The 7 Steps to building your influence on LinkedIn

1. Connect with everyone you know, meet and have a positive or neutral relationship with

This includes classmates, former colleagues, managers, people in other teams, current colleagues, partners, clients and others you have worked with outside of your current capacity. I recommend including friends and family members who are in the corporate world. As you meet new people, add them on a weekly basis. You cannot overestimate how many times somebody has benefited because of a friend-of-a-friend.

2. Join groups that are relevant and will benefit your career

This is a great way to stay up to date with industry trends, notice key individuals within your industry and start a conversation on a trending topic in the groups. Increasingly, people who interact on social networks with other people they have never met, feel like they ‘know’ them. People are open and receptive to communicating online with members of a group they have not met before, with a greater degree of trust and openness than if they’d met those people on the street and discussed the same topics.Participating in groups helps showcase your experi- ence and build relationships, and you can follow up with connections to members who are of interest and relevant to you. This can then lead to in-person meet- ings and opportunities to work together and help each other along in your career journeys.

3. Be visible (or be forgotten)

This means creating great content like status updates, articles, photos and videos that will be of interest and help to your audience. In addition, comment on other people’s posts and share them, celebrate wins, message your connections about something interesting or ben- eficial, or ask for their input by mentioning them on a post. You could go further and seek opportunities to speak at events, get on a video and get PR coverage.

Success comes from modelling other successful people, but more than that, engagement creates familiarity. And familiarity builds trust.

4. Always be helping

People are focused on achieving their goals and solving their problems. Most topics that could benefit you are likely to be of interest to you, too. This is the same with the people you connect with, so always be looking for ways to help people. People are conditioned to return a favour, so the more you help people, the more likely they are to help you when you need it.

5. Follow companies that interest you and connect with key people of interest

This keeps you up to date, and you can go a step further and proactively connect with your future target hiring managers or talent acquisition/internal recruitment department within the organisation. This helps them notice you, as well as the content you are sharing and the connections you have in common. Collectively, they move from being a stranger to becoming familiar over a period of time. You don’t have to work with them immediately, but building a relationship and being visible is beneficial to you, and to them because you could always refer people and other opportunities that may interest them.

6. Embrace your personal brand building as personal development

Finding the creativity, courage and commitment to share insights and help others is a journey in personal development. It’s likely that you could simply be far too busy to do all this–it can seem like a lot of work. In some ways, you would be right, and in other ways, you are not.

This is far more about quality and consistency than quantity and time. I recommend spending fifteen minutes each day on LinkedIn with the purpose of building engagement with your network. You can do this during a morning or evening commute or a break in the middle of the day. In this way, you’ll get far more done in a week than if you were to sit down for a full hour or more to do it all at once.

I also recommend writing at least one article each month if you are passively building your personal brand. If you are actively building it and looking to change roles soon, post an article once a week.

7. Aim for an engaged community of collaborative people

 Becoming an influencer is about building authentic, meaningful connections with people online and in person, which will benefit as many people as possible. This opens the doors of opportunity beyond job change to career acceleration. The sharing of information, insights, opportunities and collaborative partnerships will create the best circumstances for you to continue enjoying success in the future. We are better together.

LinkedIn has the people and opportunity to accelerate you career and help you achieve your goals. Invest in building your influence today!