How You Can Create an Amazing Personal Brand on LinkedIn

The next edition of?The Mango Effect is out! ?? If you're new, this is where we talk about all things related to growing our businesses and personal brands "the mango way" on LinkedIn -- from personal branding to growing our networks to attracting more ideal clients to optimizing our profiles... and everything in between!

Each week, I share ONE strategy that you can use to optimize your personal brand or grow your business on LinkedIn. Whether you're a subject matter expert at the top of your field, a business leader looking to get on more boards, or a gritty entrepreneur trying to craft an ideal sales & marketing machine -- you'll find one action item you can take away and implement each and every week to get you one step closer to your goal.

No topic is off-limits. We discuss the good, the bad, and the fugly. I do take topic recommendations, too!

My mission is to help more professionals learn how to use LinkedIn, so we can all "up our game" on the platform, build thought leadership, and grow as leaders in our careers and businesses. And, I like to keep things fun, practical, and inspiring.

Now, onto this week's topic!

How You Can Create an Amazing Personal Brand on LinkedIn

What's the most important place to build a strong foundation for your personal brand? Website. Facebook. Instagram. YouTube. TikTok. LinkedIn. Oh my! ??

With all the options out there, it's often difficult to choose the right starting place, that hub, where all your other "places" online can build from.

Getting the right online foundation in place makes putting the rest of your personal brand together a LOT easier!

Many experts and business leaders actually ONLY need to be active on LinkedIn -- and never need to go elsewhere -- while others need a number of channels.

In this episode of Mondays with Mindi, we're going to talk about why your personal brand should begin on LinkedIn and how to use your LinkedIn profile to inform ALL your other channels. Who else likes time-saving shortcuts? ????

Personal Branding “the Old Way”

The old way of creating your “personal brand” is to think of it as all these places where you need to have a profile that somehow ties together. Not anymore.

When you think of the term “personal brand” what immediately comes to mind for you?

Is it a personal website?

Your resume or CV?

Maybe your bio?

A list of accomplishments somewhere?

Your podcast or YouTube channel?

Or a constellation of online “places” where you have a profile?

What pulls up in a Google search when your name is typed into the search?

Most of us have this very unclear perception of what our personal brand actually is. You cannot download your personal brand. You cannot just send a link of your personal brand to someone. It’s hard to sum up all the components and speak the same language when everyone has a different definition of… personal brand.

So, a good number of branding experts will talk about ‘building your personal brand’ and the importance of doing so.?

We all nod our heads in agreement. We know it’s important.

But what is IT actually? Is there a place where we can actually START to build our personal brand? Or are we supposed to just start willy-nilly building out our profiles all over the internet and hope it ties together into this pretty package called “your personal brand.”

I get it, it’s totally confusing. I know why you think you need to have a “pretty profile” all over the places on the internet.

We get sold these social media planning packages by experts who tell us how to write our entire posts for the month in just one day. (Do you want to spend a day every month writing social posts?!)

We get told we need a personal branding expert to help us figure out the meaning and message behind our personal brand and what we stand for.

Overkill? I say YES.

What if ALL you needed to do was focus on your LinkedIn profile as the start of your personal brand? That’s it.?

More on that in a minute.

Start Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

Subject matter experts and specialists in their field believe that to build their personal brand, they need to “figure out their personal brand” before taking any action online. They spend months working on their messaging, their brand colors, their website layout.

How many people do YOU know who say they’ll launch, write that book, start that business… as soon as they have a website! Or a podcast! Or a YouTube channel!

Thing is, there’s ONE overlooked place that is absolutely FREE for you to start building your personal brand. AND walks you step-by-step through all of the nitty-gritty details that should be included in your personal brand.

It’s LinkedIn.

That channel staring you right in the face.

You know, the one you don’t log into unless you’re looking for a job? Yeah, that one.

And if you mention LinkedIn to the aforementioned people, they will totally discount it as “one of the many channels they’ll get to in their social media constellation” after they dial in their website.

At this point, I just want to shout from the rooftops: YOU DON’T NEED A WEBSITE. YOU JUST NEED A LINKEDIN PROFILE.

I have worked personally with dozens of clients and students who didn’t have a website or online portfolio, but they did not let that stop them from starting their business, landing their next opportunity, or getting their dream job.

When you know how to “work” your LinkedIn profile, your personal brand can START on LinkedIn - and for many professionals, that’s the ONLY channel they really need.

LinkedIn is Your Home Base

What if instead of looking at LinkedIn as “one of the socials,” you decided to value your LinkedIn profile as the home base for your personal brand?

It has ALL the sections you need to build out your brand and get clear on your experience, your story, to showcase your portfolio of work, to link people elsewhere, to share content that engages, to attract the right people when they’re in the mindset to do business.

