6 Tips to Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn
In their latest earnings call, LinkedIn reported their social network has now amassed 175 million members worldwide. With such a strong business network we need to look for ways to stand out from the crowd and one aspect I find very useful with the LinkedIn site is the potential for personal branding and reputation management.
I always think of LinkedIn as the professional business network where we can collaborate, share ideas, promote our businesses and ultimately find new clients. For my own social media agency, I have found LinkedIn to be a very useful website for generating inbound leads to my business. In fact without it, I would get much less business. I don’t pay for a LinkedIn subscription or post ads, my personal profile is what generates the results.
LinkedIn themselves are the first to realise how a quality profile can boost your personal brand online. In fact if someone Google searches your name – it is most probable that your LinkedIn profile will show towards the top of the search results.
LinkedIn put together this blog post describing how you can maximise your personal brand through your LinkedIn profile.
To recap:
1. Be Authentic – Show off your true personality and business style in your profile if possible, but do keep it professional. Ask your clients to send you a recommendation of the work you have done for them. You can ask your previous and current colleagues for a recommendation but I personally prefer to steer away from this as you look even more authentic and genuine to have recommendations from customers, not ‘friends’/ colleagues.
A wide array of recommendations from people you’ve worked with allows prospective clients to do a reference check on you, without actually speaking to your references, anytime of the day or night.
2. Create a keyword rich profile headline – Instead of just writing your job title in your headline, is there some specific keywords that describe your expertise and skills? eg PHP Developer who specialised in Social Media APIs.
3. Increase the visibility of your profile – As I am a fairly consistent Twitter user, I have put my LinkedIn profile URL in my Twitter profile. I’ve noticed quite a few people clicking through to my LinkedIn profile to get see more information about what I am do. In this case my LinkedIn really shines and promotes my personal brand.
4. Build your brand on LinkedIn by sharing your knowledge – LinkedIn Today and LinkedIn Answers are 2 great tools where you can share your experience with the wider LinkedIn audience.
5. Use Groups to network with Local Contacts – Join LinkedIn Groups where you can share information with other people in your location or country. LinkedIn Groups are a great way to get your face amongst the local business community and network with local contacts.
6. Give back to the LinkedIn Community – initially when you are building your brand you need to help others, share their information, provide advice and congratulate success. This will portray you as a friendly face and make it much more inviting for other members to contact if they can see you are helpful and knowledgeable.
LinkedIn has been one of the most valuable social media tools for my business, especially in generating new leads and customers. The beauty of using such a site is when your personal brand becomes ‘strong’ you will be able to enjoy a consistent flow of incoming enquiries and contacts, removing the need to aggressive and often tedious business development. Let’s face it – it is so much nicer when people come to you than having to go out and chase for new business. A strong personal brand on LinkedIn certainly helps achieve this.
Got any tips for us? Do let us know.
