Building Your Brand Using LinkedIn

Why Build A Brand On LinkedIn

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the No. 1 social networking platform for professionals today - with 875+ Million members in over 200 countries. More than 52 million professionals search for jobs on LinkedIn every week, and every minute, 8 LinkedIn users are getting hired.

Your LinkedIn profile is how the world views your professional “brand” and it probably is the how you make your first professional impression as well. Hiring managers lookup candidates on LinkedIn prior to interviews, recruiters sort through candidates to shortlist for interviews and candidates look up companies (& hiring managers) before taking a decision on joining (or even interviewing) a company.

However, benefits of establishing your brand on LinkedIn goes beyond job hunting.?With a strong personal brand, you open yourself up to a whole new set of opportunities including leadership roles, board positions, speaker opportunities, teaching opportunities – to name a few of the most obvious ones.

However, it all boils down to how credible and visible you are on LinkedIn and whether you are seen as a thought leader for the area you have chosen for yourself.

There is a vast amount of literature on how to leverage LinkedIn to the max but, in the next few articles, I am going to call out few of my favorites that I have seen work wonders while building profiles for several of my clients. Most of them can be done by yourself, but for those who would like a more expert guidance, we can work together on building a strong personal brand on LinkedIn using our Profile Builder Program.

What’s In a Headline?

Your headline and photo are the only set of information visible to a person before they click and go to your detailed profile. Therefore, making these 2 things attractive is of paramount important – they are the “hook” for your visitor.

Photos:?Having a professional photo is absolutely the best option, but in case you don’t have any studio grade photos, use a photo that shows you in a professional setting for the brand you are building. Remember, this is not Facebook. In case of photos, it is also important to keep the photo updated every 2 years or so to avoid “Video Call Shock” in case your professional contact matures into something more tangible in future.

Headlines:?Your headline is all about your priorities and highlights what makes you different from others.

Use strategic keywords to draw attention to your profile. A good headline typically mentions your current professional title and then then adds a few keywords that reflect on what value you create through your work. For professionals who are not employed currently, focus on your area of expertise instead.

About section:?There are quite a few ways people write their “About” sections, and there are no wrong ways of going about it. It all depends on what you want to achieve here. This section can be a chronological history of your experience, a personal story of your journey or a theme you want to highlight from your professional experiences. Whichever way you chose to write this section, always have an attention-grabbing start and end on a strong note.?

Make It Easy To Find You

Social Networking is all about Visibility first, then come the other aspects of Credibility and various other values. If you can’t be found, what good is your profile?

There are several ways of optimizing a profile to ensure it shows up in search results and is easy to find for people looking for you. Here are some of the quickest ways of optimizing your LinkedIn profile.

Profile Completeness:?LinkedIn provides a nifty Profile Completeness Barometer to show how complete your profile is. Aiming for an All-Star profile is the best use of this feature. Make sure to keep your “Public Profile Visible” setting off while you make the changes and switch is on once you are ready.

Customize your Profile Link:?LinkedIn allows the ability to change how the direct link for your LinkedIn profile. Instead of using the LinkedIn generated URL, make sure to customize it so that it reflects your real name as closely as possible.

Contact Information:?Make sure to update your mail id and (or) phone number to make it easy for people to contact you.

Location & Industry:?The most used search criteria is location and industry on LinkedIn. It goes without saying that this information should be kept up to date at all times to enable fellow professionals and recruiters find you easily.

Signal Your Interest:?Select “Open to Work” feature on your profile if you want recruiters to contact you for any interesting positions. You can limit who can see your “Open to Work” status as well.

Providing Social Proof For Your Brand

One of the key reasons social networking platforms thrive is the instant availability of social proof to its visitors. On LinkedIn, social proof comes from 2 mechanisms – “Endorsements” & “Recommendations”. These sections are also probably the most ignored sections on LinkedIn by casual users.

However, for power users, these are the best tools you can possibly ask for while building a brand. At the end of the day, these are public validations of your Brand.

Endorsements: Endorsements are directly linked to the skills section. First and foremost, you need to select the right skills for the brand you are building for yourself. Then start endorsing your clients and colleagues on a regular basis to nudge them into doing the same for you. Endorsements are single clicks and an easy way for showcasing social proof around your skills.

Recommendations: Once you have got the ball rolling on endorsements, focus on recommendations. Just like any other feedback mechanism, “Recommendations” work best when they are 2-way. In order to receive Recommendations, make a habit to give Recommendations. The best time to seek recommendations is at the end of a successful project or a task. Immediately go and give recommendations to your clients and managers after the project. Then seek a recommendation for yourself and offer to provide an outline for your recommendation to ensure that the aspects you want highlighted bubble up in the recommendation. This is an acceptable professional practice on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to thank those who send you recommendations.

If you have any other ways on boosting social proof on LinkedIn, please share your thoughts in comments.

Become A Thought Leader

We have discussed various ways of setting up your profile, and there is a lot more that can be done to further sharpen your profile. However, building a brand is not just about setting up a profile alone. If profile is a car, content is the road on which it runs.

You have to deal with the 3Cs of content to establish yourself as a thought leader – Create, Comment & Curate. This doesn’t happen overnight, rather, it’s an ongoing process.

Create Content: Identify topics that align with the brand you are building and write on a regular basis. Its best to assign a specific day to publish your original content on your profile. Limit the length of your content to be 200-300 words to begin with. Use hashtags as necessary. When running out of writing ideas, use polls.

Curate Content: There is so much information on LinkedIn that gets published through articles and from other leaders in your area of interest. Pick up the most interesting articles or posts and re-post them with an original comment to add your personal insights.

Comment Content: Participate in threads by adding insights from your area of expertise. We are not talking about “Congratulations” here, but real, insightful comments on posts that are relevant for your brand building exercise.

As you can see, building a brand is not a close-ended task, but an ongoing project that needs to be done meticulously.

If you would like to explore how you can work towards a path of establishing your thought leadership through content, reach out to me.

Until next time, share your thoughts in comments section.

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About The Author:?Meet Meghna, the career coach on a mission to help you make conscious career choices. With over 20 years of experience in the education industry, Meghna has worked with startups, big corporations, NGOs, and esteemed educational institutes globally. She has counseled numerous individuals on their career paths and believes in keeping the individual at the heart of the counseling process. Meghna founded MKCS to provide conscious career choices and career guidance for students, working professionals, institutes, and corporates. MKCS offers various programs, including workforce readiness programs for students, career planning for professionals, professional profile building and deeper insight into candidates/employees for HR departments and recruitment companies.

She can be reached at [email protected] or +971-55-33-93-115