Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to Creative Australia’s Knowledge Series. Today’s session is LinkedIn for fundraisers. My name is James Boyd. I am the State Manager of Development and Partnerships, based in Perth, Western Australia. 

I would like to begin with an Acknowledgement of Country. Creative Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live, work and learn. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and to our shared future. 

The Knowledge Series has been going for several years, post-COVID, and it is now free of charge. We have plenty of participants in today’s workshop. 

There will be two Auslan interpreters in the session today. Please keep your computers on mute and your cameras off. There will be a Q&A at the end of today’s presentation. Please type your questions into the chat box, and I will facilitate those questions at the end of Michelle’s presentation. If you have any technical issues today, please direct them to Paulina in the chat. She will help you out. Today’s session will be recorded. 

When I was at West Australian Symphony Orchestra about 10 years ago as the Development Director, my number one task was to set up meetings with potential sponsors, donors, and other supporters. It was probably the hardest and most challenging part of the job. If you did not have those meetings, you did not have new sponsors. 

It was a numbers game. You had to get those meetings to get sponsors. Often, there was no shame in leaving those meetings empty-handed, because it was the beginning of a relationship. The beginning of a discussion. That is critical. Some of those discussions did result in new relationships. 

Back then, we had email and phone. Today, we have many other tools that we can use. LinkedIn is probably the most powerful. Today we have Michelle Stein to fill us in on how to use LinkedIn. Michelle is calling in from South Africa. She is based in Cape Town. She is a fundraising consultant and trainer specialising in high-value fundraising from donors, major donors, corporates, trusts, and foundations. 

Her experience spans around the world with faith organisations, arts and cultural organisations, and beyond. Much of her work has been in the UK and South Africa, working for organisations like the British Museum, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa, and WaterAid. She has trained fundraisers around the globe. 

We asked Michelle to give us a practical session on how we can use LinkedIn, and potentially other tools, to communicate and secure the meeting opportunities that are so critical to our success. Michelle, over to you. 

Thank you, James, and thank you everyone for joining today. I appreciate you making the time to learn more about using LinkedIn to engage with prospects and find ways to meet with them more easily. 

To give me a sense of your current relationship with LinkedIn and the kind of work you do, I would love you to answer two questions in the poll. The first is, what is the focus of your fundraising? How would you describe your role and the main time you spend on it? The second question is, what is your current relationship with LinkedIn? Do you have one? How do you feel about it? 

Once everyone has completed that, Paulina, please share the results with everyone so we can see the answers. Most people are doing a little bit of everything, which is perfect. Everyone here has an account. Most people are commenting occasionally, and there are a few lurkers. That is useful to know. 

As James mentioned, I am a fundraising trainer and consultant. I had a non-existent relationship with LinkedIn until about a year ago. About a year ago, I decided to invest in building my LinkedIn presence. Because my work is about working with fundraising clients, I decided I did not want to rely only on word of mouth. I also wanted to be more proactive about people coming to me and seeking opportunities to work with me. I started being more active on LinkedIn. 

I was surprised by the response I received. I now have people coming to me and asking to work with me. That was not the case before. Nothing has changed about my skill set. I am now more visible to people who want to work with consultants. 

I had a lightbulb moment when I realised that it is the same for all of us who are doing fundraising work and want to be in front of donors. LinkedIn can provide the visibility that we might not have had before. 

LinkedIn is useful for fundraisers because of the network itself. There are 1 billion users on LinkedIn. Of those, 525,000 are philanthropy advisors and 159,000 are grants managers. If I think about my prospect pool and how many people I need to engage with in meetings, I am sure I can find a few of those users to get in front of. The people I want to speak to as a fundraiser are on LinkedIn. 

It is a professional network. People at all levels of seniority are on LinkedIn. You can have access to people at a range of levels. That is what makes LinkedIn the most efficient way to get in front of donors if you are struggling to get donor meetings. 

There are no gatekeepers on LinkedIn. If I think about how many times I sat in training where it was about how to overcome objections, or how to get past a PA, a grants manager, or another gatekeeper to reach the person I needed to speak to, LinkedIn is different. You can speak to anyone you want to. 

It can be the chief executive of a foundation, the head of a corporate, or a major donor prospect. No one is stopping you and saying the PA is managing the account. You can comment and connect with that individual. There are no gatekeepers. We do not have to run training on how to get past the gatekeepers. 

