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How To Grow & Monetize Your Blog With LinkedIn [Ep. 67]

Interested in learning a LinkedIn for bloggers strategy that can help you grow and monetize your blog?

Well, you’re in luck, as in this episode of The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast, we’ll be focusing on all things LinkedIn, from increasing your following to monetization and more.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand:

  • How to use LinkedIn for social media marketing
  • Tips for creating a great LinkedIn profile and content plan
  • Strategies for growing on LinkedIn
  • How LinkedIn can help you grow your blog
  • A powerful LinkedIn strategy you can use for yourself
  • And more!

Our special guest for this episode is Kayla of Writing From Nowhere, who will be sharing all of the above and more.

Table of Contents

A Powerful LinkedIn For Bloggers Strategy [Podcast Episode Audio]

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Free Travel Blogger Resource Library

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LinkedIn for bloggers strategy

LinkedIn For Bloggers Guide [Episode Transcript]

*Note: This is the edited down and paraphrased version of the episode. For the full episode, listen to the audio version linked above.

You’ve probably heard of LinkedIn, and may have even used it to look for jobs and internships or to make professional connections; but, did you know this platform can also be used as a tool for growing your blog?

If you didn’t, you’re not alone. While almost every travel blogger I know is active on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, it’s hard to find creators in this space who are using LinkedIn strategically -– which can really be a missed opportunity.

To help elaborate on this and educate us on why and how to use LinkedIn for blogging, I’ve got a special guest, Kayla of Writing From Nowhere, a remote work blog dedicated to helping people build online businesses and travel as much as they want.

Kayla will be sharing tips for properly setting up your LinkedIn profile, creating a strategic LinkedIn content plan, seeing success on LinkedIn, and ultimately using the platform to grow and monetize your blog.

Free Resources For Content Creators

But first, before we dive into this episode on how to grow your LinkedIn following, I want to direct your attention to the show notes, where I’ve shared a link to my free Travel Blogger Resource Library.

Inside you’ll snag access to 50+ resources from cheat sheets to workbooks to workshops to video tutorials that can help truly turn your blog into a profitable business.

I’m all about implementation and I really want to make sure you don’t just listen to the episode and forget about it, but that you actually use what I share to make your blogging life easier.

Feel free to even pause this episode to go grab those resources. You back? Then let’s dive in!

1. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your LinkedIn for bloggers tips! To start, can you tell us more about yourself, your blog, and how you got into LinkedIn?

My name is Kayla and I’m a digital nomad, and my blog Writing From Nowhere is about remote work.

I first got on LinkedIn to meet other people who are remote work enthusiasts, or maybe other people traveling like me. Pretty soon I became obsessed, and even deleted Facebook and Instagram from my phone.

From there, I just started spending all of my time scrolling on LinkedIn. I learned so much — like that there are people like me, freelance writers, who make over $30,000 a month. I had no idea!

All of a sudden I had all these friends who were so successful and generous with their information. With LinkedIn, you have access to really knowledgeable people.

It helps me to really enjoy social media again.

2. Okay so let’s start with the basics. Why should a travel blogger get on LinkedIn? What are the benefits?

I’m going to assume that you want to monetize a travel blog. Well, LinkedIn is an incredible place to meet people who are in the industry.

Sure, Facebook groups are also full of people and you can certainly network on Instagram; but, LinkedIn is specifically a digital networking site — so the opportunities to make friends are endless.

For instance, let’s say your dream is to get featured in a magazine and write for Lonely Planet. You can connect with editors and other freelance writers and actually get to know people.

It’s just an incredible way to find the network that you want to have and become friends with these people who are willing to help you out.

3. Now, of course, bloggers are always trying to figure out how to actually monetize their brands. How can LinkedIn help bloggers grow their revenue?

While LinkedIn can be used to grow your blog traffic, I don’t think it’s the best traffic source for bloggers; however, it is a place to build an audience that’s interested in what you’re talking about.

