10 Mistakes Founders Make on LinkedIn

How To Use the Platform to Supercharge Your Startups Growth

Photo from Sigmar Recruitment

LinkedIn has 810 million members across 200 countries. We know LinkedIn is a powerful platform for recruiting, sales, marketing and fundraising. For startups, founders should be the face and voice of a brand when it comes to these things, however, most CEOs & Founders are absent or ineffective on LinkedIn. But before you can be effective on LinkedIn, you need to understand three frameworks:

YOUR NETWORK: Less than 10% of your network knows what you do. So? You need to remind them!

PURPOSE OF BEING ACTIVE: The purpose of being on LinkedIn is to activate AND expand your network.

HOW TO GROW AN AUDIENCE: Growing an audience on LinkedIn is 60% from posting and 40% from commenting, you need both.

Effectively leveraged, LinkedIn can provide hundreds of thousands of free impressions each day to your potential employees, partners, customers, and investors. In our most recent founder’s workshop, Justin Nassiri, Founder and CEO of Executive Presence, shared how to effectively leverage the platform to broadcast your vision, culture, and industry insights. Here are 10 mistakes founders typically make on LinkedIn:

1. You don’t comment: 40% of your audience comes from commenting. Comments promote relationship building and audience engagement leaving people more likely to like, comment and share your content in the future.
2. You post generic comments: Generic comments don’t attract new followers. You need to add value and thought leadership to the platform.
3. You post long comments: People don’t come to LinkedIn to consume content, they come to not get bored. LinkedIn rewards efficiency!
4. You post after a post has gone viral: After a post has been out for two weeks no one cares about it anymore. This includes the author, the LinkedIn algorithm and your audience.
5. You don’t respond to comments: Responding to comments rewards you with the algorithm and your audience by making them feel seen (Bonus: Respond fast, assume 12+ hours after the fact are irrelevant to the algorithm).
6. You share articles on LinkedIn: Shared content doesn’t get views. Write your own content!
7. You post late in the day: You want the post to “live” for as long as possible. Meet your audience where they are and when they want to consume content, aka in the morning.
8. You don’t post enough: Most successful LinkedIn profiles post ~5.2x per week. Try to train your audience to know when they can expect to see your content and be on the lookout.
9. You don’t respond to DMs: This impacts your Social Selling Index (SSI) on LinkedIn. The platform wants to know you care about your audience and engage with them.
10. You don’t comment on relevant posts: This is an efficient way to grow your own audience by tapping into posts of like minded individuals and people with similar interests.

BONUS TIP: You just post about your company. Remember, people want to get to know you and are interested in following you because of the things you can teach them. Below is an example of three content pillars a founder could use to bucket their content:

At January Ventures, we’re committed to demystifying venture capital. This workshop was part of our Founders Workshop Series and aimed to give insight into how to use your personal LinkedIn profile to drive growth four your startup. Thank you to our partners Oracle for Startups and AngelList for their continued support and for making this event possible.