How I got in the TOP10 of the most viewed profiles and what it brought me (you'll be surprised)

How I got in the TOP10 of the most viewed profiles and what it brought me (you'll be surprised)

This post originally appeared on my blog.

During 8 weeks between early May 2016 and early July 2016 I did an experiment. My aim was to test the consequences of being more visible on Linkedin. I set myself the objective of jumping into the TOP10 most viewed profiles of my Linkedin network. And 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'm often invited to speak at conferences and also organize events, which is a primary source of contacts (look for instance at the event I'm organizing on Big Data, recommendation algorithms and ethics). 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

Before May 2016 my sole use of Linkedin was to post the articles I published on my blog. Linkedin allowed me to make them known to my network and at the same time to tweet them (I have linked my Twitter and Linkedin accounts). 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 did I change to come into the TOP10?

I actually changed very little to boost my Linkedin presence. Basically I chose between 5 and 10 posts/news 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 ?

What's 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 young 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 despite my PhD in quantitative marketing)
  3. I got countless invitations from people I didn’t know and 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. I definitely prefer investing my time into enriching my blog which, thanks to countless efforts in the last 8 years, has brought me excellent contacts, clients, friends, amazing organic SEO and, above all, curiosity and knowledge. I've explained in another article how this blogging discipline fuels my creativity.

In my opinion what you should do is to invest 5-10 minutes per 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.

Darine Fayed

VP Head of Legal EMEA

6y

Nicely written article and interesting conclusion! Shows that physical contacts still reign even in the digital world :-)

Catherine Charbonnier

♾Artificial Intelligence ♾ OPI Project Manager ☼ Board Member

6y

Thank you so much for sharing your experience: so pragmatic! Pierre-Nicolas Schwab will be talking today at the Big Data Conference at EBU. Looking forward this event organised by Guenaëlle Collet Eleonora Maria Mazzoli Clotilde Pupillo

Nicolas Demuynck

Head of Technology @ Computerland

7y

Pierre-Nicolas Schwab, thanks for sharing this useful experience with us. After several years of passive use of LinkedIn, I'm being more active. Your post is saving me a lot of waste time and energy!

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Rodolphe de Maleingreau

Founder / Auctioneer chez HAYNAULT VENTES PUBLIQUES

7y

This is a very useful piece as it will save many of your readers' valuable time. Have you done, considered doing or heard of a similar experiment on Facebook? I have just started really working on improving my FB presence for professional purposes, and I am curious as to what it will bring in 8 weeks'time.

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"Post a link every two days, post one meaningful comment each day". My 5 cents: did this post help you get back in the top10? 😈

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