Transform your Professional Presence

What do your customers, associates, employees or peers say about you when you are not in the room? Your answer to that question defines your personal “brand score.”  

At a sold out 2017 PBWC conference with over 6,000 attendees, Lisa Skeete Tatum, Founder and CEO of LandIt and Ty Heath, Lead for Agency and Partner Education at LinkedIn laid out a solid blueprint of actions you can take to increase your brand score.

Whether you are an entrepreneur looking to expand your business or a rising star interested in catapulting into the executive ranks, creating a personal brand that stands out is your key to success.

Your brand score is based on a series of recommendations that, when implemented, uplevel your executive presence and help you get noticed for more senior positions in your company. Lisa uses the brand score to help coach women around the globe through her website Landit which helps them cultivate and define a strong personal brand, “because no one tells your story better than you.” According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett in her book “Executive Presence, The Missing Link Between Merit and Success," your brand accounts for 25% of what it takes to get promoted. Lisa stresses that a brand requires thoughtful cultivation. According to Lisa, your brand is “what they say and think about you that makes them want you IN the room.”

Ty assured us, “Stop waiting….you don’t need permission from anyone to lead on a topic that matters to you. With less effort than you may think, you can start building a powerful online brand that will help you to unlock the next level in your professional life, help you earn new opportunities more easily and help you connect with influential people.”

Since 87% of recruiters check Linkedin for candidates we know your online presence counts. Spending just 10 minutes a day updating your LinkedIn profile and posting relevant, interesting updates to your stream helps you stay top-of-mind with your network.

Here are four tips that elevate your brand score and strengthen your online and executive presence:

1. Create your own narrative - keep track of (and communicate) your weekly accomplishments

How often do you get to the end of the year and wonder, “What did I accomplish this year?” Never leave yourself, or your network, guessing. Keep a running list of the comments, feedback, recognition, and accomplishments you achieved throughout the year. When the time is right for self-promotion, you’ll already be prepared to speak about what you do well and the kinds of projects you enjoy.

2. Update your LinkedIn Profile

Take a fresh look at your professional profile online (usually on LinkedIn) and make sure it truly reflects who you are and the career you are creating for yourself. Be sure to augment your profile with multimedia like presentations, articles, certificates, and project documents that demonstrate your work quality and showcase your talents.

3. Have a distinctive point of view.

Decide where your strengths lie or what you want to learn more about to develop a basic platform of ideas and talking points that frame how you want to be known. Follow relevant authors, bloggers, media channels, and conferences to stay up-to-date on the latest conversations in your field of interest, and send those updates out to your network. Then have the confidence to be able to articulate your point of view and demonstrate your expertise. Become known for what you know.

4. Create a trusted group of advisors

Everyone needs feedback to grow and evolve. Having a trusted mentor or peers that has your best interests at heart is key to responding rapidly to your environment. Request feedback and observations. Actively seek feedback and observations on your strengths, performance and yes executive presence. Start cultivating your team now—to go into more depth on this point, check out Penry Price’s post about building your own board of directors.

Jacqueline Jones is the Lead for Strategic Partnerships for Global Inclusion at LinkedIn.