What do LinkedIn and a plant have in common? Well, think of LinkedIn like a plant that needs care and nurturing in order to grow and flourish.

That means not just buying a plant, putting it on your windowsill and hoping for the best, which is the equivalent of creating a LinkedIn profile and NOT sending connection requests, liking posts, engaging with your network, sharing updates, strategically using groups, hashtags, images, newsletters, Creator mode, company pages – I could go on and on.

Let me just say on the outset here that I do not have a green thumb. In fact, I probably have a black thumb. This is a fake plant, but let’s pretend it’s a real plant. (I kill all plants. And if anyone has any tips on how to keep an orchid alive, let me know because the ice cube thing does not work for me.)

So why am I showing this orchid and talking about LinkedIn?

Like I said, LinkedIn is like a plant that you need to water to keep alive. So you don’t just buy a plant and hope for the best. You need to nurture the plant, water it (but not too much),, put it in the sunlight so it thrives. It’s the same thing with nurturing your network and growing your connections.

You’re not just going to create a LinkedIn profile and call it a day, at least not if you want to be successful on LinkedIn.

Here are some tips for growing and nurturing your LinkedIn presence and network.

1. Strategically sending LinkedIn requests and accepting them is one of the most basic and important steps to LinkedIn success. Don’t just wait for invitations to come to you. Actively grow your network by sending them too – before and after networking events, conferences and meetings as well as business calls and other interactions with new connections. You never know who might be a potential employee, referral, collaborator or client down the road, so cast a wide net when it comes to your network. The wider the network the more successful you will be on LinkedIn.
2. Keeping your profile updated is an essential tip for LinkedIn success. Make sure your profile reflects what you do, for whom you do it and why you do it, which is most important. Utilize LinkedIn’s latest tools and features such as the cover image, cover story, headline URL, LinkedIn newsletters, Creator Mode and so much more. Optimize your headline and profile for search engine optimization (SEO) by using strategic keywords, which will enhance the discoverability of your profile. Also, make sure your profile isn’t too formal and your profile photo is current.
3. Checking LinkedIn on a regular basis is another important tip for success on the platform. You need to regularly be present on LinkedIn in order to build relationships with your connections as well as to stay informed with news about them, your industry and your competitors and most of all, having a consistent presence on LinkedIn is what will establish your personal brand on the platform and make you a subject-matter expert and thought leader. It’s that easy and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time each day. You can’t just pop into LinkedIn every now and then to utilize all that LinkedIn has to offer.
4. Truly taking advantage of LinkedIn is getting to a point where you use it as a content hub. Posting and sharing content that reflects your content pillars – the three to five areas in your wheelhouse that support your brand and business on a consistent basis – is again what will establish you as a thought leader and subject-matter expert and will lead to all sorts of opportunities from speaking to writing to new clients to who knows what else – the possibilities are endless if you are present and open to it. Also, posting consistently doesn’t mean every day – it’s better to post a few times a week than every day if your quality is lacking – you don’t need to post every day. Also, don’t post more than once a day as you will hurt the impact of both posts in the algorithm and people may consider your posts as spam.
5. Also, one of the best ways to build relationships and to enhance your own brand is to share the content of other people in your network. This was something I did very early on in my LinkedIn career, and it greatly helped me build my network, personal brand and relationships. It really does work!

You can’t just create a LinkedIn profile and call it a day any more. And the importance of LinkedIn is that it has incredibly high-domain authority, meaning that whether you use it once a day, once a month or once a year, it still shows up as either your number one or number two Google search result.

I hope this underscores the power of LinkedIn and why you need to care about it today.

LinkedIn is a platform that needs to constantly be nurtured and it’s in your best interest to do so with more than 800 million people around the globe using it for business networking. It’s also free so that makes it even more worthwhile.

So, remember, you don’t have to post on LinkedIn every day to be successful on the platform, but you do need to post content with intention and purpose on a regular basis, which could be two times a week or five times a week – it’s up to you.

But at the heart of success on LinkedIn is really supporting people in your industry, building relationships and consistently cultivating your network, so never lose sight of that.

Plants wither up and die when you don’t tend to them, and your LinkedIn brand and network can as well if you don’t invest the time and energy into it. The plant analogy really works when you think about it.

I hope that you use these tips and also give me some tips for keeping plants alive.

Here’s a YouTube video with more on how your LinkedIn network is like a nurturing a plant with some tips to grow your LinkedIn network and presence using my (fake) plant prop.

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Stefanie Marrone advises law firms of all sizes, professional service firms, B2B companies, recruiters and individuals on the full range of marketing and business development consulting services designed to enhance revenue, retain current clients and achieve greater brand recognition. She also serves as outsourced chief marketing officer/marketing department for small and mid-size law firms.

Over her 20-year legal marketing career, she has worked at and with a broad range of big law, mid-size and small firms, which has given her a valuable perspective of the legal industry. Connect on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, sign up for her email list and follow her latest writing on JD Supra.