Some people see their LinkedIn as a formality, a necessary checkbox to tick and move on to their next career-building task. Yet, the world's largest professional network is much more than a place to post your resume and check in occasionally. Leveraging its billion-strong community of users can level the playing field and help you pursue career opportunities you could only dream of otherwise.
How? By creating and nurturing your personal LinkedIn brand! Not sure where to start? It’s easier than you think if you follow our practical guide.
Define Your Personal Brand
Defining your brand's purpose is the first crucial step. Start by thinking about the goal of your efforts. What are your core values and aspirations? Are you setting out on your own and want to drum up interest and business for your new company? Maybe you’re content where you are but want to improve engagement with others in your field and boost sales.
Once you’ve defined your personal brand’s purpose, think about your unique value proposition. What knowledge, experience, and ideas do you bring to the table? How can others benefit from your expertise? Having thought-out answers to these questions and summarizing them in a personal brand statement is the cornerstone you can always consult to shape all your subsequent optimization, content creation, and networking efforts.
Make a Great First Impression
A LinkedIn profile is most prospective contacts' first exposure to you as a professional and a person, so optimizing it is paramount. Make sure to complete each section, focusing most on the elements people will see first. You’ll also want to personalize your URL and sprinkle the page with keywords relevant to your industry for easier search engine discoverability.
Use a professional yet approachable photo with a neutral background. The banner image provides enough space for an eye-catching message, while you should use the headline to hook them in with a brief description of the standout work you provide. The About and Services sections let you flesh out the specifics by showcasing your personality, mindset, and skills.
Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
You're now in a great position to start proving your worth by creating content others in your field will find genuinely useful, no strings attached. There are various avenues to pursue, from commenting on the latest news to offering insightful comments on others’ posts to writing your own.
Don't be afraid to experiment with a mixture of short and long-form articles, personal status updates, polls, and videos to boost engagement. Pay attention to how your posts look. Using a LinkedIn text formatter can help make your posts visually cleaner and easier to read, which improves engagement. You may want to use a content calendar to plan release dates, keywords, and other specifics so you can tackle several posts at once and then release them strategically. Additionally, integrating a LinkedIn feed on your website can enhance visibility and engagement by showcasing your latest updates directly to your audience.
Keep Your Account Safe
As your personal brand grows, so does the need to protect your LinkedIn account. You’ll want to ensure it has a unique password and is protected via two-factor authentication, both of which you can easily accomplish with a password manager for businesses or individuals. Using one to strengthen and store all your business logins drastically reduces the chance of data breaches or credential theft, keeping your professional reputation, confidential information, and identity safe.
You’ll also want to be mindful of how you access your LinkedIn account. For example, you wouldn’t want to be using it when connecting through public Wi-Fi since such networks are easy for cyber criminals to fake or monitor in hopes of extracting valuable information.
If you’re often on the go and have no choice, you’ll want to protect yourself with the best VPN available. It will create an encrypted tunnel that shields your connection to LinkedIn and any other website you visit, making it impossible for anyone else to see what you’re doing or extract valuable information from your actions.
Grow Your Network
Once you’ve spent some time on content creation, you’ll be in a much better position to meaningfully expand your network. That means reaching out to users whose positions and activities are helpful to furthering your personal brand. Start with people you know personally and their contacts, expanding your search as you interact with the site and discover the people to follow in your niche.
It’s important to establish a rapport with prospective contacts by commenting on their content. Clinch the deal with endorsements and personalized messages that will set you apart from the dozens of uninspired connection requests the most well-known users get. Conversely, you’ll want to vet your own connection requests, focusing on quality over quantity.
