Tea with the Queen

Steal My LinkedIn Growth Strategy

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Are you wondering how to do business development on LinkedIn? 

Stuck with your LinkedIn growth strategy?

I know so many people out there are keen to use LinkedIn to help their business grow, but are at a loss as to where to start. 

Now, I certainly don’t claim to be a LinkedIn expert, but I have been working on my growth strategy for a while. 

When I started several years ago, I had roughly 200 connections. Fast forward seven years, and I’ve grown that to nearly 16,000. Sounds like quite the leap, doesn’t it? It means that the content I now put out reaches a considerably broader audience.

So, why should you even bother with LinkedIn? For me, it’s another crucial touchpoint in our digital presence, complementing our social media and email list efforts. 

My LinkedIn strategy is straightforward because, let’s face it, aren’t we all a bit time-strapped? So, here’s my plan—practical, actionable steps that you can easily weave into your daily routine.

Step 1: Define Your Engagement Goals

Who do you want to connect with on LinkedIn? For me, it’s other business owners, HR professionals and executive coaches. For you, it may be lawyers, accountants or creatives. The key is to have a crystal-clear picture of your target audience.

Step 2: Commit an Hour a Day

Yes, I’m serious about spending a full hour, albeit broken into more manageable chunks. You don’t have to do it all at once, but perhaps 30 minutes in the morning and 30 in the afternoon. This allows you to post, engage and re-engage.

Step 3: Post Twice a Week

Content is king, and it must be relevant and valuable. Post something original and then share content from others. Authentic engagement means providing your insights when sharing.

Step 4: Respond to Comments

Engage actively by responding to comments quickly.  I recently heard that you should respond to 60% of the comments in the first 24 hours,  and then the rest later. 

I am still experimenting with this to see whether or not that works, and to be honest I personally prefer to respond quickly than wait 24 hours. But as always, try things out and see what fits you best!

Step 5: Personalised Connection Requests

When adding new connections, personalise it! Don’t just send a request – think about crafting a unique message so there’s a little bit more context. This is a nice way to show genuine interest. 

Step 6: Comment on Other’s Posts

Don’t just ‘like’—comment. Share what you found intriguing or motivational. Show that you’re paying attention.

Step 7: Connect with 10 People Daily

This practice nets you 100 connections per week. Not everyone will accept, so balance and maintain quality.

Step 8: Be Open Yet Selective

Sometimes the logic behind requests can seem dubious, but weighing pros and cons could reveal unexpected networking opportunities.

Step 9: Embrace Video

Stand out by using video content—only a mere 3% do! It’s worth the effort as videos receive higher engagement, and if you can be a bit brave and courageous, you’ll have the potential to do really well on this platform. 

So, there it is—my LinkedIn strategy that you can adapt and make your own. You can always connect with me at Emma McQueen on LinkedIn, have a look at my profile and see how we keep our content varied and engaging. 

Feel free to experiment and let your profile reflect who you truly are. LinkedIn doesn’t have to be daunting; it can be exhilarating. Let me know how you fare with these strategies. I can’t wait to see your results!

LINKS

For a copy of Emma’s book, ‘Go-getter: Raise your mojo, shift your mindset and thrive’ – https://www.emmamcqueen.com.au/book/

