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The Biggest Creators on the Internet Are Flocking to LinkedIn. Here’s Why.

by | May 2, 2022 | Writing

LinkedIn is a grandpa in internet terms.

Yet it’s still one of the best platforms on the internet that 99% of creators and entrepreneurs misunderstand.

How do I know?

I’ve spent every day for the last 8 years on there. I have one of the largest audiences on the platform. I don’t tell you that to be impressed but to highlight that I know the game inside and out.

That’s right, social media is a video game anyone can master when they understand the rules.

Once you understand how the game works, you can make a living online and own your time again.

You’re about to hear me say “creator” a lot. We’re all creators. We create to earn a living. We create at work and we can create on LinkedIn after hours, too.

The big names are moving to LinkedIn to build their online empires

Recently, big-name creators such as Nicolas Cole, Sahil Bloom, Dickie Bush and Web3 guru Jack Butcher have been moving to LinkedIn.

This is no accident.

LinkedIn used to be a platform you’d never post content on. Why? It’s not easy to post stuff LinkedIn users care about. The psychology of a LinkedIn user is radically different to every other platform.

Let me break it down in one sentence: LinkedIn users have their boss looking over their shoulder (explains the sometimes cringeworthy posts).

And they have customers, suppliers, future employers, and colleagues all being peeping Toms and watching them like creeps.

When your boss is watching, your food and shelter is at risk. So understanding how to create content with this in mind is crucial.

If the audience on LinkedIn is acting like it’s 1950, why are all the creators moving there in 2022?

Traffic is down elsewhere

Traffic on other creator platforms is down.

The coroni-rona of the last two years created a boom in the Creator Economy. The challenge is it’s fizzling out in some corners of the world, as things slowly return to normal and people value the real world over the online world again.

This means that the worst creators are losing all their momentum and being forced back to 9–5 jobs. This is natural selection at play.

As traffic has slowed to a crawl on sites like Quora, creators have scoured the internet looking for a top up.

When times get harder people give up the perfect image of themselves that says “I’m, like, so, like, too good for LinkedIn” and they just go where the people are.

The easiest place to find or grow an existing audience is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has massive organic reach

Let me simplify: organic reach just means you can reach people without having to buy ads.

It’s organic because the quality of your content pays the price of admission rather than using low-quality content (ads) to get into the game. Linkedin has another quirky feature: it’s not kept alive by ads.

Most LinkedIn users pay a subscription to use the platform, so ads are an after-thought. Without ads dominating the newsfeed, good content is left to shine.

LinkedIn is, and has always been, a place with zero barriers to entry.

You don’t need a minimum number of followers or to submit an application form to a board of privileged tech bros who will try to tell you how to create.

Nope.

You do you and the rest happens organically. I’ve been shouting this message from the rooftops for years. I’ve seen brand new LinkedIn creators post 2 times and get 100,000 views

Only now are people listening to little Timmy Tucker and flocking to LinkedIn. It was inevitable the best-kept secret of the Creator Economy would get out.

member of the Creator Economy sitting in windowsill on laptop networking on his LinkedIn account

Photo by Ilya Bronskiy on Unsplash

Stupidly easy to build an email list

Every creator just wants to own their audience.

Why? Our trust in big tech has declined over the years. We want full control of the audience we build so no tech bro can take it away from us.

LinkedIn is a platform that’s easy to build an email list on. You publish content and then leave a call-to-action message with a link to your email list in the first comment.

LinkedIn has new features coming that will make building an email list even easier — yet another reason why they’re the #1 choice right now.

A hidden opportunity

LinkedIn loves networking unlike other platforms. Career-orientated people are always looking for groups of smart people to join.

An email list is great but the risk of a person unsubscribing will still cause you to lose sleep at night. Starting a community in conjunction with an email list is an underused tactic.

Ask LinkedIn users to join your community. Give your community a name. Give the persona of community members a label too. My community members are simply called badasses. On LinkedIn, my followers are referred to as unconventional leaders. You do you.

The best app to build a community on right now is Discord.

Convert your LinkedIn followers into community members. Then build the email list … and email the list. Host regular Zooms to stay in touch, and share helpful links you stumble across in the chat.

A helpful compass I use is if I send a link to my business partner via email then I share it with my community by default.

LinkedIn users are high-quality people

I find Newsbreak users to be the lowest quality users on the internet.

They call each other names. They swear like 5th graders. They complain and blame. They follow the politics game like it will cure world hunger (it won’t).

LinkedIn users on the other hand are some of the highest quality users on the internet. There’s another under-appreciated trait of a LinkedIn user: they’re on the platform for business.

This means they’re fine to be sold to. They don’t call making money online a scam or pyramid scheme.

Now here’s the secret I’m not supposed to share…

LinkedIn users typically have a higher average income, so they’ll happily buy high-ticket products and services you may want to sell through a Wifi connection.

The easiest way to use LinkedIn

LinkedIn tycoon and a friend of mine, Austin Belcak, says writing short posts on LinkedIn works best.

I agree and have been doing for it years — before it became popular.

A text-only post is when you click “start a post” and simply begin writing. The 3000-character limit is enough space to tell a kickass story, unlike Twitter’s measly 280-character limit.

The idea is to share lessons, insights, and stories with LinkedIn users.

Reading the best LinkedIn posts can help give you ideas and learn what the audience does and doesn’t care about. If you’re stuck you can look at the trending section on LinkedIn and write about one of those.

Short tweet-style posts can also do well on LinkedIn too.

The aim is loads of information and impact in one to two sentences. It’s an art form anyone can learn.

Final Thought

Now you know why the biggest creators on the internet are flocking back to LinkedIn.

And you know my dirty, little secret: LinkedIn users are pre-programmed to love business content and will happily buy high-ticket online products and services.

Rediscover the power of LinkedIn. It’s so much more than your resume.

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