Non-fiction writers often miss the opportunity to position themselves on LinkedIn. The reason you probably don’t see many “writers” on LinkedIn is that they position themselves as speakers, entrepreneurs or experts on a certain topic. From another point of view they are non-fiction writers with a side job that divert the attention to their subject.
Therefore non-fiction writers need to refocus or rephrase their bios for LinkedIn. The platform is less consumer oriented than other social media platforms but it still sometimes feels like a business version of Facebook. The content consists of articles on business related topics, learning, videos and photos and of course personal success stories.
Network Building For a Publishing Success
LinkedIn is perfect for building a professional network because this is the whole purpose of the platform. Why should you build a professional network, you might ask?
In Sally Collings webinar on building your authors platform (which is linked in this article) she mentions that authors list their speaking engagements on a certan topic in their book proposals. This boosts their credibility as experts on their topic. Therefore it is easier for them to get published. But building a professional network on LinkedIn can also help you to get more speaking engagements (meaning more publicity and more money), to build an audience, to position yourself as an expert on a certain topic or to boost credibility – to name a few.
In case you are not fond of speaking in front of an audience you can use LinkedIn to boost your visibility just by building a professional, digital network. In most cases users connect to the people they personally know. But there is also the possibility to follow experts and to network digitally based on interest.
Gaming the LinkedIn Algorithm
To grow your network and to position yourself as an expert you need to understand what kind of content LinkedIn boosts and how you will be able to grow. As any other social media platform LinkedIn is based on algorithms that analyse which kind of content will be pushed into someone’s timeline. Most users do want to see top performing content that is relevant in their network instead of the most recent one. To get your content into their timeline you should consider checking your Social Selling Index.
The Social Selling Index consists of the following metrics:
Although the Social Selling Index is aimed at business professionals and helps e.g. sellers reach their quota, you can use the metric to build your readership. The exact details on the description of the metrics can be found on the official SSI website. So I am going to stick to explaining the probably not so obvious.
Establish your professional brand: Your personal brand should focus on one or maximum three topics that are related in a way. Fill out your about page and don’t hesitate to include you career goals. One of the most fascinating LinkedIn profiles I found in the last couple of weeks was one of a flight attended/blogger who wants to return to PR some day. Check it out and get inspired: Her Blog or her personal profile.
Find the right people: LinkedIn rewards you for actually searching and connecting with people. This one might be the hardest metric since it requires you to use the search to digitally network.
Engage with insights: This is the most valuable metric for non-fiction writers. It enables you to create articles on LinkedIn, share relevant and interesting third-party content or your experiences during events and the like. Your articles and posts should be related to your personal brand hence the topics you chose to position yourself as an expert.
Build relationships: This metric rewards you not just for searching and using the platform but for actually connecting with people. The best way of course is to connect to the people you already know by using the search or embracing digital or in person networking during events. (For easy connection during in-person events you can turn on the “Find nearby” feature.)
Benefits? Benefits!
LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to publish your work on an easy to use platform. But most importantly it allows you to concentrate on you personal brand to establish the connection between your topics and your persona which is a crucial steps for building a successful author platform.
Kat Hutchson 
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