10 August 2016 548 words, 3 min. read

How I got in the TOP10 of Linkedin’s most viewed profiles

By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab PhD in marketing, director of IntoTheMinds
8 weeks ago I started an experiment. I wanted to jump into the TOP10 most viewed profiles of my Linkedin network. I succeeded. Read further if you want to find out how I achieved jumping from the 100th place to […]

8 weeks ago I started an experiment. I wanted to jump into the TOP10 most viewed profiles of my Linkedin network. I succeeded.

Read further if you want to find out how I achieved jumping from the 100th place to the 10th and what it brought me.

Short intro : what does my Linkedin network look like

My Linkedin network is made of approximately 1980 connections. I removed very few of them along the years, basically only people who really annoyed me or who caused me troubles.

This network was built on the period of 10 years and consists for 99% of people I’ve really met in person or with whom I’ve had real business contacts. I don’t accept invitations to connect “out of the blue”, from people I don’t know, especially when there is no explanation of why I should connect to them. As a consequence I’ve hundreds of invitations waiting.

Graphical representation of my Linkedin network (with the help of SociLab)

How I used Linkedin until 8 weeks ago

Until 8 weeks ago my sole use of Linkedin was to post the articles I published on this blog. Linkedin allowed me to make them known to my network and at the same time to tweet them (I had linked my Twitter account to Linkedin). I saved a minute of my previous time by automating the tweeting act.

This daily routine allowed me to appear regularly in the bottom TOP100 of my network.

What I changed to come into the Linkedin TOP10

I actually changed very little to boost my Linkedin presence. Basically I chose between 5 and 10 threads a day and left an elaborated comment, when possible with a link to one of my articles.

My “popularity” immediately jumped up to 10 profile views a day.

I was happy. Within 5 weeks I got into the TOP10. I even got a message from a former colleague asking me what I had done to become so visible. But eventually, what did it bring ?

The ROI of your Linkedin engagement

I got three types of rewards from my Linkedin engagement and increased visibility:

  1. I got 3 business proposals : all 3 regarded trainings. Two of them were outside my field of expertise, the last one got no follow up by the person who had sent me the request
  2. I got 3 job proposals. All three were sent by recruiters who apparently didn’t take the time to read through my profile and were looking to fill up junior positions of data engineers and data scientists (which I’m not)
  3. I got countless invitations from people I don’t know who didn’t take the time to add a personalized message in their invitation

Conclusion: is Linkedin worth the effort?

I made a great deal of efforts to increase my visibility on Linkedin and based on a 8-week observation period my conclusion is simple: don’t waste your time. What you’ll get out of it is not worth too many efforts.

What you should do is to invest 5-10 minutes a day to maintain an online presence on Linkedin. Post a link every two days, post one meaningful comment each day. It’s highly sufficient to make you visible as most people on Linkedin simply do nothing besides adding connections.

Image : GongTo / Shutterstock.com


Posted in big data, Marketing.

2 comments

  1. Hi how did you know you wee in the top 10?

  2. Hello,
    Back in 2016 when I did the test Linkedin was providing statistics on the most searched profiles in your network. This allowed me to observe the improvement in ranking week after week.
    That stat disappeared in 2017 if I remember well.

    Pierre-Nicolas

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