What is personal branding?
Personal branding means how you promote yourself. It is the unique combination of skills, experience, and personality that the world to know you. It is the explaining of your story, and how it reflects your conduct, behavior, described and not described words, and attitudes.
Personal branding is the conscious and intentional effort to develop and affect public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, raising their credibility.
How to develop a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy for Personal Branding?
Building your personal brand is a must-do, because you are a reflection of your business. Digital marketers should be strategic about marketing themselves. It is easy to spend so much time focusing on your business and not investing enough time on your personal brand. You can find 15 ways to increase your personal brand on LinkedIn.
Optimize your profile for search
LinkedIn is a search engine as it is a social media platform, so the words you choose matter greatly.
Resolve those keywords and apply them in your headline, job title, summary, and job descriptions.
Selecting the right words makes the difference between your profiles is visible or invisible.
Approach LinkedIn Like a Living Resume
Your LinkedIn profile is not something you can set up and forget.
Update your LinkedIn profile whenever you make a career step, describe at a conference, publish a new article, take a new course, etc.
You should think of LinkedIn as your living resume.
Use Your Description to Sell Yourself
Make sure to include any facts and figures on LinkedIn.
Highlight your greatest achievements that will be related to the clients or jobs you want to attract.
Your profile description functions just like a cover letter – keep it concise and obvious, and don’t be shy away from selling how great you are.
Reconsider Your Profile Photo
You will be surprised at some of the profile photos which make their way onto LinkedIn.
Here are the things to keep in mind while selecting your profile photo:
- Don’t have anyone else in your profile
- It should include your face and shoulders
- Your photo should be crystal clear
- No hats, sunglasses or other unclear accessories
- Dress professionally.
Get Creative with a Cover Photo
LinkedIn allows you to add a cover photo to your profile. This is a great way to be notable and add an extra element to your profile.
Observe incorporating your company’s logo, or an image associated with your profession, the image dimensions should be 1884×396.
Customize Your LinkedIn Profile’s URL
You should take the time to customize your LinkedIn profile’s URL. Simply, you will be able to change it your name.
If the name is already taken, consider adding your middle name or else use your profession.
Google reads dashes as spaces, and recommends their use over underscores.
Write Articles for LinkedIn
The advantage of posting on LinkedIn is that when publish it, all your connections will be notified and show up in their feed.
You can always publish a part of an article already on your blog or site, and allow your LinkedIn audience to read the rest on your site.
Otherwise, you may syndicate content from your blog and repost it to LinkedIn. You can also create content that is exclusive to LinkedIn.
Choose Your Skills Strategically
Every LinkedIn profile can list up to 50 skills and you should choose related skills to fill all 50 slots. Furthermore, you should think deliberately about what skills to include.
Fifty might seem like a lot, but once you start adding skills actually you can find it is not really many.
Set Your Profile to Public
No matter what you are using LinkedIn for but you want your profile to be public.
The reason you might choose to keep your profile private is because if you want to check out other people’s profiles without them knowing it.
In that case, you will just log out of your LinkedIn account and before viewing a profile, they will never know.
Participate in Groups
Don’t underrate the power of participating in LinkedIn groups.
Joining groups is a clever way to find other professionals whose interests align with yours those connections can lead to opportunities and contracts.
Find groups related to your industry and not only join them, but participate.
Accept All Connection Requests
Whether you know the person or not there is no reason not to accept a connection request.
Your profile is a professional, public-facing component of your personal brand you should allow all connection requests.
Similarly, growing your connections will only lead to expand network and more opportunities.
Engage Meaningfully
Firstly, LinkedIn should not be a simple platform for your own posts.
Set time to go through your LinkedIn feed and find opportunities to share, like, and comment.
This is key point to building relationships over time.
Personalize Invitations to Connect
Taking the time to write a personal note with an invitation to connect will boost your chance of acceptance and also open the door for further communication.
Write a brief message and mention how you met, why you want to connect, why you admire about their business.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Recommendations
Good places to start include your colleagues or delighted clients who you can count on to share good work.
In this case, be sure to include a personal note, politely requests a recommendation on LinkedIn.
It helps to share why you want the recommendation, and so you are looking to boost your online reputation, applying for new jobs, and looking for good references for clients, etc.
Keep Your Content Positive and Helpful
LinkedIn is your professional calling card. Don’t comment anything that you wouldn’t say to a client or employer.
Moreover, keep your posts as well as comments positive, thoughtful, and encouraging, and always treat LinkedIn like a professional workspace, more than a personal social media profile.
