Our Executive Playbook for LinkedIn Thought Leadership: Tips, Landmines, Strategies
Published December 1, 2022
When “The Queen’s Gambit” came out on Netflix, I binged it straightaway.
My favorite part of every episode was watching the characters play chess with Beth, the main character, and ultimately, lose to her quick wit and strategic mindset. Growing up, my uncle taught me how to play chess. It was our bonding activity.
Though I’m not a good player now and have forgotten many – if not most – of the moves he taught me, there’s one lesson I do remember: The king piece on the board is also a player. Many beginners see the king as a piece to protect and forget that it can also be used in a winning strategy.
I can’t help but draw the connection between chess and LinkedIn thought leadership today.
When many companies think about LinkedIn, they often see the corporate LinkedIn feed as the primary focal point. However, while a brand’s LinkedIn is a necessary channel, they pass over a valuable player in their thought leadership strategy.
The king piece on the board — or, a company’s executives.
Consumers have shown they actually feel more connected to a company when they follow and interact with the faces of that brand. And while there are many reasons to double down on LinkedIn thought leadership for executives, it’s not usually the “why” they struggle with.
It’s the “how.”
Having worked with many executives – now LinkedIn leaders with a little Carve help – we know what works and what doesn’t. Now, we want to share a little of that magic with you.
A Page From Carve’s LinkedIn Executive Playbook
There’s a Story Behind Every LinkedIn Leader
We start every conversation with our LinkedIn executive clients by saying this:
“We’re the communications experts. You’re the industry expert. We know how to tell the story, but you know the right story to tell.”
The opposite is also true: industry experts are (usually) not communications experts. And one of the most common pitfalls we see in an executive LinkedIn strategy is completely ignoring “story” altogether.
The truth is, story is the most successful tool in your arsenal. Humans are hardwired for it. Every personal anecdote or picture you share touches something in someone else that has been through something similar.
For example, when I came across this post, I immediately wanted to read the rest.
That first line of her story reminded me of a similar experience in college when my art professor criticized my work in front of the entire class — not in a helpful way, either. At the end of reading this post, I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing and interacting to show my support. Story works!
I know this is a lot easier said than done, so if you’re looking for ways to mine stories from your own head, ask yourself questions like:
What is the best career advice I’ve gotten?
In my daily job responsibilities, what am I most passionate about?
What have been my biggest learning moments?
If I could give someone in my position advice, what would it be?
What has the journey to get to this position been like?
Follow each of these questions with “why” and “so what?” Then use all that information and paint a picture for your audience. Use your words to weave the story together, rather than just telling them a play-by-play.
Don’t Leave Your Personality Behind
Here’s the second thing humans are hardwired for: connection.
It’s why we have so many social platforms available to us, why we created face-to-face phone calls, and partly why 2020 was difficult for so many. Something in us wants to be seen, understood, and connected to others.
Starving your LinkedIn feed of personality is dangerous. There are some practical ways to incorporate your personality into your feed:
Write like you. Use phrases you might say out loud. Don’t try to sound fancier than you actually are.
Share your controversial opinions. If you find yourself thinking “I wish someone would have told me X,” or “there’s an ugly truth no one wants to acknowledge,” it might be a good social post.
Try your hand at humor, especially since they added the “funny” reaction option. Lighten up your feed a little.
Memes do great on LinkedIn if you’re trying to make light of a repeated frustration or a problem in the industry. The good news is that you can find them everywhere. I find the best places are other industry thought leaders on LinkedIn, Twitter (or whatever alternative platform you’re choosing to use now), Know Your Meme, or Imgur. You can easily find animated memes – or gifs – on websites like Giphy.
If you have a picture, like in the example above, that you want to add more specific text to, Canva is a low-cost, user-friendly option to add text and create your own meme. Canva is also a great tool to create graphics to layer into your LinkedIn thought leadership strategy. A visual aspect added to posts is always helpful if you’re looking for new strategies to book audience engagement.
If you’re looking for more ways to find unique content to incorporate into your LinkedIn feed, whether it’s a meme or an article, check our process on that in this blog
Using Trending Conversations to Show LinkedIn Thought Leadership
Similar to trend-jacking with the media, if there’s a popular topic on the Internet, there’s a great opportunity to showcase your expertise or relevant opinions. Evaluate what you have to offer to the conversation: it might be a differing opinion, an elaboration, or a similar experience — take it to LinkedIn.
Our VP of Content, Mariela Azcuy, did this well recently. In the wake of a devastating school shooting and her children getting COVID, she reflected on the difficulties of being a working parent. LinkedIn featured this post tied to the trending news and it ended up with over 10K views.
