When getting started with creating on LinkedIn, or as someone who may be earlier in their career path, we often wonder what kind of posts to create. 🤔

This is typically influenced by the content we see on our LinkedIn feeds, much of which is from people sharing lessons and insights from their careers, allowing them to deliver value and grow within their niche.

Wanting to replicate their success, many developing voices on LinkedIn fall into the trap of thinking they lack the career that would allow them be worthy of sharing valuable content. 🤲

When looking to other voices for inspiration, we may fixate on those who have:

• Broad professional experience

• Established credibility and a long-standing track record

• Become an authority within their niche

Thinking that these items are required for sharing valuable content.

While these are fantastic things to achieve that can only add to your ability to create, they aren’t must-haves to get you through the door. 🚪

As a matter of fact, some of the biggest voices on LinkedIn today began sharing content without this seemingly crucial piece, and they’ve become some of the most respected and engaging voices in their niches.

Even more so, they often share how it’s precisely creating on LinkedIn that’s helped them gain these elements in their lives, and not the other way around. ✍️

How have they done it? Let’s explore the fundamentals of the approach many of them have utilized in their LinkedIn content creation.

Building In Public

A commonly practiced, and commonly successful approach that many voices on LinkedIn take advantage of is Building In Public.

Exactly as it sounds, Building In Public is all about taking your audience on the journey with you as you’re building and growing in real-time.

Whether you’re:

• In a role at a company

• Starting a business

• Leading a project

• Learning new skills

• A student or an intern

You’re immersed in ideas and material that can spark vibrant conversation and encourage others to contribute.

The key here, is that it shifts your mindset from prioritizing your current public perception to prioritizing sharing value, as it enables people in all career stages to share content that others in their niche will find valuable.

In other words:

❌ Instead of leveraging all we’ve already learned and achieved in our careers

✅ We leverage what we’re doing now, and sharing gems from the experience

How It Works

Let’s throw around some practical LinkedIn post ideas that can light your imagination.

If you’re:

In a role at a company

• What’s something you’ve accomplished recently?

• What’s a problem your team has solved?

• What’s a common task in your field you can break down and teach others to do well?

Starting a business

• What’s a valuable skill you’d rely on regularly?

• In what way do you learn about your niche?

• How do you deliver value, or make the lives of your clients/customer better?

Leading a project

• What main challenges are you addressing?

• How do you remind yourself of the value of your initiative?

• In what ways does it benefit others, and in what ways does it benefit you?

Learning new skills

• What videos have you recently watched and what insights can you add?

• What are the learning sources you return to regularly?

• In what ways do you practice, or put this to use?

A student or an intern

• What’s something that stuck with you from a course, lesson, workshop or seminar?

• What’s something you learned from your supervisor?

• What growth opportunities are you taking advantage of?

No matter how early or advanced you are in your career, you’re surrounded by insights and experiences that can be framed to share on LinkedIn.

What to Avoid When Building In Public

There are two main things to stay clear of when using this technique to drive our content.

Firstly, we want to make sure we come off the right way. There are certain claims and assertions that only experience gives us the credibility to make, and although we aren’t at a loss, we need to be conscious of the tone in our delivery. 🗣️

It’s important to craft our writing style in a manner that doesn’t position us to speak on subjects with the conviction of an authority on the matter.

Secondly, as this technique may allow for more experimentation, it’s important to avoid making public commitments based on your sharable experiences, that you may struggle to sustain.

We don’t want to corner ourselves in scenarios in which we’ve “pledged” to take something on in order to mix it in with our posts, but can’t maintain the ability to continue doing it.

How does this look in practical terms?

Instead of this:

👉 ”I’ve decided I’m going to start reviewing tools for XYZ and sharing my insights at least twice a week”

Do this:

👉 ”I’ve just reviewed X tool, here are my top 3 insights”

And get to your next tool review without being time-bound. Being time-bound is more than alright, but your commitments are better off private, so that the public doesn’t get the chance to see you slipping your own expectations.

Here’s the catch: if the commitment is a main goal of yours (rather than supplementary piece of content to include in your overall LinkedIn content strategy), making it publicly and sticking to it is in fact a great method for building credibility and uniqueness. 🎖️

Make sure not to bite off more than you can chew!

The Hidden Benefit of Building In Public

The benefits of this method even cause those on LinkedIn with the extensive, desirable careers to take advantage.

Building In Public is distinctly effective in generating engagement, as it allows your audience to get closest to you and form a lasting bond.

By offering your readers transparency, something people value tremendously today, Building In Public provides you the setting to be open, genuine and authentic, in a manner that helps create human connection.

Allowing people to witness your growth in real-time, watch your story unfold and join you on your journey, it can go as far as making people want to contribute to your development by giving you applicable feedback on your experiences - a remarkable way to stir conversation in the comment sections of your LinkedIn posts.

Quick Recap

Putting you in place to “walk the walk” and share as you go, Building In Public is an approach that makes value delivery accessible to all LinkedIn voices.

By using this method, you can find yourself a bit further down the line with more skills, an audience, and the very thing you’ve been building.

Happy creating.

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