LinkedIn also works around the clock. Unlike in the real world, where we can spend time trying to reach someone on the phone or get them to answer an email, on LinkedIn we can post something and then log off. The work continues for us because people will keep viewing it. 

If you are in an organisation without huge resources, and you are juggling many different things, LinkedIn can help. Many of you mentioned doing a bit of everything. By investing some time in LinkedIn, you do the work and it continues doing the work for you. Your post, your comments, and your engagement on LinkedIn continue working even when you are logged off. 

The last point about what makes LinkedIn useful is being discovered. This speaks to my experience. You do not know who is reading what you are posting and commenting on. That means you can be discovered by people. 

One trend in philanthropy is that people want to discover things themselves. They do not always want to receive applications. They may be closed for applications, or they may not want unsolicited applications. People want to feel like they have found something themselves. It is about being discovered. 

When you are on LinkedIn and raising your presence, you are making yourself findable by funders. Being on LinkedIn, in the way I am talking about today, is not about your company or organisation page. There are two different pages. There is the organisation you work for, which you link to, and there is your personal page. 

I recommend starting to think about yourself as an influencer. Not that kind of influencer. I mean an influencer like one of your fellow countrywomen. 

This is Luka McCabe. She runs an Instagram feed called Boob to Food. If anyone wants to transition from breastmilk to solids, she is your person. She shares her life, what she is doing, and the meals she is making. People find her if they want to find her. They engage with her, her recipe books, her courses, and the products she is affiliated with. She is what I would call a normal influencer. 

We have to see our roles in a similar way. We are going about our work. We are meeting with donors. We are engaging with different people in our organisation. We are sharing what we are doing. If people are interested in that kind of work, they come to us. We are creating a community of people who are interested in learning and hearing about that kind of work through our LinkedIn presence. 

It is about thinking of yourself as an influencer who represents your organisation. You are the ambassador for your organisation. Your company or organisation page is important. It is important that it looks up to date, so you look like you are working for a legitimate organisation. 

What I am suggesting is that the focus is on your personal profile. You become the ambassador for your organisation. You share with people all the work you are doing. People are then attracted to what you are posting, and you become findable for people who are interested. They come to you because of what you are posting. 

I am going to share three areas to focus on when it comes to LinkedIn. First, how to optimise your profile so you feel confident about people coming to your profile and seeing what you do. Also, how to make sure your profile is viewed through a donor lens. 

If a donor comes and looks at your profile, does it look like something of interest to them? Or is it currently set up for a recruiter, like your CV? How can we make it attractive to donors and optimised for that? 

Then we are going to look at who to connect with. How do we make the most of LinkedIn if we have existing donors and prospects? How do we engage with them? Lastly, we will look at what to write. How do we post and comment, and how do we optimise our engagement on LinkedIn? We will also look a little bit at the LinkedIn algorithm. 

We will do a bit of an overhaul of an existing profile. I am going to stop sharing for a moment and bring up another screen so we can look at a LinkedIn profile. 

I hope you can all see my LinkedIn profile. For anyone who follows or knows me on LinkedIn, my fictitious organisation is the Left-Handed Donkey Society. This is my profile for the Left-Handed Donkey Society. Let’s do a little bit of an overhaul so that it is donor friendly and strong. When a donor finds me, they can see that I am going to give them an amazing service and that I am exactly the person they are looking for. 

The first thing to do when it comes to your profile is to look at the photos. Here is my photo. It is not a very nice photo. Make sure you have a photo, that it is up to date, and that it looks like you. If a donor meets you in real life, they should have no problem knowing who you are. 

Remember that this photo follows you around on LinkedIn. Everyone is going to see it. You want it to be welcoming. You want to smile in it. You want to show someone that you are someone they would want to work with. I do not recommend having your dogs in it, or having someone else in it. It should be up to date. 

One of the best practice tips for making your photo stand out is to create a solid colour background. I am going to show you how to do this. You can do this in Canva. I should have mentioned at the beginning that everything I share today will be put together in a summary sheet and sent to you. Do not feel you have to write everything down. I will share everything with you, including a shareable template like this. 

