Why Do You Need To Be Active on LinkedIn as a SaaS Executive/ IT Professional
The Breakdown, Top Mistakes & Solution
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Summary
In the oversaturated IT market, it can be hard to separate yourself from the mass on LinkedIn. The majority of profiles look the same, feel the same, use the same words, and phrases and aren’t active.
This can lead to a lack of trust towards a professional as a field expert.
+ a bunch of missed opportunities that LinkedIn offers.
If you’d like to attract new leads, grow interest to yourself as a professional or bring traffic to your company, establish a subject expertise, change jobs or climb a career ladder — being active on LinkedIn is not an option, it’s a necessity today.
Breakdown of an article
- IT Industry Numbers
- Why LinkedIn Profiles Look The Same?
- Why Is It a Problem?
- Why Being Active on LinkedIn is a Big Deal? Story of Jan.
- The Solution for Jan
- What Jan can talk about on his LinkedIn profile
IT Industry Numbers
Some mind-blowing stats from career platform, Zippia (2022).
- There are over 585,000 tech companies in the U.S.
- The U.S. tech industry employs roughly 12.2 million workers as of 2020
- The U.S. tech industry is expected to grow by 6.7% in 2022
- Experts project up to 178,000 new tech jobs by the end of 2022.
Highly recommend to see the whole report.
The global information technology market grew from $8,384.32 billion in 2021 to $9,358.51 billion in 2022 — Information Technology Global Market Report 2022
With such a growth of the demand for IT products, growing the amount of the IT service providers.
The #SaaS has 25,960 followers, #AI has 587,927 followers and #InformationTechnology — 53,255 followers.
That’s literally an ocean of potential competitors.
Each of these people has their own goals. Some of them are looking for an attention of buyers and investors, some of them are interested in career growth, some of them want to get noticed and known as an expert in their field.
That is a lot of people.
And more and more people are using LinkedIn as an instrument to get there.
Creating another problem:
The amount of similar profiles on LinkedIn. Bringing us to the next point:
Why LinkedIn Profiles Look The Same?
Even as readers, we already don’t perceive certain phrases and words as highlights of expertise. Have you noticed? I’m talking about the expert cliche words. Think about it.
CV Library (2020) listed of such cliches from CVs:
- Thought leader
- Results-driven
- Works well in a team and as an individual/ Team player
- Creative/ Passionate/ Dynamic/ Highly motivated/ Hardworking
- Strong communicator
- Always gives 110%
From the IT industry I thought about things like Tech-savvy. Everyone has to be tech-savvy nowadays. It is not a Unique Selling Point anymore.
Why Being Active On LinkedIn Is a Big Deal?
Meet Jan.
Jan has worked in an IT company for over 10 years. He has climbed the career ladder in his company and he is now hunting for an IT decision-maker promotion.
He has a LinkedIn. But he used it only as an online resume. His ‘About Section’ has 3 sentences and was copy-pasted from his CV summary.
HR know Jan. He showed great results throughout his whole career and is in the right direction towards that promotion.
Jan has a rival for this position. His name is Pete. Pete worked in the company for 5 years only, has much less experience than Jan, and as Jan thinks, is not fit for the IT decision-maker’s position.
But Peter is active on LinkedIn. He posts relevant to his company and his job posts, engages with other people’s updates, and attracts interest towards himself on the platform.
Despite Jan having a larger on-hand experience, Pete had a Competitive Advantage. He was driving interest towards himself and the company from relevant people on LinkedIn.
- Through his posts and engagement, Pete talked with 5 decision-makers from other companies, 3 of which has become the company’s clients.
- Pete constantly receives LinkedIn messages from headhunters from other companies with interesting deals, which Pete also used to get that promotion
- HR treated Pete and his LinkedIn as another promotion channel for the company that can bring leads and eventually, more customers
Pete got the job.
The Solution for Jan
At this point, Jan has 3 options.
Option 1: Wait for the next opportunity to arise & try again
Option 2: Leave the current job & look for opportunities in another company
Option 3: Learn more about LinkedIn & Publish some posts OR find help
Let’s break it down.
Option 1 can take a lot of time. Jan doesn’t have a clue when the next opportunity will arise. And even if it will arise, Jan doesn’t want the story to repeat.
Option 2 looks quite good and attractive. Especially, after the incident with the IT decision-maker position. Jan feels like he was left unvalued.
Jan didn’t want to learn LinkedIn from scratch, so he went with Option 2. He applied to some jobs, wrote a cover letter and started speaking with HR from other companies.
Everything looked quite promising. However, at the last minute, HR from company X called Jan and said:
‘Hey Jan, we liked your application and your experience is impressive. But we decided to go with another candidate’.
A week later, Jan goes through LinkedIn and finds a person who took over his position at company X. His profile was quite interesting. He was re-posting industry news, adding his thoughts, liking posts of other people…
Jan didn’t notice how he spend a whole hour reading the posts of this guy.
Then Jan decided that it’s a time for Option 3 — Learning LinkedIn or getting some LinkedIn help.
What Jan Can Talk About in His LinkedIn Profile?
Jan is a Software Developer with a Computer Science Master’s Degree.
His goals are:
- Find a new better paid job OR get a promotion in his company
His target audience are:
- HR
- Other Software Developers like Jan
- IT Companies Founders, Decision-makers and Investors
Apart from fixing his LinkedIn main page, Jan has to figure out what kind of posts he should share.
Here are my suggestions:
- Jan’s opinion on trends from Big Tech or Leading Global Consulting Firms (McKinsey & Co, Deloitte, Bain & Company, PwC and other)
- Posts covering Jan’s experience — article once in a while + bite-sized posts
- Jan’s opinion on news about:
- Computer Science
- Everything connected with IT
- IT + Different industries
- IT + Particular problems
- Digital Transformation case studies, technology
- News about similar fields.
- Industry updates/ macro-trends/ micro-trends
- News from his company, new case studies
Here Jan has also 2 options.
Option 1: Set up various news alerts about the subjects of his interest, follow the news, industry trends and hold his hand on pulse.
Option 2: Get help from LinkedIn specialist.
Hi!
I’m Elena and I’m a LinkedIn copywriter and ghostwriter for SaaS executives.
How to reach out:
- Let’s Connect on LinkedIn! It’s the easiest & quickest way to chat about your goals & strategy.
Msg me ‘Medium’ on LinkedIn and I’ll send you a Free LinkedIn Strategy For IT professionals and SaaS executives (PDF) + 1 Free Trial Post (PDF)