YouTube Channel

Read The Full Transcript

Emma: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to Tea with the Queen.
Are you wondering how to do business development on LinkedIn?
Yeah, so are a lot of people. And I thought in today's episode, I would break down the exact strategy I use to do business development on LinkedIn. This will work if you're on basic LinkedIn or you're on premium version or you have sales navigator.
And if you are thinking about using LinkedIn as part of a business development strategy moving forward, I think paying for premium or sales navigator may be a winner. First, some background. I have been working on my LinkedIn strategy for a while. I went from about 200 connections on LinkedIn. [00:01:00] seven years ago to just under 16, 000.
Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? That's a lot of connections. It also means that the content that I now put out gets served to a wider audience. Now, I don't profess at all to be a LinkedIn expert. Although if you want to see someone killing it on LinkedIn, follow Cherie Clonan.
And if you want some help with your profile, connect with Kate Merriweather. Shout out to Kate. Why? Do you need a LinkedIn presence? You ask. It's a great question for me. We are on socials. We have our own email list, which is very, very important, but another podcast. And we are also on LinkedIn. The conversations we have on LinkedIn are a little different.
People see it as a more of a professional platform. and dare I say it a little bit more thought leadership going on in LinkedIn. Having said that, I'm on Instagram as well and I'm going to tell you a little secret. [00:02:00] The people that I work with that are connected with me on LinkedIn barely comment on LinkedIn yet they're very loud on Instagram.
So everyone's watching everywhere, right? We did a recent business development sprint. You would have heard if you've listened to our podcast and I wrote a few business plans out for people to use as their template. My personal LinkedIn strategy is very simple. I'm a very simple individual and we are all time poor and we all need to do what we can do and fit into the day, right?
So today I thought I'd make a really practical tactical episode and I'm going to break it down for you in super simple terms so that you can follow along as you see fit. Now if you're out walking, obviously you cannot take notes on this, but if you get, when you get home, double speed me, grab a piece of paper, grab a cup of tea, and write down what I'm about to tell you.
I'm going to give you all the steps that I use. Are you ready? Strap in. Here we go. Number one,
define who you want to engage with on LinkedIn
for me, I [00:03:00] love connecting with other business owners, people who are doing interesting things. I like keeping up to date with the people I used to work with in the past.
They are my HR peeps and my executive coaches. for you, your target market, maybe lawyers, your target market, maybe accountants, it may be creatives, figure out. Who your target marker is, and make sure that you have a very clear picture of who that is. Number two,
commit to an hour a day on the platform
I know, I know, I can hear you now. Emma, a whole hour? Yes, a whole hour. Get it into your diary. You may need to break it up into two lots. You may need to do 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. If you can't do the full hour in one go. In fact, I would say that doing 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon is actually the best option because of the next steps we'll talk about, but you'll be able to post in the morning.
You'll be able to check back in the afternoon. Number three. Post twice a week has to be [00:04:00] relevant, has to be valuable. You need to think about what you're posting so that people have something to comment on. In the first instance, post once with something that you have created and then share someone else's as your second post.
That's all. Post once a week. You can reuse some of your material that you've got on Instagram. I would just tweak it for the LinkedIn platform and I would then share someone else's. I love to spread the love on LinkedIn. That's a great way to do it, to be able to share someone else's. Don't just share though, share and comment.
So, Hey, I like this article from Emma McQueen because A, B and C, or I really like this article because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or I disagree with this because blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, I know that people are watching. I know that people are watching. So posting is pretty important. Now, if you say to me, I don't have anything to post.
I just need to think about the content that you're already [00:05:00] creating and what does that actually look like? And how do you reuse that? Number four,
respond to those who comment on your posts
I heard the other day that you should respond to 60 percent of the comments in the first 24 hours and then the rest later.
I am still experimenting with this to see whether or not that works, whether or not that is true, but I really like the idea of responding. quickly to people. And I am more of the respond quickly than wait 24 hours, but you could try that as well. Number five,
connect with those people who have commented on your posts
with a personalised message
don't be lazy. Don't just send a connection request. Now we have split tested this and we have had a good We've had a group of people send out invites just to connect, no personalized message. And we have had a group of people send out personalized message to see which one performs better. Same, same.
[00:06:00] What I like about a personalized message is you can put some context in there. So I really like the personalized message. I also think if someone's commented over and over on your post and they know who you are, so you could just connect with them. Number six. Comment on other people's posts
please don't lurk and like, that's not engaging.
You know, we all talk about engaging on Instagram and like, just hitting like is not engaging, actually leaving a comment, giving some thoughts, whatever it is, write something thoughtful rather than love this or yes, agree. And by the way, I've been guilty of this, but I want you to think about when you're posting or when you're commenting on posts, what are you loving about it?
Why has it triggered you to even go, Oh, I'll stop scrolling. Yeah. Offer your thoughts up. People want to see what you're thinking. Number seven, connect with 10 people every single day
you have a hundred connections a week, so use them all. Not everyone will connect. Not [00:07:00] everyone will connect, which leads to my eighth point.
Don't be too picky about who you connect with and try to ensure it makes sense with who you connect with. There's a total balance here. So sometimes people connect with me and I am scratching my head as to why they want to connect. We don't seem remotely connected. We don't seem like we have any mutual connections and I'm like, I don't know why you want to connect.
And so you need to balance these things. out. Yeah, we need to balance these things out. Number nine,
video
if you're watching this, you will see that I am on video wearing a pink top with bright pink puffy sleeves, right? I don't mind showing up on video. LinkedIn reckons that only 3 percent of users on the platform, use video on the platform.
That means if you can be a bit brave, a bit courageous, you can do so well on this platform. Also, they [00:08:00] tell me, at LinkedIn that is, that video gets seen by four times as many people. There's a reason to do it, don't you think? They are my nine tips, my nine simple tips on how to have a LinkedIn strategy.
Now let me go back to the very first comment, which was an hour a day. So my first 30 minutes in the day, I will share my post. I will comment on people's stuff. I will hit connections. I'll do the connecting for the first 30 minutes in a day. I come back in the afternoon to make sure that all the comments on my post I have, uh, commented on all the comments on my post and to see what else is going on, right?
But the first 30 minutes of the day for me is the most important because that's when we send out the connection requests. So with those nine steps, do you reckon you can do it? I reckon you can do it. If you want to give it a try Connect with me on LinkedIn at Emma McQueen, stalk my profile and see what type of [00:09:00] content we do.
We do a mix of static content. So we do a mix of, written words. So posts we use a lot of photos. Uh, we do short snippet videos. we try and shake things up a little bit. We have had 200, 000 impressions and we've had 50 impressions. It's just a bit of a experiment to suck it and see. Why don't you set up your own little experiment over the next little while, play around with LinkedIn, make sure your profile is up to date.
I mean, I see a lot of profile pictures with full bodies in them. Don't do that. Just put your face there so everyone can really clearly see when you connect. That is your face. Yeah, that's my first tip. Because we want beautiful photos and we want people to know our Emma McQueen wants to connect with us.
but for more profile, ideas for someone who is, being the authentic self on LinkedIn, it's Kate Merriweather for sure. I also want to say [00:10:00] in February, I'll be running another business development sprint, like the one we did. and a lot of ladies found it really useful to focus on LinkedIn in that sprint.
So if you want to supercharge your LinkedIn profile with other women doing the same thing, shoot me a DM or jump on my email list. And you'll be the first to know when we do it again, the results were spectacular and business development on LinkedIn does not have to be scary. Who knew it can be fun. I hope you've enjoyed this episode.
Let me know how you go. I can't wait to see your LinkedIn results.