Even if you are not comfortable with Canva or do not use it all the time, I have made it as simple as possible. I will share all of the size recommendations for everything on LinkedIn, so it is an easy sheet you can tick off when you update your profile. 

This is a template I will share with you. You can add your photo into the template. As you can see here, I have added my updated photo, which is hopefully a lot better. It is recommended that you give yourself a nice colour background so that the background is not your garden or somewhere else. When people are scrolling through LinkedIn, that background colour stands out. 

You can do a gradient or a solid background, whatever you want. As I said, you can copy this template. I want a green one because that fits nicely with the colours of my Left-Handed Donkey Society. That is the first thing I am going to do. I am going to update my photo. 

What I am also going to do is update the banner at the top. This was a real banner I used before I started being intentional about LinkedIn. I have seen people have sunsets or nice views, which are lovely. But if we are serious about engaging donors when they arrive on our profile, the profile is our landing page. It says everything about us. The banner is the biggest piece of real estate on your LinkedIn profile. 

Anything that can tie it to your organisation can help. It could feature an image from your organisation, perhaps from one of your programs. It could be a building, or anything with branding that brings it to life and reinforces what you do and who you work for. 

I have shared the dimensions and how to do it. You can update that banner in Canva. If you are lucky enough to have someone like a communications person, they can do the branding for you. Anything in that branding can update it. 

Let’s update my photo and branding so it feels more in line with my organisation. I am going to add a photo. Here is my photo. As you can see, that is going to stand out a lot more. When someone is scrolling through LinkedIn and sees me in their feed, that colour will stand out. 

Let’s update this banner to one I did earlier. It is easy to do in Canva. What is useful is that you can change it around. Perhaps you are running a particular campaign. You can have your banner reflect that campaign. Perhaps there is a particular show, performance, or exhibition happening. You can have that reflected. 

Here I have included my organisation’s logo, a short statement about what we do, and a strong image of my programming. It all ties together and looks much stronger when someone lands on my profile. They can see that I work with this organisation and may be interested in the work I am doing. 

Those are the first two things: your photo and your banner. Now let’s look at your title on your profile. My parents are very proud of me. I am the Vice President of Regional Development at the Left-Handed Donkey Society. But that title does not mean much to people outside the organisation. It is meaningful to me, but it does not mean anything to someone outside it. 

What you want to do in your title is make it easy for someone who lands on your profile to understand how you can be helpful to them. If I am thinking about it through the eyes of my donor, or potential donor, I want to explain to them that I can work with them. Instead of telling someone what I do in that title, I like to show them what I do. That means describing the kind of work that I do. 

Again, in the summary sheet I have given some suggestions. I like to use terms like “connecting with philanthropists”, “working with corporates”, “connecting with”, “working with”, and “supporting”. This helps someone understand that you are working with the donor group they may identify with. 

For example, if I want to make this attractive and say I am going to be working with a particular kind of donor, I can change my title. Instead of “Vice President of Regional Development”, I am going to say, “I work with philanthropists looking to change the lives of left-handed donkeys.” 

That will look different for each of you. It could be working with high-net-worth individuals, or connecting with partners who are passionate about a particular area of the arts. It could be that you support these kinds of individuals, or that you work with corporates who are excited about a particular purpose. 

It is about showing someone that you work easily with them, so they do not have to work out what “Vice President of Regional Development” means. If you are very attached to your title, or there is something else you want to do, people often add a vertical line on LinkedIn after one description or title and then add something else afterwards. 

For example, if you feel strongly that you want to keep your title, or you want to add something else, you could mention a campaign you are working on. You can also add a call to action. You might write, “Contact me if you are looking to change the lives of...” or “DM me if you are looking to support...” Their main description of what they do comes up, but they can also add things to it. 

If you feel very attached to your title, or want to add a call to action afterwards, you can. That is what I am going to add for my headline. The headline is important because when people are scrolling on LinkedIn, or when you comment on someone’s post, people are going to see your photo and the first six or eight words of your headline. That becomes the mark you leave throughout LinkedIn. 

To know from the beginning what you do is helpful. People can say, “That is a person I can work with.” Think about how you can describe the work you do so that, when someone is scrolling, it is easy for them to find you. 