It’s totally counterintuitive to what we think.

We like to make things more complicated and think that a website designer or personal branding consultant who has the most gorgeous website and logo is the answer.

I’m not saying those things are meaningless, but I am saying that you can make a TON of progress with your business, your brand, your presence online if you get laser-focused on your LinkedIn profile FIRST before worrying about other channels.

If you’ve been looking for a way to simplify your efforts and maximize your return on investment, let’s talk about why your LinkedIn profile can kickstart your personal brand.

You don’t have to wait.

You can start… right now!

And, if you decide NOT to prioritize your LinkedIn profile, guess what? You’re going to waste weeks, months or years trying to “get it right” when a “messy first draft” using the LinkedIn profile structure can save you ALL that time and be sure that you can actually be found online.

Go ahead, waste time on a pretty brand. Watch how the people starting out at the same time as you skyrocket ahead with their business. How the heck are they doing it? They don’t even have a logo or brand colors?

Well, I’ll tell you a secret. They know the power of their LinkedIn profile, and they’re getting results. They don’t NEED anything else right now.

5 Personal Branding Elements on Your Profile

So what’s so special about your LinkedIn profile, and where can you use the same elements on other social media channels?

#1 - Your LinkedIn Headline

If you’ve followed any of my videos or content, you’ve likely heard me talk about the headline as your first impression.

You may not get it right the first time, but you can always change this down the road.?

What to do: Focus on the formula of - Who You Are + Whom You Help + How You Help + Results You Generate

Where can you repurpose this: For all of your other bios (think FB, Twitter, IG, YouTube, etc) online - rework the text and use the exact same messaging to reinforce your personal brand elsewhere

#2 - Your LinkedIn Featured Section

This section can double as your portfolio of work, especially if you are looking to get hired or need a place to visually showcase what you’ve been working on all these years. It’s easy to “mix it up” here and add some LinkedIn posts to showcase your credibility.

Keep this section fresh, and you’ll be able to highlight these same pieces of content elsewhere. You can link and upload just about anything here!

Where can you repurpose this: Add to a YouTube channel, to an Instagram account, to a Facebook Page, share in various social media channels.

#3 - Your LinkedIn Recommendations Section

When you have strong recommendations online, people are more likely to trust you. It’s tough to ask for a testimonial via email and try to get people to give one to you, but what if you gave the person a testimonial first on LinkedIn and then encouraged them to reciprocate?

Imagine how many testimonials you could collect here following this formula alone! No need for people to look at a “testimonials” page on a website to get a sense of your work - just scroll through your profile.

Where can you repurpose them: Add these testimonials anywhere where you need them! I’ve added them to my personal website and use them on my sales pages.?

#4 - Your LinkedIn About Section

If you don’t have one yet, or if it’s just a copy from a bio or executive summary on a resume, you need to get this section dialed in. You’d be surprised how many people don’t have one at all!

This is something I teach line-by-line as part of The LinkedIn Accelerator, because it’s your story and how you got from there to here. It shows your personality and exactly how you can help your target audience.

Where can you repurpose this: Add to your About Page on your website or anywhere where you need a long, storytelling bio. There are going to be a lot of paragraphs you can also excerpt and reference for a shorter bio and in future copy.

#5 - Your LinkedIn Experience Sections

There are very few places online where you can easily get a snapshot of where someone worked professionally - and many people don’t list this anywhere else online. Whenever I want to see someone’s work history, I look up their LinkedIn profile.

Your Experience section can almost double as an always-up-to-date resume. Do you ever update that Word Doc resume buried on your desktop somewhere? Probably not, unless you see a great job opportunity.

Where can you repurpose this: When crafting a professional bio or executive summary, it helps to have a very clear timeline. If updated consistently, you’ll always have a resume on-hand that you can export on a moment’s notice to anyone who asks. You never know when you’ll need one!

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Those are ONLY five of the ways that you can repurpose content from your profile, and there are about another half dozen that I teach within The LinkedIn Accelerator program.

The key is to start VALUING your LinkedIn profile as the starting point for your brand versus “getting around to it” later when you feel urgent that you need it.

I challenge you today to start seeing your LinkedIn profile from a different perspective. It’s not “one of the many” that needs to be worked on -- it’s THE ONE to work on first, and let it inform all of the other elements of your personal brand.?

Once you get that profile looking rock solid, you’ll be able to start building your network and not be afraid to put yourself out there to attract those opportunities and new connections.

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If you’re looking for that extra edge to get you started on the right path with your profile, check out my FREE LinkedIn profile guide that will help you dial in the most important sections of your LinkedIn profile to kickstart your personal brand today.