V Day special: Get them to love your LinkedIn posts

Find Your Superpower newsletter 046

Read time: 7 minutes

Topics covered: storytelling, LinkedIn strategy, content marketing, abundance mindset, attraction, reciprocity

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my Find Your Superpower newsletter subscribers.

As I enjoyed an excellent mixed drink with my husband yesterday evening, I thought of writing a newsletter issue on love—specifically, how to make people fall in love with your content on LinkedIn.

While I also share lots of hacks and tips in my on-demand courses, topics like:

• LinkedIn storytelling formulas

• Algorithm hacks and no-nos

• 7 cardinal sins on LinkedIn

… I’m pretty old-fashioned at the heart of it all.

Anyone can come up with hacks and templates. But do they stand the test of time and multiple algorithm changes?

Anyone can use ChatGPT to write a reasonable-sounding post. But do they resonate? Do they enter the hall of fame?

Anyone can give you a quick win. But can they give you a sustainable strategy that survives both the good times and bad times?

I’m not so sure about that.

This is what everyone is doing right now on social media

Whether we admit it or not, all of us want validation from the people we care about, be it industry peers, colleagues, family and friends. And on LinkedIn, that validation comes in the form of likes, comments, reposts and follows.

When we invest a lot of time into writing something and it gets hardly any likes or comments, we may immediately feel rebuffed and frustrated. Our mood sours. We lose our confidence. We post less, and in extreme cases, I have observed people stop posting entirely.

But when we post something that goes viral and hits some kind of LinkedIn nerve, we bask in the glory of likes and new followers. Our mood soars. We feel more confident. We plan on posting twice as often.

Can you see the rollercoaster we’ve subject ourselves to?

Are you sure that your mental health is ready for this?

As a content creator, if you let yourself go through these ups and downs, you’ll burn out in no time. You’ll probably burn out in a matter of months, posting at my frequency.

Over time, I’ve counselled many people (and other professional creators) through these rollercoaster emotions which they subject themselves to.

It’s simply not a recipe for long-term success.

In fact, it may literally cause some of your unhealed childhood traumas to flare up—being teased in the playground, being isolated, being neglected, being rejected.

Which is why I recommend we go back to basics, and try my suggestions instead:

1/ Abundance thinking as applied to LinkedIn

The day I learnt about the abundance mindset, I was released from a lifetime of scarcity.

Having an abundance mindset is liberating. It means that we don’t believe the world operates in a zero-sum manner.

With an abundance mindset on LinkedIn:

• We believe that the pie is big enough for everyone, and not just for the world-famous thought leaders and coaches like Simon Sinek and James Clear, or perhaps the LinkedIn Top Voices, who have blue badges to verify that they are "worth" listening to.

• We believe that we have the permission to be successful on LinkedIn, despite not being as accomplished as Sarah Blakely or Adam Grant. We believe that there is no limit to how much success all of us can receive on LinkedIn.

• If we have a poor-performing post, we don’t take it personally and we try something different the next time by learning from our past data points.

• If we have something valuable to share, we share it freely. Scarcity thinkers hoard information and the “good stuff”. But the irony is that the more you give, the more the content will resonate with your potential clients who will subsequently pay thousands of dollars for your services.

Everyone loves an abundant thinker on LinkedIn, I can guarantee you that.

2/ The law of attraction on LinkedIn

For those of us who are determined to post more frequently on LinkedIn, be aware of your energy levels when you are posting content.  If the universal flow of energy can be described as one giant circle, then we ought to give out good energy if we want to receive good energy in return.

We can therefore set the following energetic intentions for our LinkedIn posts:

• Each post will deliver valuable knowledge and bless those who read it

• Each post will inspire when I share my professional journey and challenges

• Each post will create more goodness, not sadness, in this world 

Setting my energetic intentions has caused a profound shift in the way I post, and has allowed me to make better decisions about what I post on.

Maybe we’re having a bad day at work or the kids have been grating on our nerves at home. Without these energetic intentions to protect us, you can imagine how we could easily end up sounding mean-spirited and bitter in our posts, or passive-aggressive in every word choice. 

We are ultimately responsible for what we put out into the world. “Every intention sets energy into motion, whether you are aware of it or not,” wrote American philosopher Henry David Thoreau.

With these energetic intentions in place, your LinkedIn followers will thank you for your maturity and responsibility, and love you more.

3/ The law of reciprocity on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman once noted, “It seems counterintuitive, but the more altruistic your attitude, the more benefits you gain from the relationship.”

We can all be “givers” on LinkedIn, by providing value and knowledge in every post that we write. 

As a rookie on LinkedIn, I used the platform to tell everyone about what exciting activities I participated in yesterday. I frequently refer to it as the “I came, I saw, I conquered” strategy, after a famous quote by Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar in his letter to the Roman Senate.

I used LinkedIn to post low-value, event-focused updates, such as “I am humbled to attend this conference” or “I am thrilled to be invited to speak on this panel.”

Why low value? Because Julius Caesar-type posts violate the law of reciprocity on LinkedIn.

When we adopt self-oriented behaviors in such posts, we are unable to invoke reciprocity and goodwill in our readers. They may congratulate us and say nice things about our success, but they gain nothing from us.

And if they do get anything from us, it would be a fear of missing out (FOMO), feelings of inadequacy, and potentially even a sense of jealousy. In the worst-case scenario, they may consider unfollowing us as they may be annoyed by us bragging and showing off.

Another way we can “give” on LinkedIn is to invest in developing relationships such as by commenting on good posts. To me, reading someone’s post is a form of listening online, and we let them know we visited by leaving a thoughtful comment.

When someone tells me, “I don’t know what to post!” I tell them to comment instead. Building a community and tribe on LinkedIn starts with being a good LinkedIn citizen.

--

On this note, congratulations!

If you practice these three age-old laws on LinkedIn: the law of abundance, the law of attraction and the law of reciprocity, you will be better loved than everyone else on LinkedIn.

Read more in the LinkedIn Success Mindset e-book

A lot of what I wrote today in this newsletter is encapsulated in THE LINKEDIN SUCCESS MINDSET e-book and video course, which is suitable for intermediate and advanced users of LinkedIn.

In this e-book and video course, we learn how to manage our mindset and create focused content for our business and career success. We will also learn about three valuable laws of success on LinkedIn.

The e-book and video course comes with:

• chapter summaries

• idea prompts

• a 17-chapter e-book

• 1h LinkedIn Storytelling Secrets with Juliana Chan Workshop and Q&A session (23 November 2023 recording)

• 1h LinkedIn Branding Basics with Juliana Chan Workshop and Q&A session (26 January 2024 recording)

You may buy the e-book here, or sign up to my newsletter here to get a free introductory chapter before you decide.

-- 

Thanks for reading issue 046 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.

For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 33,000 people on LinkedIn and email, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.

Here’s how we can stay in touch:

1. I would recommend you purchase my course, The LinkedIn Success Mindset. In this all-in-one guide to LinkedIn, we will learn how to manage our mindset, take action and avoid making cardinal sins on the platform.

2. If you are very new to LinkedIn, consider my masterclass on LinkedIn professional branding, Find Your Superpower: How to Rebrand Yourself on LinkedIn. This 1h on-demand video course that will help you identify your professional brand, write a brand statement from scratch, and launch your brand on LinkedIn. Don’t muck around for years on LinkedIn, sort your profile out quickly!