Non-spammy ways to network on LinkedIn

LinkedIn: We love it, we hate it, it helps us network with clients we can’t e-mail and can’t meet in person, we fantasize about buying LinkedIn for the sole purpose of shutting it down…it’s complicated!

And if you want to completely quit LinkedIn, Amelia Hruby of Off the Grid will help you do it! I don’t even want to completely quit social media, but I find Amelia’s ideas creative and her opinions refreshing. Plus, she herself runs a six-figure business with only placeholder accounts on LinkedIn and Instagram (“Find me on my website because this account is dormant”). Remember: you’re a freelancer. No one “makes” you do anything in your business. Clients work with you or don’t, but if social media is making you nuts, get off!

The pluses of LinkedIn 

That being said, LinkedIn has some definite advantages:

• You don’t have to find anyone’s contact information
• You don’t have to worry about e-mail privacy
• You have access to endless amounts of information about who works where, where they used to work, who replaces them when they quit, it’s all right there 
• You can nudge people or companies on LinkedIn without worrying about what to write in a 150-word e-mail besides, “Do you have any work for me??? How about now???” 
• You can repost other people’s posts if you don’t want to write your own
• You can comment on other people’s posts in addition to or instead of writing your own 
• You can write your own posts and maybe get found by people who don’t yet know you and might be in a position to hire you or refer work to you
• You can look for full-time jobs and pitch yourself as a freelancer while they look for a full-timer or instead of a full-timer 

Despite the (many) annoyances of LinkedIn, I think these advantages (and probably others you’ve thought of) make it worth your time and attention. 

Forget the stupid algorithm 

Sorry for not finding a more professional way to say that. People have all kinds of theories about LinkedIn’s algorithm. Posts from personal accounts should always say “I” while corporate accounts should say “We.” Always use an image, never use an image, put your link in the post, put your link in an image, put your link in the comments. Comment on someone else’s post before you post so you don’t look like a lurker. 

I say life’s too short and my brain is already too overloaded to worry about this. Just get a little more active on LinkedIn and let the algorithm live its bot life without you. I *do* often put a “subject line” at the start of my posts. Here’s an example, where I posted about last week’s T4T newsletter. This makes it easier for people to see what the post is all about, but I think it looks formulaic if you do it all the time. 

 

The lowest-commitment way to start

The problem? When most of us think “networking on LinkedIn,” we think of the spammy messages we get all the time. “Offering you a paid Board position.” “Train AI and put yourself out of a job.” Or we think of the people whose every post is an “I’m So Great, don’t you wish you could be me???” or the people who post in an overly aggressive manner on potential clients’ posts. “Sounds like a disaster! Next time hire me and this won’t happen!” 

If you’re terrified of this, start here:

• Go on LinkedIn and follow some current or potential clients. Just go to their company page and click Follow. I know, some people worry that this gives away their business secrets or people will know who they work for. Personally I say, people really don’t think about you as much as you think they do. They barely think about you at all. Just follow some companies or NGOs or publishers or film studios or whatever, and if people want to be weird, leave them to it. 
• Get super-brave and just click the “Like” button on the post of a freelancer, corporate leader, or company you admire. Just that: one click. You can do this! You won’t die, I promise! 
• Repost someone else’s post (individual or company) that you like/agree with/want to support, just by clicking “Repost.” Don’t add any thoughts. I know, I know, the algo supposedly hates that, but here we’re training you, not the algo. 

Do those three things, then if you survived that (of course you did), keep going. 

Three ways to comment on someone else’s post 

Lots of stats and anecdotes show that commenting on LinkedIn is one of the best ways to get on the radar screen of a current client you’d like more work from, or a potential client you’d like to work for. But how do we do this? What do we say? How to not come off as too pushy or only commenting for the sake of commenting? Try this!

• Just be supportive and encouraging. It’s really OK to not say something pithy. The world needs more people who are just kind and positive and make other people feel good about themselves. It’s 100% OK to comment something like:
  •  “I really appreciate the information in this post, thanks for writing it up!” 
  • “Such great information, I’m making a note of this for the next time I’m thinking about/dealing with [topic of post]” 
  • “Great insights about [topic of post], thank you!” 
• Add a simple idea of your own to what the person/company said. Such as:
  • “I love how you talked about clients who specifically want a human touch instead of pure AI. I recently noticed this when a client came to me asking for…” 
  • “You’re so right that the AI transition has been a lot to deal with, but has also forced us to rethink how we want to work. I was pretty devastated to lose a client to machine translation, but I then found a replacement client who explicitly wants their writing to sound human.” 
  • “That’s interesting that you’re having trouble finding freelancers who do multilingual audio description. I wonder if any audio description training courses provide referrals to people who’ve taken their classes?”
• Ask a question that builds on what they said or encourages them to say more. Such as:
  • “I really appreciated your comments on XYZ trend. Do you think we’ll see more of that in the future, based on what you’re observing now?” 
  • “That’s interesting that you’ve gotten so many requests for multilingual clinical trial support. Do you think international trials are expanding? Maybe it’s getting harder to run trials in the U.S.? I’d love to read more about that.” 
  • “I really enjoyed this NGO trends report, it’s so hard to get good information on what’s happening post-USAID. Do you have any plans to release another study like this, maybe focusing on francophone Africa?” 

Posting on LinkedIn is its own topic, one that I’m not going to cover in this issue. But if you’re feeling tentative or even terrified about networking on LinkedIn, in any way, I hope these tips are helpful!