You don’t want to just post new blog posts and paste the link. Instead, spend time sharing what you write about.

For instance, if your blog is focused on a specific region or a type of travel, share that information freely and you’ll build an audience naturally.

In my opinion, the real magic of LinkedIn is the caliber of people who are active, so being able to to connect, send direct messages, and hop on coffee chats is a big benefit. You’ll learn so much about how to achieve your different blogging goals from people who have already done it or who have personal insights.

4. Let’s backtrack for a bit. For someone who is brand new to LinkedIn, what are some best practices for setting up your account and profile?

The first thing that you want to do is to get that nice URL. Remember, you can’t edit your URL, so just have it be your name so it looks really clean.

Then step #2 is to set up your account in a way that makes you look like a professional.

You don’t need to detail all of your past job history, but fill out your Featured section, your headline, and cover photo.

As you fill these things out, really think about your goals with LinkedIn and what you want to convey.

For instance, let say you write for your own blog and you would love to be a freelance writer for Travel + Leisure. If an editor came to your LinkedIn profile, would it be clear that you were available for hire? Is it easy to find your portfolio?

5. Okay, so you have your profile set up. What types of content should people be posting to LinkedIn? Text posts, photos, videos?

Videos are becoming more common, and text is very common; but, there isn’t a type of content that is bad on LinkedIn.

That being said, your main LinkedIn content options are:

  • text with a photo
  • text with a video
  • a carousel — which is like an Instagram carousel where you swipe through; carousels are pretty hot at the moment

You can also post polls. Those used to be really popular, and then things kind of come and go out of trend just like any platform.

A photo of yourself every now and then is nice. Many LinkedIn creators post selfies because people love to see people smile. You love to see someone’s face; you feel like you know them better by seeing more than just their little icon in the corner.

In short, the basics of content marketing apply. Always focus on sharing value and you will figure it out. You’ll see other people posting and you’ll meet other travel bloggers or people who are like you and you’ll see what they’re posting to get inspired.

You’re just going to refine your content strategy as you go. What you post in the beginning is not nearly as important as the fact that you do decide to post.

Evergreen Content On LinkedIn

One thing to note is that reposting content you already posted is totally fine on LinkedIn. In fact, if I post content that is evergreen, I’ll share it about once a quarter and use a social media scheduler to stay organized.

When you do this, you can change up the first line, or even say something like “I got so many great responses to this post a few months back so I wanted to share it again!”

6. You’re so good at consistently posting interesting content on LinkedIn, so I’m really curious how you come up with your content ideas and if you have a set LinkedIn content plan?

I drift in and out of a set LinkedIn content calendar.

I try to post daily — because I also really believe in the magic of exercising that muscle every day.

This is actually one of the first things I saw on LinkedIn when I became active. People would have at the bottom of their posts “Day 972 of daily link LinkedIn writing” and I was like “Oh my gosh! How are you posting that much? What did you gain from that and how many followers do you have?”

I was looking for all these tangible benefits; but the reality is you get so much sharper and wittier the more you write. So I try to write on LinkedIn every day.

To stay organized, I use bubble sheets of the whole year and then I just color in whenever I have a post scheduled on that day. And then whenever I post in real time, I color in a different color so I can look at a glance to see my progress.

It’s okay to miss a few days; but if you’ve like a whole month that is blank, you know you’re not really growing there.

In terms of what I share about, I might pull tips from a blog post, offer up educational lessons, share my thoughts or insights, or ask questions to build engagement.

For instance, one post that did really well was when I asked “What is something I would say about you if I met you in real life?” That one got loads of comments!

LinkedIn is fun. It’s like chatting at a bar or water cooler. It’s not all professional — but there is an endless demand for good content. So spend your first few months on the platform honing your writing skills.

7. Now let’s talk a bit about visibility. Once someone creates their post, what are some things they can do to help it get seen by as many people as possible?

Not Many People Post On LinkedIn

First of all, realize that the competition to get seen on LinkedIn is very low. If you look at the numbers, I think it’s something like there’s 875 million active LinkedIn users and less than 1% of them post — but they scroll.