Another thing you can do to enhance your profile and make it donor ready is add a link underneath your bio section. That link can go to a particular page on your website that you want to take people to. Maybe it is a donation page. Maybe it is a page where you talk specifically about high-value partnerships. Maybe it is a particular campaign you are running. Maybe you want to take people to the page for a particular exhibition, show, or performance. 

That link can be updated all the time. If I want to add a link, and unfortunately I have not set up the Left-Handed Donkey Society web page yet, I will just use my website as an example. I will take that link and update it in my profile. Right at the bottom, it says “edit custom button”. You can select whether you want a link on your page. I will put the link in. 

Then I am going to do the link text. Here I want people to read more about becoming a donor at my organisation. I do not like the term “learn more”. I want to say something more attractive, perhaps “read more about our donkey campaign”. You can see I have exceeded the maximum length, so it needs to be short. Let’s go with “read about our donkey campaign”. 

Now the link is in my bio section. Again, these things, along with the banner, can change all the time. If the banner changes to a particular performance, exhibition, or campaign, you can update your link so it reflects that and reinforces the message. Or it can be something completely different. It can be a landing page for a donation form, or a page on your website about how to become a partner. 

You can also experiment and see what works for you. Use that link in your bio so people have different places to go if they want to find out more. It also shows them there are many ways to engage with you. 

The next section I wanted to mention is the About section. Most people use their About section in the traditional way LinkedIn is used, which is like a CV. You say where you worked and what your work history is. What I suggest, if we are looking through the lens of the donor, is to use it as a way to discuss the successes you have had working in partnership with donors. 

Again, this reinforces that you are a competent and successful person to work with. Instead of only listing skills, you could say, “I worked with this kind of donor to do this in this particular area of the arts”. You could say you worked with a particular company, or with donors doing a specific kind of work. You are listing achievements, but talking through the lens of working with donors and showing how it was successful for the donor. 

For example, “We worked together and we achieved this”. This frames your work through the eyes of the donor. The About section does not have to be long. People get bored. It can be a few sentences. If you can share a few successes where you have had a partnership, worked well with donors, supported a campaign, or helped with a particular exhibition or event, list that there. It helps people quickly see that you are the right person for them to speak to. 

The last place I wanted to suggest is your Featured section. This is helpful because it can reinforce that you are a great person to work with. Your Featured section is static. It stays on your profile. It is a place where you can add items that you want to stay on your profile and draw people’s attention to. 

That could include an article you have written or been featured in. It could be an overview document about what it means to work with your organisation as a donor. It could be a slide deck you would share with a prospect. It could be a membership scheme or the tiers of a membership scheme. Anything you want to feature can stand out there because it stays on your page. 

You can add a cover image to the Featured section. The dimensions are included in the summary sheet. You can create an image and add it to the Featured section with a link to whatever you want people to see. Some people add articles they have been featured in. But anything you want to draw a donor’s attention to can work. 

You can have three or four items in your Featured section if you want multiple things. Some people on LinkedIn say you should only have one item. Others say you should have more. Experiment and see what works for you. See whether there are things that engage people and things that do not work. You can add and change items in your Featured section. 

That is everything I wanted to mention about optimising your profile. Some people feel uncomfortable about posting on LinkedIn if they are not used to it. Having a strong profile can help build your confidence when you start posting. 

Think about LinkedIn as a place where someone lands on your page. It is not a recruiter. It is a prospect who you want to think, “I have found the person who is doing this kind of work with children’s music.” Every element should reinforce that you are the right person to speak to, that you are competent, and that you have had success in this area. 

Your donors want to help people. They want to invest in different areas of the arts. You want to make that job easy for them by making yourself findable and raising your profile, so they can invest, donate, and partner more easily. 

That is your profile and how to maximise it. Now let’s move on to who you should connect with. When it comes to connecting, there are four groups of people I recommend connecting with. 

The reason you want to connect with these individuals is that, at the moment, when you scroll through your LinkedIn feed, the people you probably see are fellow fundraisers, communications people, people you have had some kind of work experience with, and people you know. They tend to be in the same industry, or in an adjacent industry. 

If you want to get inside the head of your donors, you want to know what is going through their mind. That is why we want to turn our feed into a place where we are seeing what our donors and prospects are thinking about, writing about, and posting about. 