Sharing your commentary on recent thought leadership articles is also a good way to showcase your industry knowledge. When we create content for clients, we often set Google Alerts tied to the anchor topics we agreed on in our Foundational Content Document. Then, as email alerts pop up we see if there’s something we can react to.
I also like to think about seasonality. If you’re in the sports industry, each season or year brings new events like March Madness or the World Cup. Many industries often go through cycles. If you are a finance leader, you might tie content to the financial close periods or other reporting deadlines.
There are also holidays like National Take Your Dog to Work Day or National Small Business Month. Make a list of these events and holidays and see if you can turn them into an opportunity.
Things We Avoid on LinkedIn
Don’t Over Promote
Your business goals should be a factor in your LinkedIn content strategy. However, there is no better way to lose your audience than being too self-promotional — it’s a balance.
Here’s how to know if you’re too promotional. If every other post is one of these:
Call for webinar registration
Promotion for a company event
Hiring post
Company announcement
…it’s time to mix it up. All those things are great, but you don’t want it to be the bulk of your feed.
You want to concentrate on communicating value. What are you offering? Wisdom? Tips? A new perspective?
When we create content for potential clients – and our own LinkedIn feed – we go by a rough equation.
YOUR LINKEDIN FEED = 70% VALUE + 15% INDUSTRY POV + 15% COMPANY UPDATES
Why so much focus on value?
Here’s the simple answer: When you meet someone for the first time, you don’t immediately launch into a reel of your life’s greatest accomplishments.
(If you do, you might rethink your people strategy.)
You start by introducing yourself, who you are, and what you do. You get to know the other person and what they want from you. You build a relationship. Then, when you inevitably have wins to celebrate, the other person knows and trusts you enough to celebrate with you.
It’s the same on LinkedIn.
Creating Content Without Engaging With Other LinkedIn Leaders
One of the worst things you can do is to spend time creating and posting content, but don’t engage with your audience. LinkedIn is ultimately a social media platform. Meaning, the more you connect with your audience and network, the more favorably the algorithm will view your content.
In his 2022 LinkedIn Algorithm Report, expert Richard van der Blom found that engaging with at least three posts in your feed after posting your own content increases your reach by 20%.
We counsel clients to set engagement goals for themselves. It could be spending five minutes every morning engaging on LinkedIn; it could be fifteen minutes every other day. Whatever your goal is, be sure and meet it consistently. That’s how you will see results.
And, if you’re at a loss for how to interact with other posts, here are a few things to think about:
Do you have a similar experience to talk about?
How does this post make you feel? Were you surprised, or unsurprised?
Do you agree or disagree? Don’t stop there — why or why not?
Know someone else that might enjoy the post? Go ahead and tag them in the comments!
Reshares, Tagging, and Other Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making
This is where we launch into the nitty-gritty. The LinkedIn algorithm is a tricky, finicky creature full of contradictions that many don’t discover until they’ve spotted a pattern.
Case in point: LinkedIn will boost your post if it sees that others are re-posting it. But if you directly repost someone else’s content without adding your own copy, it limits your reach.
Why? Because the algorithm is set up to boost original thought leadership, rather than riding the coattails of someone else’s opinion.
But we see executives on LinkedIn make this mistake all. the. time. We’ve seen it so much, we dedicated a social post on Halloween to it:
We’re not telling you to stop reposting. In fact, reposting can be great if you want to show support for another creator without being concerned about reach.
We’re asking you to think about it differently. Sometimes, we work around the algorithm by screenshotting what we want to re-post and attaching it like a picture. You can then write your own dialogue into the post and tag the original creator (more rules on that below).
Here are a few more things we’ve learned:
Tagging like crazy is not recommended. If you tag people or companies that don’t interact with your post, the algorithm will decide it’s not valuable or insightful and stop showing it in others’ feeds. If we need to tag someone that is not likely to interact with the post, we do it in the comments.
Use videos strategically. Videos are great to break up the feed every once in a while, but LinkedIn only counts a view when a user has watched at least three seconds of the video. Posting videos too often can cause an engagement decline.
Avoid Fridays. In our experience, we see posts that go live on Friday earn fewer views and engagement.
We won’t give away all our secrets, but you get the point. There are a lot of algorithmic land mines you can step on without knowing it.
We know this is a lot to take in, and – frankly – it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Like good chess players, we’re constantly researching, trying out new techniques, and tweaking our strategy. The “LinkedIn Executive Playbook” changes a lot, as it should. But this should give you some solid ground to start.
And when in doubt, remember this: you already have the expertise. All you have to do now is let that shine through.
