and always rely on a good feedback system so you know where you’re at.

Becoming an influencer is also partly a growth hacking goal because it involves finding unique ways to become better at what you do.

9. Get Some Professional Help

Lastly, get some professional help if you need to.

There are a lot of people that can help make your life easier.

VAs can help with content creation and posting, you can get a strategist to help with your image and more, and make sure you’re always on the lookout for new trends in the industry.

The more hands you have helping out, the easier it is to focus on the things that matter, which is taking care of your following and making creative and innovative progress in your field.

When you first start out, it might be tempting to think that you can hack it on your own, but two heads are always better than one.

10. Consider Joining Our Influencer Academy

Most of the steps I’ve outlined here are part of our LinkedIn influencer academy.

And, here’s what.

If you check out our course today, you don’t even have to pay for some of the material that we have on there.

We understand how the world is right now and we want to help out.

We’ve worked extremely hard on our academy because we believe that normal people can become influencers if they put in the effort for it.

Takeaways

You’re already spending the time and effort to make it on LinkedIn.

You already have goals that you’ve set out.

So, why not take it further?

Look, you can be an LinkedIn influencer.

If I did it, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t.

If you need help, join my LinkedIn influencer academy today. We’ve helped so many people take their growth to new levels.

You could be next.