On the face of it, LinkedIn isn’t like other social media platforms. It’s a powerful tool for business networking, lead generation, and brand building – in other words, it’s business first, pleasure second.
But it’s also designed to keep you coming back, and browsing for as long as possible. The endless scroll, video feeds and games – who plays those, by the way? – are all meant to get you interacting. Just like other social platforms, you can access LinkedIn for free because you are the product.
So if you’re using it for business, you’ll want maximum results in the minimum time. Here are a few tips for avoiding the time-waste trap.
Define your goals
Why are you on LinkedIn? For most businesses, it’s all about building awareness and engaging with the right audience: your potential customers. Keep that focus in mind whenever you visit the platform, and you’re much less likely to get sidetracked.
Schedule your content
Getting the best out of LinkedIn means sharing content regularly. Preparing batches of content in advance is a great way to save time. Sure, it might take you three or four hours to write a whole month’s worth of posts, but that’s still quicker than spending 30 minutes every couple of days.
Once you’ve got each post ready, you can turn up the efficiency by scheduling it in advance. Just click the clock icon by the Post button, and pick a date and time up to 90 days in advance. This lets you maintain consistency and share content when your audience is most active.
Plan for engagement
Of course, just posting content isn’t enough. LinkedIn’s algorithm promotes posts based on engagement – the more interactions, the wider the audience. So if people comment but you never respond, you’re not helping the algorithm do its thing. And you’re missing out on a chance to speak directly to your audience. But how do you avoid getting sucked into the discussion?
Scheduling helps you here, too. Block out 30 minutes after your post goes live to respond to comments and interact with your audience. You’ll get all the benefits of engagement without being glued to the platform for hours.
Stay targeted with search tools
Making strategic use of LinkedIn’s search tools is an effective way to engage with your top contacts – whether clients, leads or supporters. In a few steps, you can set up a system that saves you time and keeps focus.
Step 1: Decide who you want to track. This might include clients or former clients, leads or prospects, and followers who regularly engage with your content. No need to list everyone – a focused group of 20–30 is the ideal.
Step 2: Go to LinkedIn’s search bar and hit enter. This will show the filters you can use to create your search.
Step 3: Under ‘Sort by’, select ‘Latest’; then under ‘Date posted’, select ‘Past week’ or ‘Past month’. Now it’s time to add the members you want to track. In ‘From member’, add the names of people on your engagement list. Don’t worry – you only need to do this once.
Once you’ve found everyone, save your search as a bookmark. The filtered search results will generate a unique URL at the top of your browser. Just copy this and add it to your bookmarks for easy access. You can organise your search bookmarks into folders, such as “Top Clients” or “Industry Leaders”, for extra efficiency.
Step 4: When it’s time to engage with your contacts, just open the relevant bookmarked search link and review the posts or activity shown in the results. Like a few posts, leave some meaningful comments, or share relevant content to stay on their radar. In this way, you can ignore the distractions lurking in your main feed and focus on the people who matter most.
Step 5: Update your list regularly as your network evolves. Revisit your saved searches to remove old contacts, add new names, or create new bookmarks.
This five-step approach streamlines engagement and brings those key relationships to the fore. It’s a really effective way to show up for the right people without wasting time hunting them down – or scrolling through irrelevant posts. It’s a lot more efficient than relying on LinkedIn notifications, which can easily get lost among all the birthdays and other alerts.
Avoiding the LinkedIn rabbit hole
LinkedIn is an invaluable business platform, but it can also be a massive distraction. The key to using it well is to know your goals, plan your content, and batch your activities. By following these simple tips, you can transform it from a time sink into a time saver.