LinkedIn can assist with building your personal brand as well as professional connections. Personal branding involves finding your uniqueness and building what you want to be known for, so it’s important to think about what your LinkedIn profile says about you. Is it consistent with how you want to portray yourself? What is your contribution or impact? Your digital presence needs to leave the right impression, from what you update on your profile to how to engage and share content.
Here are six things to help build and boost your personal brand on LinkedIn.
01. Your Headline and About Summary:
For both the Headline and About summary, keep keyword phrases and search terms in mind as LinkedIn is just as much of a search engine as it is a social media platform, so the words you choose do matter. Think about what keywords you want to be found for when potential clients or employers search on LinkedIn. It is your chance to let others know who you are, what you do, what makes you unique, and maybe include something which expresses what your goals and areas of interests are for the future if relevant. For the Headline, you could write a concise phrase that captures your main areas of interests and what you do or include keywords which represent your “job family”.
Remember your About summary is not a resume or cover letter so if you are stuck, consider the following to help guide you:
Who is your target audience?
Why you got into doing what you do
What you love about doing what you do
Describe what makes you unique and what your impact or contribution is
Be authentic and write in the first person – it is social media so you are trying to build rapport with visitors to your profile
If you are still stuck, ask “what do I do, for who and to achieve what for others?”
02. Select and Include Your Skills Strategically
You can list up to 50 skills for your LinkedIn profile. Fifty might seem like a lot, but remember that you can add skills which are more generic as well, not just technical or industry specific skills. Filling all 50 slots will help boost your branding on the LinkedIn platform as they will demonstrate 50 skills which align with the skills that potential employers or clients will be looking for.
If you are not sure what skills to include, look at the jobs you want and see what the desired listed skills are and if you have them, make sure to include them in your profile. If you don’t have them, you can start working on them so you can include them later.
3. Sharing Content and Showing Up as Your Authentic Self
Remember that LinkedIn is not a place where people want to hear sales pitches all the time but a place where people engage with other members, share valuable content, as well as personal stories which resonate with them. It is important to show up to your connections or followers in your most authentic self, as a relatable person who is not perfect. Admitting that you don’t know everything could be the start of a meaningful conversation with your followers. Remember that people do not just relate to a brand but relate to other people and will be drawn to you when you share content that is relatable and personal, but of course keeping in mind that it is a professional network and who your target audience is.
Here are some ideas of what content you can share:
If you have a blog, you can share it as a feature or a post and people in your field will enjoy and respect you for it
Short video or limited video series on a topic
Free e-books, checklists or worksheets
If you were recently on a podcast episode, or if you have a speaking opportunity, you can promote or share a recording
Content from other outlets – this not only shows you are knowledgeable but that you also make an effort to stay aware of what’s happening in your industry
Stories of challenges you have faced and how you have overcome them as you don’t know who in your industry will relate to your story. This may lead to new opportunities for you to start conversations and build new meaningful business relationships.
4. Engage Meaningfully
Engaging meaningfully with other members is also important. You can participate in conversations in LinkedIn Groups or on other people’s posts. It is a great way to connect with someone for the first time and can lead to more interactions in the future. Set aside time in your week to go through your LinkedIn feed and find opportunities to share, like and comment on others’ posts. Commenting with a thoughtful response that touches on the topic shared in a post is a great way to build and strengthen your relationships over time.
Consider mentioning or tagging an influencer you follow when you post. If this is done in a considered and relevant way, it can help boost your visibility and build relationships on the platform. An example could be if you have applied a method from a book written by an influencer in your post.
5. Be Consistent in sharing your unique content and be a micro influencer
Remember that you do not need thousands or millions of connections or followers to have an impact on your career. What you do need is consistency in creating and sharing content that is unique, valuable and demonstrates your expertise in your field. We can all be micro influencers in our own unique way with our own unique voice.
6. Community: Help Others Build Their LinkedIn Presence
Remember that in social media, there is a community, and that networking can be defined as the giving and receiving of advice, information, and referrals. The key is to build meaningful relationships over time with this community so if you already have traction with building your own network, why not leverage this network to help others build their presence on LinkedIn? For example, you can encourage and help people who are new to LinkedIn to become more active on the platform and hence enhance their presence. There are a number of benefits – you can learn from each other, engage in meaningful discussions on relevant topics, expand your reach to other people’s networks, and they also become visible to your network.
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