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Everyone who matters to your business or career is on LinkedIn, including future investors, clients, employers and employees.

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Yet most leaders get LinkedIn wrong.

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They treat it like an online CV when really it is your most powerful digital business card.

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An underwhelming presence on LinkedIn costs you more than you think because the opportunities you're looking for, they never open up.

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And the people you want to attract into your life, well, they never reach out in the first place.

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This is why I want to share with you my pace method.

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It's the best method to become a top 1% leader on LinkedIn without creating cringe content, posting AI slop, or spending hours on it every week.

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My name is Oliver Aust.

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I'm a LinkedIn learning instructor, and I've built an audience that's bigger than that of the CEOs of Caterpillar, Toyota, and IKEA combined.

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Let's get into it.

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Almost all the advice out there on LinkedIn is aimed at salespeople, job seekers, or full-time creators.

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Now, this is different.

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This is for you.

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This is for leaders.

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So I will share with you my PACE method.

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And PACE is an acronym that stands for Profile, Audience, Content, and Engagement.

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Really the four pillars of any successful LinkedIn strategy for leaders.

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Let's start with your profile.

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We're social animals.

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We're social animals.

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We're looking for social cues and we're looking for social proof.

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And when people look at your profile, they put you into one of three buckets.

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They see you as a leader, they see you as a worker bee, or they see you as a junior, as a beginner.

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And of course, you want to be positioned as a leader and your profile needs to project leadership.

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Yet most leaders treat LinkedIn like a ghost town and they wonder why they get crickets.

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And I always wonder why.

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So when I ask leaders, why are you not more active?

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Why does your profile look so underwhelming?

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They say, you know, it's a bit cringe.

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I don't know.

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I'm worried what my boss, my board, my buddies will say.

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But let's be real.

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This is not about LinkedIn.

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These concerns, they reflect a very human fear, the fear of being judged.

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And that's the same fear that affects people when they speak in public or record a video, right?

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People see you and they judge you.

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But let's be honest, people judge you anyway.

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It's part of being ambitious.

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It's part of being in the arena.

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Hell, it's part of being alive.

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And I'd rather be judged for a kick-ass profile and a big audience than for a deserted profile and underwhelming, non-existing network.

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And to be honest, LinkedIn has opened literally hundreds of business opportunities for me, including a TEDx talk, including me being flown out to California to record courses for LinkedIn Learning.

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And by the way, my first course on LinkedIn Learning has just dropped.

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It's called Mastering Communications as a Leader.

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I'll show you how to become a top 1% leader.

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It includes AI role plays and many other gimmicks.

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So really, really effective.

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I include the link below.

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If you have a LinkedIn subscription, it's free.

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So check it out.

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Your profile has many elements, but there are a few that are more important than others.

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In particular, the background banner.

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That's the visual bit on top.

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And you have two options.

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Either you create a banner that you can either design in Canva, or you get someone on a place like Upwork to do this for 20 bucks for you.

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Very easy to do.

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Or you just take one that is existing.

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Most companies have these.

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Just look at what your colleagues are doing.

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Copy their banner if you have to and include it in yours.

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Takes 20 seconds.

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Problem solved.

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Second is your profile picture.

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Of course, it should be a professional headshot, not something you didn't took on a holiday, not something you wear sunglasses and look into the sunset.

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We want a professional headshot that shows your head and your shoulders and you want to look into the camera.

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Really, this is about showing your face and looking at the person.

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Then there's a short text under your profile picture that's called the headline.

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Here you want to say who you are and what you do.

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Let's say you've been a finance executive for 10 years.

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Say something like seasoned finance executive with 10 years global experience in such and such industry.

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Currently serving as CFO of such and such company.

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That's a good headline.

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What you don't want to do is include anything that suggests you want to sell, because that will get people to ignore your connection requests, ignore your content.

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So anything that sounds like go-to-market, business development, sales, etc., I would avoid in the headline.

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Then underneath is the about section.

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Very important because you can tell your story.

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I think someone who does this really, really well is Simon Sinek with his ridiculous 9 billion followers.

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And he follows a formula that I also recommend.

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Key message, proof, call to action.

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Simon Sinek's hook is, I'm an unshakable optimist.

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Then he goes on to explain what he and his business does.

