Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

Looking to grow your career? Expand into consulting and management? Leverage your customer experience and call center knowledge to hit the speaking circuit? Building a personal brand on LinkedIn is the key to opening new doors. But where do you start? 

Successfully optimize your profile

1. Add a headline. Don't overthink it. This is meant to be a quick invitation as to why people should click on your profile. 
2. Update your summary. LinkedIn is a powerful tool but to take full advantage you need to be searchable and that comes from content and keywords. Plus, more context enables new connections and allows you to showcase your work. 
3. Use your cover image real estate wisely. You can use this space to showcase your personality and professional focus. Canva is a free and easy tool for creating custom cover images. 
4. Ensure your profile pic is set to public. This can easily be changed under LinkedIn's Privacy & Settings so that search engines and people not in your network can easily find you.
5. Publish content. Because LinkedIn supports a mobile experience, organic posts are more algorithm friendly than outside article links (LinkedIn wants you to stay on platform). Also, spacing between content is more SEO friendly so keep that in mind. 
   

Build an audience 

1. Grow your followers through strategic searches. Have you located coworkers, clients, partners, prospects and subject matter experts in your industry? Have you searched by hashtags, content and companies? Diligently build your audience through outreach and personalized messages.
2. Social media should mirror a conversation. Don’t just push information out. Teeing up topics and sharing them is not enough. You need to jump into conversations and provide value. Search by keyword and topic and add your feedback in the comments. Providing value is the best way to drive awareness of your personal brand. Plus, the beauty of social media is the transparent and level set nature of it. There’s no gate keeper so you can immediately become a fixture in important conversations among media, prospects, event organizers and brands.
3. Give recommendations and endorse colleagues as a way to build reciprocity. 

Get people’s attention:

1. Now that you’ve created a profile and built an audience – deploy a content strategy that works for you. Do you like writing? Prefer video? Be authentic with your voice.
2. Share your content and updates consistently and respond to all comments. LinkedIn weights comments even higher than likes so the more engagement per post the more your content will be served up in people’s feed.
3. Have fun! LinkedIn’s moment is now and it’s a hugely powerful tool for growing your brand. It’s a big runway for allowing you to connect, share, grow your side hustle or expand your business. So, dive in, start creating and let’s connect! 

Kathryn Frankson is a B2B event sales and marketing professional at UBM. A believer that 2018 communication means knowing how to get the markets attention through thumb stopping content, audience development and storytelling, she executes sales and marketing strategies in the catering, special event, cruise shipping and pharmaceutical space.

Connect: LinkedIn