Hate Marketing Yourself on LinkedIn? Here Are Ways to Make It Less Cringe.
Cut through the noise with these simple tips.
Some people don’t mind being self-promotional. I am not one of those people.
Yet here I am, a freelance content marketer who relies on LinkedIn for business. Before that, I ran sales at a marketing agency and was expected to bring in new clients.
Many people find posting on LinkedIn terrifying. I’ve heard comments ranging from “I don’t know what to post” to “I always second-guess myself.”
But there’s an undeniable benefit to being on LinkedIn when you're running your own business. LinkedIn is very effective at driving high-quality leads and produces better organic results than other platforms.
You can be active on LinkedIn without the cringe. I’ve spent more than 18 months building a network and personal brand — one that DOESN’T revolve around constant self-promotion and instead revolves around building awareness and a personal brand.
(Say what you want about the cringey-ness of personal brand; it works.)
Repurpose Your LinkedIn Comments
If you’re not sure what to post, start by commenting on other people’s posts. You’re using their post as a prompt for your own ideas.
This doesn’t work if you reply with something like, “I agree!” It has to be substantial. The benefits are twofold: you’ll generate ideas for future content of your own and you’ll start showing up in the feeds of other people. Start small, like commenting on at least five posts per day.
Then you’ll take your comments and turn them into your own posts. You can easily export your comments from LinkedIn by going to your profile -→ Settings and privacy → Data privacy → Get a copy of your data. Take your prior comments, expand on the idea, and you have a LinkedIn post of your own.
Repurposing is always easier than coming up with net new content. You’ve already had the idea when you left the comment. Why not get extra mileage out of it?
If you’re really struggling or feel like your writing isn’t up to snuff, hire a ghostwriter. As a writer myself, I firmly believe that many people have ideas, but not all of them are writers. You can spend half an hour with a ghostwriter talking about different topics (or hand the ghostwriter your exported comments) and the ghostwriter can turn the ideas into LinkedIn-worthy posts.
Schedule Posts In Advance
Part of the paralysis people experience comes from cringing at their own posts the minute they hit “Publish.” This is especially true if you’re not used to writing publicly. You worry that low engagement means people didn’t like your post (it doesn’t — it just takes a long time to build up enough of an audience to get consistent engagement).
You can remove some of your trepidation by scheduling your posts in advance. I schedule mine weeks in advance. By the time the posts actually go live on LinkedIn, I’ve forgotten what I’ve written.
I also schedule many of them for 8:00 am, when I’m in the midst of getting my kids out the door for school and not looking at LinkedIn anyway. By the time I check to see if the post has any engagement, it’s been live for at least 20 minutes.
If you’re exporting comments to repurpose as posts, this is even easier. Ten comments will get you two weeks’ worth of posts if you schedule one per day.
LinkedIn has a native scheduling option, but it’s terrible and clunky. Scheduling tools will make your life easier. I use Buffer (and it has a free plan) but there are a lot of options out there, like Hootsuite, Loomly, CoSchedule, and Sprout Social.
Anna Burgess Yang
Very Few Posts Are Self-Promotional
I worked with a woman who was trying to become more active on LinkedIn. She had some really unique ideas; writing wasn’t her problem. But she was only publishing once every two weeks and each post ended with a really strong CTA to connect with her and learn more about how she could help.
Two problems with this approach.
First, once every two weeks is not nearly enough. You need consistent, daily posting to become memorable (though you can work up to daily posting over time).
Second, every post was self-promotional. That doesn’t work. The people who grow on LinkedIn are freely sharing information and getting attention that way. If someone really wants to learn more about what you do, they’ll click over to your profile.
LinkedIn is a place for conversations, not constant sales pitches. If every post is, “Come work with me!” or “Reach out to learn more about this company/product!” people will start to tune out.
I only post self-promotional content maybe once every 10 days, and it’s usually very subtle. I’ll say something like, “As a freelance fintech writer…” reminding people of what I do. Everything else is just interesting content about topics I’m interested in, such as remote work, content marketing, and productivity apps.
Connect With Potential Clients
I spend a lot of time connecting with potential clients. Even if they’re not interested in working with me, more connections means more potential for people to interact with my content — which puts me in the feed and in front of potential clients I may not be aware of.
I’m in a bunch of Slack communities, meet people there, then connect on LinkedIn. I do not immediately pitch them. There’s nothing more annoying than a “pitch slap” in LinkedIn’s DMs. Better to build a relationship over time. I use a personal CRM to keep track of these interactions.
Instead, I use the “bell” icon on the person’s profile to get notifications when they post. Then I’ll interact with that person’s posts. That way, I stay on the person’s radar, and hopefully, they’ll reach out if they ever have a need for my services.
I did the same when I was running sales at a marketing agency. I wanted to form relationships with potential clients, especially since the agency was small and not well-known. Several ended up reaching out later because my interactions with them kept the agency on their minds.
Collaborate With Other People
If you collaborate with other people, you’ll benefit from their networks when they share info about the collaboration on LinkedIn.
For example, I appear on podcasts, write guest posts, and host webinars with other people. These are instant-cross promotion, and sometimes with people who have a much larger network than me. It exposes me to a new audience and potential clients.
And unlike “Come work with me!” posts, people expect you to be self-promotional with this type of content — you have something to share! I’ll always share it myself, in addition to the posts from the collaborator. I’ve had many people say to me, “I heard you on this podcast…” or “I read this article you wrote…” so I know the effort is worthwhile.
A Long-Game Strategy to Avoid the Hard Sell
I hate a hard sell. I hate doing it and I hate being on the receiving end.
And buyer behavior has changed. With all of the noise on the internet, they’ll tune out what they don’t want to hear. They’re more focused on relationships, referrals, being aware of brands, and “good vibes.”
Overly promotional marketing doesn’t work anymore. People want to buy from people — and, more specifically, people they like. Show up where buyers are on LinkedIn and become an interesting presence, and you won’t need a hard sell. I know from experience: at this point, the vast majority of my work is inbound.
Presence matters, and it pays off.
Still not sure what to post on LinkedIn? Check out my e-course: Authentic Online Writing: 30 Days of Prompts.