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He helps leaders create a better work environment, right?

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So he offers his services in a way.

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Third part is proof, which is like, I've sold millions of books, I have this super famous TED talk.

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And finally, the call to action, visit my website.

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And of course, you may not have a website and your call to action may be something simpler, like if you share these interests, reach out.

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That's the about section.

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And the big mistake a lot of people make is essentially just copying the experience section.

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The experience section is kind of your CV, your resume, but the about section, that is the opportunity to tell your story following the simple formula I just shared, hook, key message, proof, and call to action.

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And that's already it.

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There are many other things you can do if you really, really want to professionalize your profile.

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But this is where I would start.

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The background banner, professional picture, the headline underneath your picture, and the about section to tell your story.

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And pro tip, make sure you switch off alerts in your settings.

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You don't want a thousand people to know that you just uploaded a new profile picture.

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All right, back to PACE.

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The A stands for audience.

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You want to know it and grow it.

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You want to know your audience, meaning you want to be clear about who your audience is on LinkedIn.

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That, of course, depends on your goal.

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If your goal is to, as a founder, to attract talent and investors, then that's your audience.

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If you're going for C-level positions, then you're looking for board members and headhunters.

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So just have clarity, know your audience, so you know what kind of profile and content appeals to them.

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All right, so the number of connections, the size of your network is really important because it's seen as social proof.

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Now, how do you grow it?

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How do you get from, let's say, 300 to 3,000?

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There are only two things you can do, really.

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You can send connection requests and you can publish content.

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Connection requests, let's tackle this first.

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What you do is essentially identify who you want to connect with.

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Let's say CFOs in Barcelona.

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So you can simply use the search function and type in CFO Barcelona and you get a list of all the CFOs in Barcelona.

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It is that simple.

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And LinkedIn makes it really easy.

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It actually shows you the buttons to connect with them.

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So you can literally in five minutes go through and just connect, connect, connect, connect until you reach your weekly limit of 100%.

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You probably wonder, should I not include a text?

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Well, you can, and sometimes that's useful.

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It's not always useful because it depends on the text, really.

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Often, people who send you text actually want to sell you something, and they're trying to disguise that.

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So people are a bit wary of others sending them connection requests with text, so just be mindful of that.

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So here's what I recommend.

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If you are connecting with CFOs in Barcelona, use a simple generic text like, hi, I'm also a finance professional in Spain and I'd love to connect with you.

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That's it, right?

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You're a finance professional, you're probably not going to sell anything.

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So that is as simple as it gets.

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And you probably wonder, can I automate this?

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Should I automate this?

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And the answer is, you can automate this, but you shouldn't because you get banned.

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LinkedIn is very good at detecting automation software and they will ban your account.

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So I wouldn't recommend this.

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But if you trust someone in your team or VA, you can totally get human support to help you grow your LinkedIn and reaching out to people via these connection requests.

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But either way, think about the math.

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If you reach out to 100 people a week and 50% accept your connection request, that's 2,500 people a year.

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Relevant contacts in your industry, people who could be your clients, your employers, board members, etc., right?

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And you can now send them personal messages.

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The great thing is, unlike many other channels, which, you know, important busy people tend to ignore or they have someone to do this for them, most people actually read their own LinkedIn inbox.

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So it's a great opportunity to reach out to people if you're connected and if you can send them DMs.

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All right, back to pace.

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The C stands for content.

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And you probably wonder, should I post?

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Let's say yes.

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Because people are there who are half as smart, half as hardworking, creating massive opportunities because they're visible.

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And money follows attention.

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Opportunities follows attention.

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So there is a big benefit in posting regularly.

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And here's the good news.

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You post once a week, you're already in the top 1% of LinkedIn users.

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That's right.

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There are a billion people and 99% of them never post or post irregularly.

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And I'm not making these numbers up.

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Actually, algorithmic reports that confirm this.

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So if you post once a week, you're a top creator on LinkedIn.

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Isn't this awesome?

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Okay, now you probably think, what should I post?

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All right.

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As a leader, I would recommend you post either educational content or experiential content.

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You can, of course, mix the two.

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Educational means you share valuable information about your area of expertise and your area of expertise is obviously already anchored in your profile.