The first group is your existing donors. This is important for stewardship. If you have existing donors and they feel comfortable connecting with you, you can find out what is going on in their lives. That can help you improve your stewardship. You may also be able to recognise or celebrate with them if they support your organisation in a particular way and you want to feature that on LinkedIn. 

The second group is your board members. This includes anyone on your board who you can connect with. The third group is your prospects. These are people on your list of people you would love to engage with. They could be major donors, people from particular foundations, or corporates. These are people already on your prospect list who you want to engage with. You can try to engage with them in real life, but you can also try engaging with them through LinkedIn. 

The last group is connectors. These are people like wealth advisors and philanthropy advisors. They may not be able to give money themselves, but they can connect you to a particular person. If you say, “Michelle, I do not know any wealth advisors”, that is fine. We will look at that through LinkedIn. You do not need to know a wealth advisor, but it is useful to be on their radar. 

Those are the four groups of people: existing donors, board members, prospects, and connectors. Now let’s talk about what to do to connect with them. 

On LinkedIn there are two different ways you can engage with someone. You can connect with someone, or you can follow someone. When you connect with someone, you have to click the button that says “connect”. There is an option to send a personalised note, which I always recommend. If they accept, you become connected. Whatever you post comes up in their feed, and whatever they post comes up in your feed. 

If you know someone a little, you can connect with them. LinkedIn etiquette is that you do not need to know someone in real life before you connect with them. For example, if Judith Neilson is on my prospect list, I may think she is unlikely to connect with me because of how high profile she is. But that does not mean she cannot. 

For each person, it will be different. I think about whether I believe they would connect with me. As I said, LinkedIn etiquette is that you can connect with people you have not met in real life. But with very high-profile donors, or people with a very high public profile, I think about whether they are likely to connect with me. 

Some people try to connect with me as a fundraising consultant, and I do not accept every connection request. So I think about whether I should connect with them or not. The other option is to follow them. 

You can follow anyone. They do not need to agree to it and you do not need permission. When you follow someone, whatever they are posting comes up in your feed. They do not see what you are posting, unfortunately. But you become familiar with what is going on in their world. You just cannot message them, and they cannot see what you are posting. 

It is about weighing up your prospect list or your list of connectors. Who are you going to connect with? Who are you going to follow? You can start by following someone, which I have done, and write a few comments on their posts. We will talk about that in the last section about what to write. 

After a while, if someone knows who you are, they may recognise your photo and your bio description. It may then feel more appropriate to connect with them and say, “I have really been enjoying your posts over the past few weeks.” You can then send them a personalised note. 

When you connect with someone, you can send a personalised message with the connection request. I always recommend this as best practice because you are much more likely to get a response when you attach something. The note should say something that speaks to the person and makes them feel positive. For example, “I really enjoyed your post on this”, or “I have been enjoying what you have been posting about”. 

With some donors and prospects, you may need to weigh up whether it is suitable to send a connection request if they have not heard of you, or whether you should follow them first and then send one later. 

Because I do not have my full profile on my Left-Handed Donkey Society profile, I need to go into my real LinkedIn profile to show how we can connect with people and who to follow. This will be more helpful. 

This is my real profile, but I am using it to demonstrate connecting with people, who to follow, and why it is important to build as many connections as possible with the kinds of people you want to speak to. These include donors, board members, prospects, and connectors. Those connections help you reach the people you want to speak to. 

For example, if I want to find a wealth advisor, you might say, “Michelle, I do not know any wealth advisors.” That is fine, because at this moment neither do I. We can use the search function on LinkedIn to find a wealth advisor. 

You press enter to search, and then you can search through people, posts, products, and other categories. I prefer to filter it by clicking “all filters”, because I find this part of LinkedIn a bit fiddly. 

I want to find people in my network who are wealth advisors. Everyone who is your first-degree connection is someone you have connected with. It is a person where you pressed the button, sent the connection request, and they agreed to connect with you. You can message them, see their profile, and see what they post. They can also see yours. 

For this search, I do not know any wealth advisors. I want to see who in my network can help me find wealth advisors. That means looking at my second-degree connections. If you think about how we are all connected, your second-degree connections are people who are one person removed from you. 

I want to find people who are one person outside my network. I can filter this in many ways. Let’s say I want to find wealth advisors based in Perth. I can add Australia, Perth, or a specific location, and then add “wealth adviser” as a title. I can then see who might be able to help me. 

