Developing Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn
In today’s day and age, personal brand development has changed considerably with the many newfound resources available to us through the internet. Of these resources, LinkedIn, is one of the best to consider when establishing your personal brand online. This is because LinkedIn serves as a digital platform for you to both network and showcase your digital resume and portfolio. It allows professionals the opportunity to engage in valuable, relevant, and knowledgeable conversations.
What Is LinkedIn?
When getting started on LinkedIn, it is essential to understand the purpose of the platform. Often times, LinkedIn is thought of as “just another social media platform.” But LinkedIn offers users more than a personal network to spend time informing friends of life updates, seeking entertainment, or scrolling through viral videos. LinkedIn provides an interface for professionals to invest time, seek career information, and scroll through brand and industry updates and current affairs. This is why it is essential to understand your customers’ or target audience’s mindsets. LinkedIn is not a platform to share entertainment updates; users on LinkedIn are seeking industry knowledge, career advice, and concrete, insight-supported practices from valued communicators, brands, and stakeholders.
LinkedIn provides the ability to increase trust through showing competence and ethics; it is essential to stay present, post about current events, and make tonal adjustments as needed. LinkedIn is a source of reliable information; users turn to LinkedIn when they seek accurate and reliable information.
Insights to Help Create Business Opportunities on LinkedIn
Establish Your Identity
When creating or updating your LinkedIn account, it is important to articulate who you are and what you want. Your profile serves as your digital resume, portfolio, and blog. Therefore, your profile must reflect accurate, relevant, and current information. Use an up-to-date professional headshot, include a descriptive summary that offers personal insights into your career and areas of expertise, highlight your work in the experience section, and include examples of past projects and leadership positions. Don’t forget to include pictures, videos, and presentations to demonstrate your experience and skills.
Best Practices for Posting on LinkedIn
- Start Conversations – Use short posts to engage with your audience and start conversations about what you are interested in, working on, needing advice on, and respond to professionals in your industry with your professional opinions on trending topics, industry news, and significant events. Ask questions, respond to commenters, and get people talking about what’s going on in the world.
- Network – LinkedIn is a phenomenal tool that has helped the world of networking to evolve digitally. Share quality insights and your perspective on trending topics.
- Share Consistently – Post daily or several times a week to help build professional relationships. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Leandro Cruz de Paula, Senior Partner Manager of Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn. Leandro offered me an important piece of advice that I felt compelled to share with you. He said, “It takes ten days of consistent posting and interaction for the LinkedIn algorithm to understand your habits and start generating effective networking activity.” This piece of advice is crucial because often, individuals who are trying to build a digital presence get discouraged by the lack of activity they receive on their posts.
- Hashtags – Use relevant hashtags to attract professionals who share the same interests. Hashtags make your posts searchable and enhance your discoverability.
- Use Photos/Videos – Including visual content in your posts will grab the user’s attention and start a conversation.
- Articles – Write articles on LinkedIn and send them to professionals whom you think might be interested in your content. This tactic adds a personal touch and starts conversations. LinkedIn articles are discoverable on Google searches, which can help with engagement.
- Gain Knowledge and insights – Follow companies, influencers, search at scale by location, industry, and company, and customize your feed by connecting with individuals in your industry and much like yourself to create valuable connections.
- Learn – Use LinkedIn learning to further your knowledge of skills, subjects, and software.
LinkedIn is an excellent source for growing your brand, developing your personal career, creating economic opportunities, and connecting with professionals to make yourself and your team more successful and productive. It is an evolving resource full of culture, community, business, and productivity. It can be used to find a job, seek talent, market yourself, and your company facilitates sales, and to learn. So, if you’re not on LinkedIn, I highly recommend you get started on the platform and start your new personal brand development today! Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn!
