Wrestling with LinkedIn? Try our guide: Link Me In

How to tell your story on the platform we love to hate

Why do so many of us love to hate LinkedIn? Phrases like ‘it gives me the ick’, ‘I just don’t know what to say’, or questions about the platform suddenly being a home for political and personal content abound.

Yet, the reality is it can be a brilliant platform for storytelling, done in the right way. New connections made, inspiration gained, community built around ideas. The dichotomy of the perceptions of storytelling on LInkedIn and the value it can bring has been something we’ve long pondered at LookUP. We don’t profess to be experts in LinkedIn, but on many occasions we see contacts we haven’t bumped into for a while, and they mention our content. Sometimes even the lurkers looking at your words are adding value to your business.

We set out to write a guide to StoryTelling to LinkedIn, which you’ll find at the end of this piece. Our first step? Finding the people that we respect and believe have a particular type of success on the platform (and what success looks like is a question in and of itself, it’s not just follower numbers). A big thanks to Zoe Scaman, James Denman, Lee de Souza, Natalie Moores, Bronwen Foster-Butler and Emma Alexander for their contributions.

We see three challenges consistently play out that this guide delves into.

(1) We try to be someone we’re not

(2) We don’t spend enough time on our Why

(3) We think of ourselves (wrongly) as the star

Amongst much other guidance, one of the things we spend time on is the different roles you can play on LinkedIn (spoiler: they’re not all being a thought leader). We’ve found for everyone from CEO’s to wider teams, this thought of what role you should play to achieve your goals, and what will engage your audience lifts your focus from ‘what should I write’ to ‘why am I writing at all’.

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