Most of my connections are South African and UK-based, because of the nature of my work, so I may not have many examples in Perth. If I broaden it to Australia, I can see some wealth advisors. LinkedIn shows me the mutual connections. For each person, I can contact my mutual connection and ask, “Could you make me an introduction to this person?” 

That is why it is valuable to build up your connections with strong connectors, like existing donors and board members. In many board meetings, people say, “I do not know anybody.” LinkedIn gives you a useful way to connect with board members, search their networks, and ask for an introduction to a specific person. 

If you want to find someone in a particular profession, you can use the second-degree search function on LinkedIn to see who can connect you to that person and make an introduction for you. 

You can also search from a particular connection. For example, if I have a board member named Jonathan, I can search his second-degree connections and see who he is connected with. I can go through those people and ask whether anyone in his network might be interesting to me. I could then ask him for an introduction. 

You can use the filters to narrow your search by location, industry, or level of seniority. This is helpful when board members or donors say they do not know anybody. LinkedIn can help identify who they may know who could be a strong prospect or connector. 

I also like to use LinkedIn when I want to search for a person from a particular company. If you have a corporate on your prospect list and you want to engage with that company, it is useful to see who you know who might be able to make an introduction. 

For example, if YouTube is on my prospect list, I can search for second-degree connections in Australia who currently work at YouTube. LinkedIn may show me people where I have a mutual connection. I can then ask that mutual connection to make an introduction, and see whether I can get a meeting that way. 

You can also search for specific people. If you want to get a meeting with someone at the Ian Potter Foundation, you can search for that foundation and see who comes up. For example, the CEO may appear, and LinkedIn may show mutual connections. You can ask one of those mutual connections to make the introduction, or you could connect directly and send a personalised message. 

Another useful filter is for people who want to join a nonprofit board. You can search for people who have indicated that they are interested in joining a nonprofit board, and then filter by second-degree connections and location. If you want to expand your board beyond existing networks, this can help identify people who may be interested. 

That is useful if you are looking for new board members. You can search LinkedIn and use the “joining a nonprofit board” filter to find people outside your usual networks. 

The last way I wanted to show how these filters can be helpful is about engaging with a defined list of people. Once you have your list of people you want to engage with, rather than waiting for your feed to show what they are posting, you can set up a search so you are always seeing particular people’s posts. 

You can change the search to posts. Then you can sort by date posted. I usually choose the last 24 hours because I log on to LinkedIn daily. If you only check once a week, you can choose people who have posted in the past week. Choose whatever is a good fit for you. 

You can then add a person’s name under “from member”. For example, if I know my board member Jonathan, and I want to see what he has posted over the past week, I can add his name. Then I can add another person’s name. You can add as many people as you want to this section. 

When the results show, you will have a list of posts from the people you have chosen. Your list may include the four groups of people we discussed earlier. You can then bookmark this search and save it. I click on mine daily, and it brings up the posts from the people I follow closely. 

This means I can comment quickly, rather than scrolling through the feed. I have about 25 people I follow regularly, and I want to see what they have posted in the past 24 hours. That might look different for you. Your list could be 10 people, 15 people, or 40 people. It could cover the past week, the past month, or the past 24 hours. It is useful to have everyone you want to see in one place rather than spending time scrolling. 

Those are some ways to use filters to connect with people. The more connections you make with people who you want in your network, the more useful LinkedIn becomes. You do not want your LinkedIn network to include only other fundraisers, communications people, or arts people. You also want donors, prospects, connectors, and board members. 

Connect with them on LinkedIn so it opens up second-degree connections. I think of it this way: the person who is going to give my organisation its next gift may be one step removed from me. It is about finding someone to connect with and then engaging with them. 

That is who to connect with. Now let’s move on to what you should post. 

Now you have your strong profile and your list of people you want to engage with. What do you do next? 

There are two ways to engage on LinkedIn. The most effective way, if you want to make as much impact as possible in a small amount of time, is to comment on other people’s posts. 

This is because, for someone to see your post, they first have to be connected to you. They cannot just follow you. You need to have sent them a connection request and they need to have accepted it. Posts can also get lost, although LinkedIn is better than Facebook or Instagram at keeping posts alive in the algorithm. 

