7 One-Month Bootcamp
If you are new to LinkedIn or have a neglected profile, this 20-day template will get you started. It provides structure if you are not sure what to do. Deviate from it whenever you have something better to post.
This bootcamp suggests posting five times a week which is more frequent than we’d suggest in the long-term but it will help kick start your activity and get you used to posting so once you have wsettled in, 2-3 times a week would be a more reasonable pattern. You can also stretch out these activities over two months or do them out of the order specified. Whatever works for you.
This chapter really does owe its existence to Dan Quintana and Twitter for Scientists and again, I am grateful for the Creative Commons licence.
7.1 Before You Begin
Set up your profile following Chapter 2. Your headline, About section, and photo should be complete before you start posting.
Fix your notification settings. Seriously. Do this now.
Follow 20-30 people. Colleagues, people in your field, organisations you care about. You need content in your feed to engage with.
Enable followers if you have not already.
7.2 Week 1: Getting Started
7.2.1 Day 1
Post that you are going to be more active on LinkedIn. Public accountability helps. Something like: “I’m going to try actually using LinkedIn this year. Expect posts about [your area]. Feel free to follow along or tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
7.2.2 Day 2
Share something you have read recently - a paper, a report, a useful blog post- and add why it is interesting. Tag the authors if they are on LinkedIn.
7.2.3 Day 3
Comment on someone else’s post. Not “great post!” but something substantive. Ask a question, a related point, or share your experience.
7.2.4 Day 4
Share something about your own work. A paper you published, a resource you created, a project you are working on. Explain what it is and why it matters.
7.2.5 Day 5
Reflect on the week. What did you notice? What got engagement? What felt comfortable or uncomfortable?
7.3 Week 2: Finding Your Voice
7.3.1 Day 6
Share a tool, resource, or approach you use regularly such as software, a method, or a framework. Provide some sort of image (like a screenshot) and a link. Explain how you use it and why you find it useful.
7.3.2 Day 7
Ask a genuine question. Something you are actually curious about or need help with.
7.3.3 Day 8
Share something from behind the scenes of your work. What your desk looks like. What you are reading. A view from your commute.
7.3.4 Day 9
Engage with others. Spend your LinkedIn time commenting rather than posting. Aim for 3-5 substantive comments on posts you find interesting.
7.3.5 Day 10
Share something that did not work. A project that failed, a lesson learned the hard way, a mistake you made.
7.4 Week 3: Building Momentum
7.4.1 Day 11
Write a longer post. Take a topic you know well and explain something about it in 300-500 words. Share your perspective or expertise.
7.4.2 Day 12
Promote an event or opportunity. A conference, a talk, a call for papers, an open position. Something useful to your network.
7.4.3 Day 13
Respond to something current. An issue in your field, a recent publication, something in the news. Share your perspective.
7.4.4 Day 14
Repurpose something. Turn part of a talk into a post. Share slides from a recent presentation. Extract a key point from something you have written.
7.4.5 Day 15
Review your posts so far. What got engagement? What did you enjoy writing? What felt forced? Adjust accordingly.
7.5 Week 4: Developing Your Practice
7.5.1 Day 16
Recommend something, this could be a book, a podcast, or a person to follow, just make it something you genuinely found valuable.
7.5.2 Day 17
Document something from your work. A photo, a screenshot, a process you are working through. Show rather than tell.
7.5.3 Day 18
Engage with someone new. Find an account you do not follow yet, read their recent posts, comment on something.
7.5.4 Day 19
Share a resource. Something you created or something you have found useful. Include enough context for people to assess whether it is relevant to them.
7.5.5 Day 20
Reflect on the month. What worked? What will you continue? Post something about what you have learned.
7.6 After the Bootcamp
At this point you will have established a baseline and should have become more comfortable with posting. Now it is time to find what works for you in a way that you can sustain.
Quality over quantity. You do not need to post every day. A couple of good posts per week is plenty (and sometimes not even that).
Engage more than you post. Commenting on others’ posts is often more valuable than creating your own.
Repurpose relentlessly. Talks become posts. Papers become threads. Teaching materials become shared resources.
Follow your interests. Post about what you actually care about, not what you think will perform well.
Take breaks. It is fine to be quiet sometimes.