This gives you a chance to get seen and stand out.

Commenting

To really grow your visibility, make sure to comment on everything that you see!

Honestly, you don’t even need to post every day on LinkedIn as long as you’re commenting daily. This allows you to piggyback off of what other people are posting — kind of like a guest post, but on social media.

You want these comments to be valuable and add to the conversation, because the goal is that other people that you want to follow you will see your comment and then visit your profile and your latest post.

For example, let’s say someone posts 10 things that are great about remote work. You might respond something like “These are spot on! I’d also add…” and then add your own item to the list.

And you can use commenting to also reach your goals. Let’s use the example of wanting to write for Lonely Planet again.

If you want to be really strategic, you could find people who work for and write for the publication, and put their names into a spreadsheet. Then make it a point to interact with them daily with thoughtful commenting and relationship building.

Then, in six months, send a connect request. Note that you shouldn’t send these right away. Allow people to get to know you first before they add you to their network.

LinkedIn Search

Your LinkedIn posts mainly get discovered through people seeing them as they scroll on the home feed, but they also find things by looking for them in the search bar. People use the search function all the time, so this is another way to get found on LinkedIn.

For instance, I write for GoDaddy, and I use it whenever I’m looking for sources for an article.

It’s actually very robust, too, and you can get really deep. For instance, you might look for:

  • People who say they are Pinterest experts
  • People who work at Pinterest
  • People who used to work at Pinterest but now work at a different company

You can be very in-depth with your ability to find people.

8. What are some of the top strategies you’ve used to grow on LinkedIn?

Commenting is really the main way. I’d also say if you want to maximize your commenting to the fullest, comment in the morning and be one of the first to comment.

Some LinkedIn creators will even tell you what time they post each day, so you can set an alarm to be one of the first to interact with their content.

In terms of a commenting strategy, I would suggest first thing in the morning you sit down and comment for 15 minutes, then write your post, and then comment for another 15 minutes.

This way people truly see your comments and you can also interact back.

For me, doing this has led to many connection requests.

Kayla’s LinkedIn Connection Request Template:

When you send a connection request, you can — and should — add a note. Here is a template to help you get started with this:

Hey [NAME]! 🙂 I’m interested in learning about [TOPIC] and I discovered your account on LinkedIn. I’m an SEO blog writer and would love to connect and learn from you!

9. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see new creators on LinkedIn make?

Give LinkedIn time to work. Likely, the first three months or so will be quiet and you won’t have much engagement. You need to give your strategy time to work.

Avoid engagement pods. This refers to when a group of people promises to engage with each other’s LinkedIn posts to give a (fake) boost to engagement. Along with not being an effective way to actually grow, other users will see right through this and won’t like it.

Don’t add or accept connection requests right away. LinkedIn is all about creating genuine relationships, so spent time nurturing these before adding or accepting a request.

10. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom! Before we sign off, can you let everyone know where they can find you?

Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you feel inspired and empowered to start using LinkedIn as a tool to grow your blogging business.

Don’t forget to grab access to my free resource library for bloggers. There are a ton of social media resources in there.

And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time businesses.

Happy blogging!

Grow Your Social Media Channels With These Helpful Past Episodes:

Why You Need A Drone & How It Can Help You Grow Your Blog

How To Create A Mindful Morning Routine (Checklist Included!)

How To Create An Effective Blogging Workflow In 7 Steps

9 Clever Ways To Increase Blog Traffic & Get Blog Followers

YouTube For Bloggers: How To Grow & Monetize

How To Map Out (& Crush!) Your Blogging Goals

7-Step Blog Post Promotion Checklist (Trello Board Included!)

12 Strategies That Can Help You Grow A Blog Fast

How To Enjoy Social Media – Growth Strategy Included

Responsible Blogging: How To Use Your Platform For Good

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What tips would you add to this LinkedIn for bloggers guide?