Twitch, Mixer, Discord, Twitter, Instagram— these are all incredibly powerful and important tools that one must utilize in order to create an esports brand (big or small) online. However, if your ambitions extend beyond small-scale gaming, and you truly wish to venture into more serious territories, like that of partnerships and sponsorships, then LinkedIn is your goldmine.
Remember, there’s a whole other side to esports than bright monitors and the furious clicking of video-game console controllers. Esports as an industry is valued at over $1 billion, and that number won’t be faltering anytime soon. Which brings me to my main point: LinkedIn is your ticket to growing the business side of your esports endeavors: acquiring sponsors, building a professional image for yourself, formulating strategic partnerships, etc.
I’m going to keep my advice short and simple by walking you through a brief guide to LinkedIn for esports via the list below. Additionally, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that you’re already on the platform and that you have at least a couple hundred followers. Let’s begin!
1. Company Profile Pages
First thing’s first, if you’re an organization, and you want to look official, you will need to create a separate company profile page. Once you’ve done that, make sure to fill-in-the-blanks about who you are, what your mission/vision is, where you’re located, etc.
2. Consistent Content and Adapting to Change
Posting consistently doesn’t just mean posting on a daily basis; rather, it means posting as often as necessary in order to keep your followers engaged. Now, I can’t tell you how frequently you should be updating your fanbase. The only person who is capable of figuring that out is you. However, by pure experimentation, after enough time passes (and this could be just a matter of days), you can figure out how often it is that you need to engage with your followers by utilizing LinkedIn’s nifty marketing analytics tools (which tell you everything from organic impressions to follower growth stats, and more).
Another thing to bare-in-mind is that you shouldn’t post the same type of content day-in and day-out. People get bored, and if they get sick of your content, they might stop engaging with it. Mix things up a bit. Post about news, personal updates, etc. use your creativity!
3. Staying Relevant— with Hash Tags
Hashtags are a social media search engine’s best friend, especially LinkedIn’s. If you want to appear more frequently in peoples’ feeds, then you gotta throw in those relevant hashtags. Trust me, this advice can do worlds for you.
4. Communicating with Urgency
A wise business contact of mine who worked on Wall Street once told me, “business should be done like it was needed yesterday.” I’ve been living off that single piece of advice ever since. Don’t. Ever. Wait. To. Respond.
Don’t you want to grow ASAP? Don’t you wan’t to look professional and serious with regards to your big ambitions, as your mission statement so boldly proclaims? Then respond! What are you waiting for? The amount of people I know that wait for an entire hour to message back is absurd. Don’t be like them. It’ll pay off in the end.
5. Settings Goals on LinkedIn
You can’t grow if you don’t put yourself out there! Make it a goal to connect with a certain number of people, organizations, etc. each day so that you can build a solid presence on LinkedIn.
