In this blog post, I will share my experience of being named LinkedIn’s Most Engaged Marketeer of the Year 2017 in The Netherlands and provide you with some actionable tips to increase your own engagement.

Late November, LinkedIn reached out to me and informed me that I was in the Top 10 of most engaged marketeers on LinkedIn throughout 2017 in The Netherlands. I had never heard of such a top 10, nor ever considered ‘going for it’, so I was really surprised and honored to even be considered for this. It also spun up some questions. What does it mean to be an engaged marketeer? What does it mean to be engaged at all? What engagements do they consider influential?

It all became much clearer to me as the majority of the top 10 marketeers gathered at LinkedIn’s office in Amsterdam in early December and received a clear presentation of what being an engaged marketeer really means. They explained it beautifully and the clarification of the selection criteria was defined by our individual contribution to the following 10 data points:

As it turned out, I ended up at the top of the list and was given the award for being LinkedIn’s Most Engaged Marketeer of the Year 2017 in The Netherlands. That was a moment of pride.

Now, during our visit to the LinkedIn office, we spend most of the afternoon discussing what it means to be an engaged marketeer and it became quite apparent to me that all of us present marketeers had quite the same perception of what success looks like, and how to achieve it. Where we differentiated was in our use cases of LinkedIn. How we wish to engage, what our objectives are, how we are doing it and where we want to go with it. This part was very interesting to dive into, and as it turned out, this part was exactly why we had made our way to the top 10.

Really, the discussion we had is a conversation relevant to anyone who wishes to elevate their personal branding, kick-start their business, increase company brand awareness, empower employee advocacy, increase industry influence, and be influenced by listening to needs and wants.

I will try and explain the common nominators in our definitions of success, in my own words, and then provide some quick tips for you to get started on your journey to becoming (most) engaged on LinkedIn.

The one rule to rule them all: If it is not you, it is not working

On LinkedIn, you have an extraordinary opportunity to present yourself to the world and an extended audience, compared to, let’s say, the business partners, networking meetings, sports activities and close by communities you engage with frequently face to face. Now, the most powerful advantage you hold in these face to face activities is your persona – your character, body language, tone, and voice speaking who you are to the people around you, before they even consider listening to your spoken words.

Being able to grab the essence of that and use this in presenting you, your business and your company (yes, companies have persona to – it’s called culture) is what will elevate your professional brand. Remember one thing: people do business with people. We can guard ourselves behind company names, titles, technologies and products, but at the end of the day – we are people engaging with people. Right, so how to make it ‘you’ in a digital world so that it will work? Here are four thought processes to make:

1) Define your story

You are unique, there is no one else like you out there. Period. It’s not possible. So start by answering these questions: What do you do? How did you gain the experience to do that? Where are you going with this? We can read your fact sheet and CV in your Experience section here on LinkedIn, that is not what is interesting here. What you do, how you got here and where you are going are all defined by your persona. Define your story, driven forward by your persona and make it apparent in every engagement you do, online and offline.

2) Find your audience

The way that LinkedIn offers you the opportunity to discover, learn and engage with professionals all around the world empowers you to reach out and find the right audience for you. There is no one set definition of your audience. It highly depends on where you are now, and where you are planning on going.

It can be based on the industry you work in, your clients, your organizational level, the various interests, skills, groups, schools, influencers and employers you have or have had in common with other people. All these combined (and you can easily find these by using the search function on LinkedIn) will at least provide you with +1000 value-adding connections on LinkedIn. Not only will this give you a relevant and influential audience, it will give you the opportunity to keep up to date on what is moving them and give you a head start on new business development.

3) Add value

Listen, becoming the most seen on LinkedIn is not the end goal here. We can all step into a room and start yelling and everyone will look at you, but no one will know who you are, or what you can do, or how you can help them. Nor will they have any interest in helping you. When it comes to you communicating about you, quality will always win over quantity. Therefore, be mindful of what signals you send out and how they influence your story, your objectives and your audience when you engage. Use your brainpower and persona to fuel your professional brand at every engagement you make. Refrain from engaging based on impulses. As a safe guard, always ask yourself: Is this value-adding to my audience? Is this in line with my story? Is this what I want to be known for?

4) Be present and be patient

Finally, I will highly encourage you to make your story, your knowledge and your expertise available to your audience – and the audience that is yet to find you – at a consistent pace. Now, what I mean by this is to make a small, but significant, timely investment in sharing your story. It does not have to be more than 15 minutes per week, and it shouldn’t be more than 15 minutes per day. Keep it simple. You, your business partners, your employer will all eventually see the value and ROI from this small investment. When saying eventually it is to make clear that this whole perception of you, your story and the value you add to your audience is something that is build over time. It will not happen overnight, nor will it be something you can report back on at the end of the first quarter. Credibility is build when people see the consistency in you and your engagements over time. Be patient. I promise you, it will come.

There are multiple ways for you to become more familiar with the various features of LinkedIn and how to actively use this in building your brand. I have added a few links below which might be of interest to you. Have a go at it and do let me know how it all works out! If you have questions on this, reach out! I am always happy to help when I can.

• How To Use LinkedIn Profile Features – LinkedIn Tips Video
• What Using LinkedIn Successfully Looks Like – Connect to Opportunity Video
• How To Become An Engaged Marketeer – LinkedIn Blog
  

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Thank you for reading my blog. This blog was originally posted on February 11th 2018 on LinkedIn. You are always welcome to reach out to me to make a comment, share it with your friends, give me a call if you have questions or if you can help enlighten me further me on this topic. Always keen to learn more, always happy to meet new people.