It is often much more effective to comment on other people’s posts. People like it when you comment on their posts, because people appreciate attention and engagement. You also make yourself visible to your prospects, donors, and connectors. 

That is why I recommend keeping a list of the people you really want to engage with. That could be your top 20 connections. You create the filtered list, save it as a bookmark, and use it when you are ready to comment. Then you can bring up that list and comment on their posts. 

Your comments can be things like “lovely post” or “very insightful”, but what you really want to write are comments that engage people and spark a conversation. They might ask a question, share a reflection, or expand on what someone has written by offering a different point of view. The aim is to help continue the conversation. 

I think it is interesting to look at people who are active on LinkedIn. Tom Hall is the Managing Director and Global Head of Social Impact and Philanthropy at UBS. He is quite active on LinkedIn. You can see he has a Featured section, where he has put his top posts. 

For example, he reposted something about the 2024 Nature Finance Conference and the idea that the economy cannot exist without nature. If I was a nature charity, or doing something adjacent to this, I might write a comment saying, “Fascinating insight, Tom. We have also found this to be the case at...” or “We are putting on this event...” It is about sparking a conversation. 

I use him as an example because I find it interesting that more people are not commenting on his posts when he is giving people a way in. He posts regularly. For example, he posted about whether big-ticket philanthropists hold too much power. Only a couple of people commented. A comment like “well said, Tom” is not especially helpful because it does not give him much to respond to. 

If you have an opinion on whether big-ticket philanthropists hold too much power, and you are trying to engage with Tom Hall, you should comment and try to engage with what he is posting. Even if it is not exactly in the arts, you do work with big-ticket philanthropists, so you may have a relevant point of view. 

Do not add comments for the sake of adding comments. Try to add comments that pose a question, share something from your experience, mention something from your organisation, or offer a point of view that can start a conversation. It is difficult to engage with someone when they only say “great post” or “lovely insight”. It is much easier when you give them a meaningful comment they can respond to. 

Commenting also helps before you send a connection request. I would not necessarily send a connection request to someone like Tom straight away, because he is in a senior role and he does not know me. I would comment on a few of his posts first. Over time, he may recognise the background of my picture and start recognising me, especially if only a few people comment on his posts. Then he may be more likely to accept my connection request when I send it. 

The other way to engage is to post on LinkedIn. This is a less successful approach in some ways, because someone has to be connected to you to see your post. If they are not connected to you, they will not see it. You are also competing with other posts that are coming up in the feed. 

Do not let that stop you, particularly because I see so many people repost what their organisation’s page has shared. For example, “This new show has started”, and then it is reposted. But people connect with people. People buy people. This is about you being the influencer, spokesperson, or brand ambassador for your organisation. 

It is useful to post content that is authentic to your experience of your organisation. What does that look like? Who have you spoken to at your organisation? What conversations have you had that you can post about? 

You might post, “I have just come back from having this conversation with someone”, and then describe the conversation. You might write, “At the dress rehearsal for this...” or “Saw the practice session for this...” or “Just met this artist.” It could be opening night for a performance or exhibition. Anything that reflects a day in your working life and the interesting people and experiences you encounter can be useful. 

Post about what you are doing in your everyday life. Remember, you are the influencer. People like seeing what senior people are doing every day, especially because we take for granted the things we have access to. We forget that those things are special. 

You could write, “I wrote a grant report, and these are some of the successes I loved sharing”, or “I had this conversation”, or “I saw this thing”. Anything about your daily work can resonate. 

That way, it does not look too corporate or as though someone in your communications team has written it. It should not feel like you have taken the brand voice of your organisation and turned it into a post. It should be about you. That is what makes a post successful. 

You do not have to post every single day. There are a few ways to improve engagement on LinkedIn. First, LinkedIn has a preferred style for posts. LinkedIn does not like big blocks of text. It promotes posts, or stresses posts, that are easy to read. 

You want to make your language as simple and direct as possible, and use line breaks. By that, I mean a space between each line. This might feel strange at first, but it is the LinkedIn style. It is much easier for people to engage with a post, and LinkedIn is more likely to promote it. 

LinkedIn also likes what is called an F pattern. If you imagine the letter F over your post, that means there is a long first line, then the lines get shorter and shorter, and perhaps it ends with another longer line. Short sentences, lots of line breaks, and clear, simple, direct language help push posts in the algorithm. 

