Creating a unique identity for yourself is called Personal Branding.USPs speak loud for a good product or a brand.Similarly, Your expertise and skills speaks loudly for you.
How people identify you and for what aspects you are being identified is creating a personal brand.
Personal brand helps people to trust you.It helps you to get many new opportunities.It helps you to achieve your goal.It widens your horizon and helps you to reach out to more customers and clients.
In this blog, let’s discuss how to use Linkedin for personal branding and generate more leads for your business.
Why is LinkedIn Essential for Personal Branding?
Linkedin is a powerful platform for personal branding because it is a platform with over 900 million global users.
This platform gives you the opportunity to connect with industry leaders,recruiters and peers.
Linkedin can be used to showcase your expertise,skills and thought leadership.This can help you get new customers,clients and helps you get hired if you are looking for a job in your niche.
Mastering LinkedIn for Personal Branding Success
The first step in utilizing Linkedin for personal Branding is optimizing your linkedin profile.
- Optimizing your Linkedin Profile
Attention Grabbing Headline:
Use keywords that define your expertise.These are the keywords that recruiters and clients will be looking for.
For Example: If you are a paid ads expert,you could have an headline that says “Paids ads expert, Helping brands to get 4X Roas
This headline will attract B2B businesses because if you can get them 4X roas ,it will increase their sales.
Unless you promote your expertise others will not know that you are capable of doing something.
Writing a Compelling About Section
The about section will help people interested in your expertise to know more about you.
You could share your professional journey,achievements and aspirations with engaging and relatable storytelling so it will be easily understood by your customers or clients.
Choosing a professional photo
Your Linkedin profile picture should be clear and visible.It should be professional and of high quality.
You could design a banner that showcases your personal brand and gives a good impression for your profile visitors.
Customized URL
You can customize your linkedin URL
For Example: www.linkedin.com/in/YourName
You can customize your URL with your name so that your recruiter or clients remember it easily.
- Showcase your expertise
Build your experience section:
List out all your roles and responsibilities and let your client know what you have done to boost the sales or growth of your previous company.
Instead of generalizing, use metrics to explain your expertise.
For Example : I increased the sales of a product by 25%.
Metrics helps the customer understand the depth of your skills.
Highlight skills and endorsements
Add all the skills that you possess.Even the smallest skill can become your greatest strength and can get you good opportunities.
Send requests to your peers and colleagues and get as much as endorsements as you can because these are social proofs of your expertise.They rate the expertise you have and help the customer or client understand your skills.
Utilizing Recommendations:
These features on linkedin help to establish a strong personal brand.You can give or request recommendations from your connections.
These are testimonials that you can receive from your clients,colleagues and customers to enhance your personal brand and expertise.
Adding certifications:
Adding all the certifications you have received can help people witness your expertise and skills.
- Share Valuable Content Regularly
Posting Thought Leadership content:
There were times when you only posted sales content on linkedin but now things have changed.Sharing valuable and helpful content with your followers and connections gives you more engagement.Post business insights,How-to guides and success stories that will help others.
The more you post on your expertise to solve a customer’s pain point,the more traction it gets and gives you an opportunity for growth or business.
Engaging with your network
Comment thoughtfully on other’s posts that will encourage or give them knowledge instead of commenting for the sake of engagement.
Share posts of connections that you think are worth sharing.
Linkedin Articles
Linkedin provides people with expertise to answer some questions and also share articles in your niche.
These articles are long form and they help people understand your expertise and authority in a particular topic.
- Grow Your network Strategically
Connecting with target audience:
Give connection requests to people whom you think would be prospects or potential customers for you.
Also connect with your peers and people similar to you to learn how they promote themselves and their products.
Linkedin Groups:
Join groups that might help you get clients or customers and engage in the group by posting,sharing and liking others posts and posting valuable comments on their posts.This helps you to expand your reach to prospects.
Linkedin Webinars and events:
Hosting webinars on linkedin and attending events can boost your visibility.People’s awareness about you and your brand is the key to gaining new customers and retention of old customers.
- Measuring and Improving Your LinkedIn Efforts
Measuring your efforts and analyzing what is working and what is not is important.
Linkedin Analytics can be used to see profile views,post engagement and follower growth.
Different content formats could be tested like carousel,video and static posts to check which gets more traction.
Analyzing and consistently following what works and discarding what doesn’t and experimenting different trends can help you level up your personal brand on linkedin and adapt yourself to changing trends so that your profile does not look outdated.
Update your profile regularly so that it is fresh and relevant.
- Common Mistakes to Avoid on LinkedIn
Follow a pattern of posting.Don’t overpost or don’t post irregularly.Don’t post salesy or over promotional posts that are unpleasant to the audience.
Posting regularly and not engaging with your network is also a mistake.Not analyzing or measuring your efforts every month can also lead to your efforts going in vain.
Do not ignore profile updates.Complete all the sections in your profile.
Conclusion:
Linkedin is a powerful platform that is ideal for personal branding.A good profile optimization ,content sharing and networking is important for a successful personal branding.
The key factors that drive success for personal branding on linkedin is consistency,authenticity and engagement.These build credibility and trust toward you and your brand among your target audience and peers.
If you want to learn how to leverage Linkedin and other platforms to build your personal brand you can contact Eclatmax Training Solutions.Their Personal Branding Training Programs helps you explore the strategies that make you unique and stand out with distinguished impressions.
To learn more on the training sessions.Contact us today!