Promote Your Value & Boost Your Personal Brand

Promote Your Value

A big issue my clients need help with is promoting themselves. We've all been raised and socialized to believe that promoting yourself is arrogant or boastful. But to stand out in the hiring process, you need to rethink this.

View yourself as a product while on the job search - when marketing a product, you must tailor your messaging to your target audience (e.g., recruiter or hiring manager). They care about the value they can get from you as a potential employee. Your job is to help them view you as the best choice.

Quantify the value - recruiters and hiring managers don't just care what you did; they want to know why it mattered and the result it created. You'll need to determine how to quantify the results or value you generated. Go through your resume and ask yourself: How many? How much? How often?

Convey the value in a targeted way - when you write your bullet points, focus on what matters to that targeted audience.

For example, you might write a bullet that says:

Organized a stockroom

You need to figure out how to quantify the value here. How many items did you organize? Why did you organize them? What was the result of organizing them? If you quantify those, your bullet might look something like this:

Organized a stockroom of X+ items, providing an X% productivity increase, resulting in an X% growth in sales.

OR

Grew sales by X% by organizing a stockroom of X+ items, which provided an X% increase in productivity.

OR

Increased productivity by X% and sales by X% by organizing a stockroom of X+ items

There's a reason I provided 3 different ways to rewrite this bullet. Each of these showcases more value than the original bullet, but the one you choose will have more or less impact, depending on the job you're applying to. You might want to use the first for an inventory management-type role, the second for a sales-based role, or the third for a consulting-based position.

While your experience is your experience, how you convey it can drastically differ depending on the position you want to land.

4 Tips to Boost Your Personal Brand

Many people I speak to are afraid to share content on LinkedIn . They believe every post they make must provide value, drive conversation, and go viral for them to be seen. Thinking that each post has to do this is a mistake.

Below are a couple of ways to boost your personal brand. You only need to implement a few (or even just one) to start building your brand.

1. Showcase your expertise

We all have some sort of insight or perspective that others don't. While that insight or perspective may only resonate with some, we don't need it to resonate with everyone. We need to simply share information that helps people become more aware and informed. Prove that you know your industry/niche and understand the problems of your target audience.

2. Define your brand

Ask yourself a couple of questions:

• What am I known for?
• What do I want to be known for? (if this isn't in alignment with the answer above, then your work is to figure out how to get it into alignment)
• What makes me different in the work that I do?
• How do I create results, provide value, or generate impact?

These questions will help you get closer to defining your brand. The key to branding is to keep it authentic to you and your work. There is no "perfect" or "right" brand, but remember, potential employers believe your online activity reflects on them.

3. Expand your visibility

I've found that one of the best ways to do this on LinkedIn is through commenting. I'm not talking about those "Congratulations" or "Nice work" comments. We want to continue or add to conversations, sometimes with controversial opinions or takes. This is most helpful when it happens on the posts of people with large followings or posts that are gaining traction on the platform.

When it comes to posts, use a combination of original posts and sharing expert insights. This will help make you a trusted source.

4. Be a human

At the end of the day, while LinkedIn may be a "professional" social network, it's a social network at its core. People want to help and work with people that they can connect with. You can make posts that bridge your personal and professional life by focusing on things you would feel comfortable talking about at a business function but don't directly relate to business.

It doesn't matter if you are a big Beyoncé fan, love cycling through the city, or recently volunteered for a good cause--you can post about it.

Now, there are a few topics I suggest staying away from, including politics, religion, and any other controversial topics that might deter potential employers or colleagues.

This post was inspired by a LinkedIn for Sales blog that you can check out here .

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