Want to improve your personal branding and grow your business online? It’s time to get serious on Linkedin with these tips.
LinkedIn is a powerful platform full of opportunities, professionals and high-quality content.
It’s also the best place to build your personal brand.
Now before we dive into why I’m advocating Linkedin specifically, let’s clarify what I mean by “personal branding”, shall we?
Why is personal branding important?
In the age of fake news and growing consumer-demand for transparency, your personal brand can mean the difference between people trusting you and your business or them skipping over to competitors that they trust more.
So what is a personal brand anyway?
The term “personal branding” was coined back in 1997, by a man called Tom Peters. Peters told us that no matter what industry we work in, or where we live, we’re all in charge of controlling how others perceive us. Furthermore, we must market ourselves (the human) not just our businesses.
Common examples of personal branding and how it can positively impact business performance are Steve Jobs of Apple, Oprah Winfrey, Jack Ma of Ali Baba, and Elon Musk of Tesla.
Would their companies be anywhere as powerful as they are today if we never knew who their CEOs were?
How personal branding can help your journey
CEO of Linkfluencer Alex Pirouz once shared with me the following in an interview:
“You are who Google says you are.”
So if people are searching for your name, your company name, or your product or service online then what comes up about you is your personal brand.
Do a quick test now – in a new browser tab, type your full name in Google Search and see what comes up. Do you like what you see? Does it paint a compelling picture of who you are, what you do, and who you serve?
If not, then it’s time to take control of your personal branding.
As you can see, creating a personal brand is a key step in your career. Don’t hold back on putting your time into creating a brand.
Your personal brand also includes:
- Your unique style of communication,
- Your best and worst traits,
- Your way of showing up at events by yourself or in a team,
- Your way of getting your message across,
- Your online presence,
- Your values.
It’s how people perceive you and what feeling they get after talking to you.
If you build your personal brand right, people are going to come to you. Your brand will attract them.
It’s also a smart way to overcome some of the common challenges of small business marketing.
One of the biggest benefits of a good personal brand is building trust. Also, before you build trust, you build recognition.
They’ll recognize you, get to know you, like you, trust you. Once they’ve got that, only then will they be keen on working with you.
People will start to discover what’re the services you and your business offer, and what’s the quality you offer them with.
You’ll connect with more people and in their time of need, they’ll come to you for a solution. Your clients can then recommend you, so your connections will grow.
You’ll be recognised in your area of expertise. As a leader, you’ll establish credibility and respect.
By building your brand your building confidence and becoming authentic.
The biggest challenge with personal branding for entrepreneurs
According to personal branding expert Jade Green, the biggest problem for startup founders and business owners is time.
“They don’t have time to work on their business, they don’t have time to spend with their families, they don’t have time to live, they’re stuck, wearing too many hats. They can’t scale because they’re the biggest icebergs in their business.”
That may come as no surprise, right? After all “hustle (struggle) porn” has become a thing now (in a really bad way, but I’ll save that conversation for another article).
Why Linkedin for personal branding?
LinkedIn is the perfect platform for personal and professional branding.
According to their About page, Linkedin is “the world’s largest professional network with more than 645+ million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide”.
In my own experience, LinkedIn is a place where sharing your knowledge is a gateway to various opportunities.
Related: Beginners guide to social media\LinkedIn
13 compelling reasons to build your profile on Linkedin
- Linkedin provides visibility amongst professionals, business people, and journalists
- LinkedIn is going to give you suggestions based on what you can do, and what you offer.
- LinkedIn has a lot of traffic coming in and out so it mostly appears at the top of Google search results.
- You can be a part of LinkedIn groups which will keep you updated about your speciality-areas and topics you’re interested in.
- LinkedIn pulse helps you stay on top of topics and news you’re interested in and it follows key influencers. You can also publish articles on Pulse to build your profile (highly recommended).
- It’s your online portfolio and your business journal. People can see your perspective, your opinion based on your activity.
- LinkedIn allows multimedia content. It also allows people to react to accomplishments.
- It’s a place online where you can list all the things you’ve achieved, collect and give recommendations, and highlight your top skills.
- You can recruit people and people can recruit you.
- There’s a CRM tool inside Linkedin Sales Navigator that allows you to manage and organize your contacts by category (tags).
- You can sync your phone and email connections to LinkedIn.
- One of the newer features is activity tracking which allows you to see when somebody is online. This way there’s no need to wait for a reply because you can see when people are online and then message them.
- Avoid going for the sale too early, like immediately pitching someone your product or service when they accept your connect request or when you accept theirs. This terrible tactic comes across desperate and sleazy.
LinkedIn, when used regularly, is without a doubt one enormous source of knowledge and value.
For a step-by-step guide to creating a brand on LinkedIn, watch this video:
Linkedin personal branding tips
People on LinkedIn share value. So, start off by sharing some of your knowledge.
Here are 7 guidelines for you to leverage your time and efforts on Linkedin:
- Be sure to optimize your Linkedin profile, and present it in a way that it’s all about your target buyer (not all about you).
- Build relationships through private messaging. In fact, 80% of your Linkedin effort should be happening through private messaging.
- Post updates and comment on other people’s posts regularly. Be consistent in providing value, so you can gain respect.
- Post different types of content. Make short videos, post pictures, upload PDFs, write short form status updates, and share long form articles. Mix it up.
- Keep it professional, but add something personal that will lead people to connect with you. Share experiences, some relevant moments of your personal life, etc.
- Pay attention to the connections relevant to you; you don’t need thousands of connections as proof of your brand, you just need the right connections for you and your business.
- Create your content strategy first, and then determine where Linkedin fits within that.
It’s time to grow your business and improve your personal branding on Linkedin
LinkedIn is a powerful platform full of opportunities, professionals and high-quality content.
It’s also the #1 place for you to connect with your target audience, potential partners and buyers, and grow your thought leadership.
I’ll be sharing further tips and case studies of how to use Linkedin for personal branding in upcoming articles.
Your action step: Select a few Linkedin tips above and implement them this week.
Then get posting and private messaging with your contacts consistently (at least an hour a week) over the next 30 to 60 days.
About the Author
Anfernee Chansamooth is a copywriter and content strategist helping up-and-coming influencers, thought leaders, and community builders to craft and tell stories that sell. He’s the Director at Simple Creative Marketing, and co-host of the Founders Connect podcast on iTunes.
