Influencers To Emulate

Richard Branson may be the LinkedIn Influencer poster child, and with over 4.6 million LinkedIn followers (more than Bill Gates and Jack Welch combined!) he has earned that respect. But there are many more fish in the Influencer sea. Here’s our roundup of 10 top influencers and some of the posts you should be reading:

ANGELA AHRENDTS, CEO at Burberry: Ahrendts’ Influencer posts cut straight to the heart of fashion and business, often finding the humanism in both. Check our her piece about the power of human energy, “Why I Believe Energy Can Transform Companies and Communities”. As an Influencer, Ahrendts is also adept at using the network to repurpose content – notice that the article is adapted from and links to her TED Talk on the same topic.

MARTHA STEWART, Founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia: You might be surprised to discover that the domestic doyenne got started on her empire after growing tired of her successful early career as a model. Learn more about her transition from modeling to pie baking to catering in her contribution to LinkedIn’s “Best Advice” series, “Best Advice: You Can Do Anything You Choose”

HUNTER WALK, Partner at Homebrew VC: As a former product lead at YouTube and Google, Walk has a plethora of thoughtful advice to share about all things entrepreneurial. While he often shares his own insights, Walk has also posted several interesting interviews during his stint as an Influencer. Check out, “How One Small Sandwich Shop Became a Giant eCommerce Success Story,” his interview with the founder of NYC’s iconic peanut buttery, Peanut Butter & Co, or “They Sold Their Startup for $150+ Million. Then They Opened a Chocolate Store,” about how the founders of Plaxo turned their attention from tech to chocolate.

NICOLAS BORDAS, VP at TBWA/EUROPE and President at BEING Worldwide: Bordas employs the power of question headlines (something we’ve written about!) with his Influencer posts, posing each as a business-related what if. Out of the bunch, be sure to check out Bordas’ post about corporate gratitude, “What If Brands Learned to Say “Thank You”?

JEFF WEINER, CEO at LinkedIn: What better LinkedIn Influencer to follow than LinkedIn’s own chief influencer? Most of Weiner’s posts center around leadership and management, such as “A Simple Rule to Eliminate Useless Meetings”

SHANE SNOW, CCO at Contently: As a journalist and media entrepreneur, Snow’s Influencer posts are a fantastic source of insights at the intersection of business, content, and good storytelling. Case in point is his Influencer post, “This Will Be The #1 Business Skill Of The Next 5 Years.”

BETH COMSTOCK, CMO at GE: As a marketer, Comstock has clearly mastered the art of messaging with her LinkedIn Influencer posts; her contributions to each Influencer series, from “My First Job” to “How I Hire” are regularly lauded as stand-outs among the Influencer submissions. Her most popular post, however, was her contribution to the “Best Advice” series, “Best Advice: What I Learned From Jack Welch Hanging Up on Me,” which has to date been viewed nearly 700,000 times.

CONAN O’BRIEN, CEO at Conan: Conan is a relative newcomer to the LinkedIn Influencers, and to date has published only a handful of posts. But keep an eye on his Influencer profile to lend some levity to the group. His latest piece, “Why I, Conan O’Brien, Turned Down The Microsoft CEO Job,” for example, is a reprieve from the noise of business punditry. (In case you were curious though, here was one of his ideas for Microsoft: “I would have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a marketing campaign to get everyone in America to ‘Bing their symptoms’ after that weekend trip to Juarez.”)

MEG WHITMAN, CEO at Hewlett-Packard: Hewlett-Packard was the fist company to gain 1 million followers on LinkedIn, and CEO Meg Whitman has followed-through as a leader on the network with her role as a LinkedIn Influencer. Check out her debut piece as an Influencer, “Taking On A Turnaround.”

DHARMESH SHAH, Founder & CTO at HubSpot: As a prolific blogger for OnStartups.com, Shah offers a variety of personally and professionally relevant content to his Influencer posts. For the more professional, check out “9 Qualities Of Truly Confident People” or “The Core Beliefs of the Delightfully Successful”; for the more personal take a look at “12 Things I Want To Teach My Toddler About Work” or “Could A Shorter Commute Save Your Relationship?”

Think you have what it takes to be an Influencer? While you have to be invited to join the Influencer elite, there is good news for those with the Influencer spirit. Earlier this year, LinkedIn decided to open its content publishing platform to all of its members. LinkedIn is staggering the launch of the platform among members, so if you don’t have access yet, you can apply here for early access.

Building Your Own LinkedIn Influence

According to research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, in 2013 83% of B2B marketers and 51% of B2C marketers reported using LinkedIn as a content distribution channel. But how should you approach content distribution on the network? To build your LinkedIn influence, start by following in LinkedIn’s own footsteps.

LinkedIn has done a fantastic job serializing and repurposing content from their Influencers. Take, the Influencers “Best Advice” series as a prime example. Not only have individual posts from business superstars like Richard Branson and Martha Stewart garnered hundreds of thousands of views and interactions, but LinkedIn has also proactively aggregated and repackaged this content into a blog post, infographic, and SlideShare presentation, each providing a new take on the content.