Leverage LinkedIn to Promote your Personal Brand
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Leverage LinkedIn to Promote your Personal Brand

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Learning how to leverage LinkedIn to promote your personal brand is vital for ensuring you (and your company) stand out from the crowd.

As the world’s largest professional social networking platform, LinkedIn has more than 850 million members, 89 million companies, and 39k skills represented on the site so creating a profile which acts as a marketing tool – promoting your professional accomplishments, skills, and strengths – makes perfect sense.

However, understanding how to create a professional identity (a.k.a. personal brand) which distinguishes you from others, attracts prospective talent to your firm, or engages with potential clients, can be time-consuming and it’s easy to get it wrong.

Here at Creative Word Training, our collaborations with top trainers, who are also business experts, enables us to create courses which are highly relevant within today’s marketplace.

Our Leveraging LinkedIn course offers valuable insights into developing your personal brand and increasing your reach through SEO and marketing.

We’ve collated some of the course’s top tips in this blog to help you on your journey but if you’d like more detailed advice or wish to participate in the course, simply click here, or contact us.

 

 

What is a Personal Brand?

Before beginning on the ‘how’ of promoting your personal brand, it is worth clarifying what is meant by personal branding.

Personal branding (professional identity or self-branding) is the process of creating a professional persona for an individual or organization which communicates your identity to the world.

Your personal brand must be constantly refined and promoted in order to remain relevant and to set you apart from the competition.

Your personal brand will reflect your values and unique talents, but it should also reveal how other people view you and how you wish to be viewed.

A level of authenticity (and self-examination) is required in order to create a personal brand which can be wholly maintained, projected, and developed.

A well-developed personal brand increases professional exposure and success, helping you stand out from your competitors.

 

 

Top Tips for Leveraging LinkedIn

1. Focus on your Profile

Creating a professional LinkedIn profile takes a little time and effort but it is worth getting right.
The following points will help you form a solid foundation for building your brand:

• Image – don’t opt for cool selfie, group photo or favourite holiday snap! Your profile photo should be a clear, professional-looking headshot. Ask a friend for help with this if needed.

• Headline – this is the intro to your sales pitch, make it work for you by incorporating keywords linked to your profession and brand objectives so other users can find you and discover more.

• About – here you have more room to highlight your personal brand. Use the same keywords from your headline and develop points. This section is used to persuade other users to investigate further.

• Featured – this is the section where you can really showcase your skills and talents. Consider linking to posts you’ve written, vlogs you’ve created, or key speeches and appearances. Make sure everything you feature supports the image and brand persona you are creating.

• Experience – keep this relevant but also include any experience which supports your personal brand. This might include charity events you’ve completed or recommendations from clients linked to your brand.

• Education – list all relevant education in reverse chronological order. You can add media such as, written or video presentations in this section.

• Skills – you can list transferable, specialist, and general skills in this section which can then be endorsed by your connections. You can also ‘demonstrate’ these skills.

 

2. Customize your LinkedIn URL

Your URL will initially be automatically set and generally includes your name and random numbers, but it is worth checking.

You should be able to change the URL to just your name but if this is already taken you might consider adding something linked to your profession such as www.linkedin.com/in/asifafzal-creativeword

3. Update and Refine

Your LinkedIn profile is similar to a resume that continually evolves and grows – just like your personal brand.

Update it regularly, adding new training and skills, or links within the features section so that those viewing your profile can see the most up-to-date information.

This is especially relevant to those who are looking for employment (including freelancers) but is also good practise for networkers.

4. Be a Marketer – sell yourself!

Your personal brand should be the finest version of yourself, so you’ll need to be able to ‘sell’ yourself.

If you are feeling a little reticent, ask friends or colleagues that you trust for some help in highlighting your skills (and ask them for endorsements once you’ve completed the ‘skills’ section of your profile, but remember to return the favour where possible).

The ‘About’ section is where you’ll highlight your achievements (including any other information to support this) and where you will sell the concept of your brand, encouraging viewers to look deeper into your profile and connect with you.

If you are struggling with marketing yourself, it is worth checking out LinkedIn profiles of people you admire to gain insights into what they’re posting, how they portray their ‘brand’ and who else they are connected to on the site as this can fuel inspiration.

You’ll also need to list your skills and can even demonstrate these by completing skills assessments or by uploading written or video content based on transferable skills you have.

Your connections can endorse these skills, adding testimony to your talents.

 

5. Grow your Connections

The whole point of LinkedIn is to network with others, so make sure you work at growing your connections.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t accept every connection request (even if you don’t know them personally) as growing your connections will open up more networking opportunities.

Once you accept a request, you’ll become part of their network and will show as a connection. Your profile can then be viewed by their connections, and so on.

Similarly, it helps to grow connections if you join LinkedIn groups.

Groups are a great way of finding like-minded connections, and also a way of connecting with other professionals in your industry.

Choose groups to join with which you’ll want to contribute – participate in comments, start a discussion, or offer informed advice.

Groups relevant to your industry are a good place to start but branch out to include other linked industries and personal interests.

Be warned, participating in lots of groups is time consuming. Once you’ve found a few that really resonate with you, you can discard others that don’t serve a purpose.

6. Sharing is Caring

Share something you’ve written, a recent vlog you’ve created, or links to interesting articles and engage with posts that your connections have made.

Find time to go through your feed regularly; comment, share, or like posts, and build relationships with your connections.

The time you spend each week on LinkedIn is professional networking that you can do from the comfort of your home, office, or while commuting.

 

7. Go Public

Make sure your profile is set to public – there is no benefit to having a profile which is private unless you are just trying to check out other people’s profiles without them knowing!

If that’s the case, simply log out of your account and check their profile, then log back into your account.

Remember, LinkedIn is a networking site…if you have set your profile to private, no one will be able to connect with you, unless you connect to them first.

 

Finally, LinkedIn is a professional networking site, not a personal social media platform.

As such, it is worth remembering that a prospective employer, client, or colleague is likely to see your posts and comments so keep it professional, positive, and pleasing.

More information about how to leverage LinkedIn can be obtained on our course. Click here to book your place or contact us.