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And that's really important because the LinkedIn algorithm checks if you actually know what you're talking about because they don't want anyone to create anything with AI, right?

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They want people to know what they're talking about creating content online.

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And that helps you.

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And a simple hack would be to think about the 10 most common questions you get about your area of expertise.

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And those 10 questions and answers, there can be 10 articles.

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But that's education.

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And experiential means that you, for instance, share that you've been to an interesting industry conference or you had an important meeting.

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But when you do...

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Please don't just say, I was at this conference.

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Share something valuable.

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Share what you've learned.

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What are the three big trends in the industry?

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What are the topics everyone's talking about?

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And your personal view on that.

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Now, that is content that works.

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Simply saying, I was at the conference or will be at the conference.

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No one cares.

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Now you know what to post about.

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Now we need to make sure people actually see your content.

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And that means it needs to stop the scroll.

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Stop the scroll means when people are scrolling through their feed on LinkedIn, they see your post and they stop because something catches their attention.

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And that would be, for instance, the text hook at the beginning, something that, you know, that piques the curiosity, something that's a provocative statement, something surprising.

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and a visual that is also hooky, that also gets their attention.

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And that can be a picture, can be a video, it can be an infographic, a carousel, all of these work.

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When you start out, picture is often the easiest to do.

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Now, let's think about the platform psychology.

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People look at content and they apply three tests.

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Implicitly, they don't think about this, but we all do this.

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First,

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Is this interesting?

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Only interesting content stops the throw.

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Second, is it credible?

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Do you believe this person?

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Does this person have credibility?

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Do they know what they're talking about?

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So your profile and your content always need to reflect your credibility.

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And finally, does this add value?

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Is this valuable information?

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And this is a mistake most people make.

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They provide valuable information, but it's not interesting in the sense of the platform.

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And it's not credible.

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At least it's not clear why I should listen to you.

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Now, here's a simple shortcut.

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Just go through on feed and pay attention to what grabs your attention.

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And then think about why.

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Why does this phrase, this visual, grab my attention?

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And that will tell you a lot about the psychology of the platform and what gets to stop the scroll.

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And you probably wonder, should I not use AI for this?

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Isn't this easy and faster if I create content with AI?

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And it's yes or no.

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Don't use AI as a ghostwriter, but absolutely use it as an editor.

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AI is a decent writer, but it's a fantastic editor.

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So I recommend you write it yourself, especially at the beginning, to get to understand the platform and then get feedback from AI.

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Actually, a lot of people out there who break their brand with AI slop and they don't even know it.

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So be careful here.

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Don't over-index on AI at the beginning.

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Get to understand the platform first and then you can still think about how to automate more of it.

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All right, PACE.

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And the E stands for engagement.

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Simple.

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Engage with others and they will engage with you forever.

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Find your people on the platform.

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Find people who have similar goals to you, who want to grow as well.

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Maybe people from the industry.

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Help each other swap stories, compare notes, and support each other's content.

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The second aspect of engagement is that engage with people who engage with your content, right?

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If someone leaves a nice comment under your post, by all means, thank them or keep the conversation going.

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That's all there is.

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It's common sense.

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Help others and they will help you.

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And that was my PACE method.

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Profile, audience, content, and engagement.

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And here's the crazy thing.

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If you spend one hour a week creating on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok,

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Nothing will happen, I promise you.

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These platforms are dominated by professional creators.

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They have teams, they have designers.

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They live and breathe the platform.

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LinkedIn is different.

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It's a massive opportunity for leaders.

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It takes one hour to upgrade your profile and then one hour per week to send out those connection requests and to publish one piece of content.

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And if you do that, you will be a top 1% user creator on LinkedIn and it opens up all of these opportunities, job opportunities,

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Clients, customers, prospects, top talent, you name it, they're all out there on LinkedIn.

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And if you are visible and have a great profile, you will attract these opportunities into your life.

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That's it.

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Don't forget to connect on LinkedIn with me.

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Please do.

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Love to hear from you.

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And also take a look at my course, Mastering Communications as a Leader.

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It's on LinkedIn Learning.

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If you have a premium subscription to LinkedIn, which you should have as a leader, to be honest, then it's free.

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So see you next week.

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Thanks for watching.

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If you like this episode, please...