How to use LinkedIn to build your brand?

Personal branding means projecting people’s talents and skills to work as brands and setting these up as the pivotal tools for business. It is an ever-expanding practice that tends to preserve the importance of an individual. So, your brand promotes yourself through collaborating proficiency, expertise, and disposition for recognition.

It is still a relatively cutting-edge field, and most people, including job seekers, freelancers, and influencers, haven’t taken full advantage of it yet.

Importance of Personal Branding

Now that you know what is personal branding, the following facts will signify personal branding’s importance:

It Helps Establish New Contacts

With the help of personal branding, you can start new connections in a diverse range of specializations and in the fields you are interested in. As you build your credibility, you get a better online presence, which paves the way for more people to connect with you who are interested in the field same as you.

It Builds Trustworthiness

Personal branding can help you make your impression as a skilled person and an innovator in your area of interest. Through personal branding, you will be able to get the credence, recognition, and high regard you otherwise would not get.

For example, 90% of recruiters would decide your fate in the company through your online presence. In that regard, personal branding calls for great attention on your online presence as the accounts you own and whatever content you post there will be representing you – the brand.

Why LinkedIn for Personal Branding?

Even though your social media accounts and blogs are the face for your digital branding, the power LinkedIn gives you in actually reaping the benefits of doing so are beyond measure – for all the good reasons. Everything fueling from your personal brand lives to your skills depends on the networks you build on the site. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that LinkedIn is the epicenter for creating and maintaining business relationships and sharing content.

Not impressed enough? We’ve dived into some stats for you:

LinkedIn comes with more than 575 million users belonging to more than 200 countries.
B2B marketers rate the platform on the top number to deliver effective business content and generate leads.
40% of LinkedIn members actively use the site daily.

What’s the Catch?

Your LinkedIn profile is, unlike the conventional thought, not a resume. It is beyond that which makes it powerful – enabling two-sided communications with the big decision-makers in the market and business partners effectively and straightforwardly.

However, it would help if you focused on making the right choices for your LinkedIn profile at the right time to reap the benefits in a multi-faceted way.

So, how to use LinkedIn to build your personal brand?

How to Get Started?

Following are some takeaways for building a presentable, capable LinkedIn profile.

Professional headline – You are given 120 character spaces to fill up the headline field. Consider making a tagline to build the first impression. Now, do some keyword searching to describe yourself and your areas of interest and expertise.

Photo – Professionals will click your profile more often when you have your real photo included in your account (11 times more chance). The photo needs to be a top-quality headshot in which you are slightly smiling and making direct eye contact with the camera lens.

Background – In your cover photo of your profile, get as much clarity as you can about your brand and show your area of expertise. Try to use real images to give a credible impression to the users.

Contact Information – You will need to fill in your usual contacts here and override some defaults, such as replacing the standard links with any website or blog you have.

Customize LinkedIn URL – The platform gives you an awkward and long URL that can be customized using your name, making it easier for people to remember and share.

Summary – Use this section to market yourself. This would pretty much work like an ‘About Us’ page you would see on websites. Try including a few keywords here and there, and create an engaging summary starting with some basic questions or inspirational notes to develop trust in the audience.

Show your Previous Work – LinkedIn is the perfect internet platform to showcase your previous work using SlideShare. You can upload audio, video, image, and whatnot through the integration media and select ‘Add to LinkedIn profile.’

Experience – Showcase the field with all your work and credentials that you will define in your resume.

Add Related Media – Feel free to use additional media, certifications, and related documents and links to your profile, creating more credibility and relevance to the field you are presenting.

What to Follow?

You need to follow these crucial points for personal branding on LinkedIn.

1. Generate Engaging Content

It might seem superficial at first, but the more engagement in the form of comments and reactions you get on the posts you publish, the more connections you can make. However, it will help if you kept in mind that not all engagement is equal. Having comments on your post shows effort; this will help get more attention to your content, but you have to create and post content that is relevant, trending, and engaging.

2. Be Mindful Regarding the Content

Having a good story, relatable content, and a worthy presentation are all important for good personal branding. For example, using too many hashtags just for the sake of more SEO or using too many emojis to look cool would not do any favor to you on LinkedIn – this is not how the platform is going to work.

It is so because:

More than 60% of the total LinkedIn users age from 30 to 64 years old ranging from CEOs to middle managers, everyone who is involved in giving you a better opportunity for your job, freelance work, or business. So, it is better to stay minimal and skip the glitter.

The hashtag function of LinkedIn doesn’t work like other networking platforms. If you actually want to use some in your posts, don’t go for more than five hashtags per post as too many hashtags would result in your post getting marked as spam.

3. Be a Storyteller

Be real and explain your idea through a story – if you try to push through making a sale or profit, the users will easily point it out. Doing so in the right way demands you to be a good storyteller, something relatable. For instance, you can describe how you couldn’t get a task completed at your office if you are trying to sell yourself as a stress and time management coach.

You can tell how you gradually taught yourself the skills and harbored the stuff you learned along the way to get success in your field.

4. Balance the Professional to Personal Ratio

People relate to people more easily than brands, so stay authentic and share a bit about your personal life. Don’t forget that LinkedIn is a professional platform, so you need to keep in mind the field you are in.

5. Start Small

A million connections won’t guarantee you the success you are looking for in LinkedIn. All you need is the attention of the right people so you can market yourself in a profitable way. Create your targeting content and stand out from the crowd.

What Should You Avoid?

Some other practices that you need to avoid when using LinkedIn for personal branding include the following:

Promotion as an influencer

Users are able to detect any defect in a story from miles away. Please don’t come up as an influencer of a disruptor, as it will always sound desperate. Have some authenticity and create a selfless and a giver impression to your audience.

Starting with a Call to Action

This will be a major turn off for the users, so put this at the end of your post. Unfortunately, a lot of people do the opposite, which lands them in a low engagement.

Adding Links

If you add links to your profile, the platform will penalize you for it. The algorithm will turn out in a lesser engagement doing so. Even if you want to add links, post the content first. You can add the links later when you decide the edit the post.