LinkedIn Marketing Strategies: 7 Effective Ways to Grow Your Professional Network

In London in 1532, at the Steelyard on the banks of the Thames, a 34-year-old merchant sat for a painter. The Steelyard was the Hanseatic League’s trading base in London: a small walled world with its own warehouses, weighhouse and counting rooms. The merchant’s name was Georg Giese. He came from a wealthy Danzig family and worked in the family’s London branch. The painter was Hans Holbein.

The resulting portrait now hangs in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Giese is in his office, at his desk. Around him are letters addressed to him, a clock and the small tools of his trade. Some of the letters are from his brother, some from trading partners. On the table stands a vase of carnations, at the time a symbol of betrothal. An inscription on the wall gives his name and age: 1532, aged 34. The wall also bears his personal motto: "Nulla sine merore voluptas", no joy without sorrow.

The portrait is thought to have been made to celebrate an upcoming engagement; Giese married Christine Krüger three years later. In the 1530s, Holbein painted a famous series of portraits of Steelyard merchants. These merchants, who came to London for a few years, acquired pictures from the same painter’s hand that told the world who they were and what they did.

Your LinkedIn profile is Giese’s wall

Giese’s portrait has almost every element of a LinkedIn profile today: a face, a name, a workplace, the people he corresponded with and a one-line stance on life. Using LinkedIn as a marketing tool means doing the same job online: consistently showing who you are, what you do and who you are connected to.

Here are seven ways to grow your professional network.

1. Build your profile like a portrait

A clear photo, a headline that says what you do in one sentence, and an "About" section explaining whom you help and how. Describe your experience by its results, not as a list of duties. Like every object Holbein placed on the table, every line of your profile should say something.

2. Decide who you are talking to

Customers, hiring managers or decision-makers in your industry? Know who they are, what problems they face and what language they speak. Your content, your profile copy and your connection requests should all be shaped around this audience.

3. Post regularly

The accounts people remember are the ones that show up regularly, not the ones that shine once in a while. Set yourself a rhythm you can keep up: one or two posts a week, one idea each time. Commenting on industry news, sharing what you learned from a project or owning up to a mistake are all good places to start.

4. Publish long-form articles and a newsletter

Short posts grab attention; long-form writing builds trust. With LinkedIn’s article and newsletter tools, you can explore a topic in your area of expertise in depth. Because a newsletter notifies subscribers of every new issue, it makes building a regular readership easier.

5. Show up in groups and comments

Join groups related to your industry, but do not just drop your own content and leave. Ask questions and write thoughtful comments on other people’s posts. A good comment introduces you to people beyond your own followers.

6. Try video

A short video carries what text cannot: your voice, your face, the way you explain things. In a few minutes you can show what goes on behind the scenes of a project, tell a customer story or answer a frequently asked question.

7. Measure and adjust

Check your post and profile analytics regularly. Which topics get comments, which posts turn into profile visits, who starts following you? Use this data to change your strategy in small steps. For inspiration, take a look at our list of 75 content creators to follow on LinkedIn.

A profile is the name of a line

The word "profile" comes from the Italian "profilo": to draw the outline of something. At its root are "filare", to spin thread or draw a line, and the Latin "filum", thread. In English in the 1650s it described a drawing of something’s outline, especially the side view of a human face. It only gained the sense of a short piece of writing about a person’s life and character in 1734. So a profile was first the line of a face, and then became the summary of a life.

The first look at that line is very brief. In a study published in 2006, the psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov showed that seeing a face for a tenth of a second is enough to form judgements about traits such as trustworthiness. With longer exposure, participants became more confident in their judgements, but the first impression stayed largely the same. Your profile starts talking before you have written a single word.

A final word

In one of the short notes collected as "Maximen und Reflexionen" (Maxims and Reflections), Goethe says:

"Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are. If I know what you busy yourself with, I know what can become of you."

LinkedIn is a picture of those two sentences, updated every day. Anyone looking at your profile today can see who you are connected to and what you are working on. So does that picture show the person you want to become, or only the person you used to be?