How do you create a unique and memorable personal brand that stands out from the crowd?

The 2,600-character (~5 paragraphs) LinkedIn About section showcases YOU. To build trust, write in the first person and be authentic in telling your story. Give people a chance to know the real you. Plan what you want to say. For example, select three things you want to be known for and build your narrative around those. Or tell us about your purpose, passion, business principles, and how you lead. If there are questions that arise repeatedly after people read your profile, take control of the narrative by addressing them in your own way. Read your draft aloud and correct the verbiage where you stumble. Delete what is expendable. Read aloud again; edit again. Getting this section to shine is important; it is worth the time it takes.

If you are working on your personal branding because you’re jobhunting, your relevance to the hiring managers who could use your talents is the first thing to focus on. Your audience cannot care about your personal motivations or vision until they have a reason to learn more about you. First, tell us what you do or plan to do in your job. Are you a project manager? Great! Then say so. Are you an emergency room nurse? Put it out there. You cannot be all things to all people. The biggest personal branding problem is when we can’t tell what you do for a living. That’s enough to make most recruiters and hiring managers look for other candidates. You’re going to brand yourself for the job you want, not every job you could perform.

When you’re jobhunting, you have to know what kind of pain you solve or relieve for your employers. Is it the kind of pain they feel when their competitors’ social media activity is much stronger than theirs? Is it pain related to cost overruns or problems in the supply chain? You have to know. You have to know a lot about the kind of pain you solve. We are all consultants and entrepreneurs now, even when we work for someone else. We have to know a lot about what keeps our clients up at night!

Your strongest brand is your story. Tell us how you got where you are, in a couple of sentences. Your story brings you alive for the reader who hasn’t met you yet. Avoid clichés like “results-oriented professional with a bottom line orientation.” You are so much more than that! You are a vibrant, talented, creative person. There has never been anyone on this earth with your story, and there never will be again. You can use “I” in your branding and complete sentences. The old rules are out the window now – thank goodness!

We teach our clients to share very short Dragon-Slaying Stories(TM) to bring across their skills, thought process and personality. Here’s an example: In my manager’s absence, I helped a customer sort out thorny billing problem and saved his $400K account. —- This little story tells us that you knew what to do in the moment, and tells us that you also knew the significance of your actions. You are aware of the impact of your work – not everyone is! One or two of these stories per job you’ve held is plenty. You don’t need to list your tasks and duties – we can extrapolate them from your job title. Anyone in the role would have had the same responsibilities. Tell us what you left in your wake, instead!

Your LinkedIn comments are a really important part of your brand. When you comment on someone else’s post you show your brain working, and share a bit of your perspective and personality as well. When you scroll the posts on LinkedIn, you have an opportunity to weigh in on topics you may have thought a lot about and other topics you may never have dwelt on for even a second. Until I started writing articles I didn’t know how I felt about tons of topics. I only learned how I felt about them when the time came to write about them!

I don’t know about the continually monitoring, evaluating or tweaking your brand strategy. That message leaves me cold, TBH. For me, branding is organic. If it feels like the right thing to say, say it. If you wake up in the morning, thinking that you want your branding to say more about the fact that you like one thing or hate another thing, do it. You can always change it. Don’t overthink it. Virtually everyone has been taught a horrible, fake corporate branding language that we are all trying to unlearn together. Be easy on yourself! You are awesome, regardless of the state of your personal brand.

No matter what your branding says, not everyone is going to approve of you, and that’s fine. Only the people who get you, and who resonate at the same frequency you do, deserve you!

Be authentic. Align with your values, treat everyone with respect, and whenever possible, approach interactions with positivity and good humor. Strive to be a reference for anyone seeking assistance in your field. Your personal brand is already 80% developed...