Another way to make the most of the algorithm is to remember that LinkedIn likes posts that are not just text. If you are writing a post, include an image if you can. A text post with an image does very well. It could be a photo, an image from a brochure, or a poster. Anything that connects to the text you have written can increase the likelihood that the post stays in the algorithm. 

I know “waste” is a horrible word, but do not waste your post by only adding text. Add an image to it. Even if it is an image of your office, an image of the skyline, or something simple, it will increase the likelihood of the post staying in the algorithm. 

Text and image work well. LinkedIn also does not like you posting more than once within 24 hours. Make sure there is space between your posts. Otherwise, LinkedIn may punish the second post by not promoting it well in the algorithm. 

LinkedIn also does not like too much tagging. That may seem counterintuitive, because you might think tagging lots of people will help them see the post and respond. If you tag more than two people in a post, LinkedIn may reduce how much it promotes the post. Try to avoid tagging lots of people if you want to celebrate an opening night, dress rehearsal, or particular success. 

The other thing LinkedIn does not like is external links. It tends to reduce the reach of posts with external links. For example, if you write “Love the opening night of this exhibition. For more information on the exhibition, click here”, and add a link that takes someone outside LinkedIn to your website, LinkedIn may not promote that post as strongly. 

LinkedIn wants people to stay on the platform. That is why it is useful to have the link in your bio. You can say, “If you want more information about the exhibition, DM me”, or “There is more information in my bio.” People also like to post external links to articles, such as newspaper articles. LinkedIn may reduce the reach of those posts because they take people off the platform. 

What LinkedIn does reward is engagement. If you post and someone writes a comment, respond to them. Even though it is you commenting back, LinkedIn likes to see engagement on a post and is more likely to push the post in the algorithm. 

Some people who are very active on LinkedIn will post something and then stay on LinkedIn for the next 15 to 20 minutes to respond quickly if people comment. That helps increase engagement and can help the post travel further. 

Use the saved filter once you have a list of prospects you want to engage with. Save it so you can comment easily on people’s posts, rather than spending time scrolling through your feed. 

Lastly, LinkedIn rewards consistency. Do not feel compelled to post every day. If you post once a week, twice a week, or every Tuesday at a particular time, LinkedIn rewards that by pushing your posts up in the feed. 

When you are starting out on LinkedIn, I recommend setting aside 15 minutes once or twice a week. Put on a timer, go through your comments, and post something. If you do not have time to post something, I would focus on comments, because they are more likely to help you start engaging with someone. 

Make sure you are consistent. LinkedIn rewards consistency by increasing the chance that your posts will appear in other people’s feeds. 

Lastly, it does take time. First, there is a learning curve as you learn the style that LinkedIn likes, especially if it is not natural for you to write that way. I also want to recognise that, for me, I had some hesitation about making myself visible and putting myself out there. 

There is a piece around confidence and feeling good about what you are putting out. If you have perfectionist tendencies, they can prevent you from doing it. Just start trying it. Set aside 15 minutes once or twice a week to comment and post, and it will start to feel more comfortable. 

It will take time to get traction, but LinkedIn is a good platform and it is underused by fundraisers who are trying to become visible and findable for donors. 

I am going to end there. I would love to respond to any questions, hear your comments, and get feedback. Over to you, James. 

Thank you, Michelle. I hope you can hear me. My video will be up in a moment. That has certainly accelerated my confidence with LinkedIn. I have used it for two or three years, but some of what you have shared today has accelerated my knowledge and confidence in using it. I have mine open on a separate screen, so I have already made some of the recommended developments you suggested, which is quite fun. 

I noticed on your LinkedIn that your last post had 17,000 impressions. Clearly, we should be listening carefully to what you have to say. I hope everybody has taken some notes. We have some questions coming in. 

The first question I would like to ask is about the filter ribbon. I cannot get that filter ribbon up. Can you tell me how to get that filter ribbon up, and then we will go to the questions coming in? 

This is my homepage. You can see the search bar that says “search”. I click on it and press enter without adding anything to it. The filters should appear at the top. I find it a bit fiddly, so I click “all filters” so it opens on the side, and I use it from there. 

Fantastic. I hope that helped a few others as well as me.