If you’re one of those people who always complains about LinkedIn for just being garbage, then it’s time to take charge of it! I find my visits to LinkedIn to genuinely be interesting and useful, and it just takes a bit of effort.
😍 Jazz up your LinkedIn!
🤝 Add people on LinkedIn when you meet them.
If you’re ever at a networking event, a conference, or other work-related event, make sure to actually connect with the people that you meet and the speakers that you found interesting. A lot of them will post and interact on LinkedIn, which will make your feed more rich!
This is also pretty good for adding diversity to your feed by adding people outside of your type of role. Getting a bit of perspective from different roles of industries can also be really inspiring!
It’s pretty expected to use these events for building loose connections, so you won’t sound desperate or silly by asking someone if you can add them!
🏢 Follow companies or communities to keep up with.
If there are any companies you think are particularly cool, or software that you actively use, or communities that run events you might want to attend, make a point to follow them!
If you need some inspiration, here are some that I follow:
Women at work pages: The Female Lead, Grapevine
Local meetups: Product Anonymous, Therapy for Designers
🕳 Follow people in thought leadership, and go down the rabbit hole.
This can take some time to build up, but follow individuals who post a lot of content that you find interesting. Since they’re usually very active on LinkedIn, they’ll also surface content from others as they comment or like it, and you can follow those people too.
Some of you will work in spaces with community voices that have a title you can look for (eg. Notion Ambassador, AWS Hero, Microsoft MVP) or you might just need to spend some time exploring the posts on your feed. If you want a headstart, here are a few people I follow and what I like about them:
Bobby Pinero, Chair @ Equals – he posts a lot about the product, but also about building a finance function in a startup and how to measure success.
Amy Edmonson, Author & Professor – I loved her book Right Kind of Wrong and she often posts content related to it, which is a great reminder.
Marty Cagan, Partner @ SVPG – a classic product management leader, I read a lot of his content and he posts about very current PM thoughts.
Pranav Piyush, CEO @ Paramark – talks a lot about detail in the B2B marketing measurement space.
Ryan Rumsey, CEO @ Second Wave Dive – I’ve done training with Ryan before and loved his content; he posts a lot about design leadership and how it’s been evolving.
👋 Ask your friends/coworkers who they like and follow them.
And of course, you can lean on the network that you already have! If you have friends or coworkers that you respect, ask them who they like to see on LinkedIn and use that to boost up your own following list.
Me with my perfectly curated LinkedIn feed
Building up your LinkedIn following takes a bit of manual effort, but it is worth it! If you do it right, you could leave every visit with a template, an article to read, or even just inspiration for a discussion later. And the bigger and more relevant your feed is, the more likely you are to find opportunities that could be right for you. 💖
