When you’re trying to generate business through LinkedIn, a strong personal brand is one of the most valuable assets you can have. While LinkedIn is hyper-focused on B2B content and industry developments, it’s still a social media platform, where human connection is a major deciding factor on how successful your LinkedIn marketing is going to be.
Whether you’re just getting started with LinkedIn campaigns, or you’ve been at it for a while and want to ensure your strategy is well-optimized, it’s crucial to make your personal brand as polished and engaging as possible.
Here are some tips for LinkedIn personal branding to help you build a stronger network and stimulate your broader social media marketing.
1. Define Your Goals
Like any aspect of social media marketing, your LinkedIn personal branding should be driven by a clear goal.
Though many professionals using LinkedIn have limitless value to offer their audience, approaching personal branding without a clear goal in mind can result in sporadic marketing efforts and diffused content. When you start with a clear goal, you’ll make it easier to keep focused and on-brand for more consistent and effective messaging.
Some examples of LinkedIn personal branding goals include:
- Increasing profile visibility by publishing thought leadership content and building new connections.
- Building engagement and lead generation through increased post engagement rates, ad campaigns, and lead generation attributed to LinkedIn.
- Nurturing credibility by engaging in discussions about emerging trends and industry news, and making informed predictions about future developments.
Take some time to consider why you’re concerned about your LinkedIn personal branding in the first place, and you’ll soon be able to articulate some clear, measurable goals that will keep your future efforts focused and effective.
2. Optimize Your Profile
Once you know what you’re trying to achieve through your LinkedIn personal branding drive, you can move on to the central asset at the core of your marketing: your LinkedIn profile.
Making sure all aspects of your LinkedIn profile are well-optimized will ensure you make a good impression to anyone who lands on it, and prominently feature your best qualities as defined by your established goals.
Some of the things every LinkedIn profile needs for good personal branding include:
- A professional headshot.
- A banner image that summarizes your professional experience and directs people viewing it to the next stage in your conversion pipeline.
- A headline that spells out your personal USP, and incorporates keywords that your audience is likely to use when browsing LinkedIn.
- An “About” section that goes into more detail about your background, specialism, and how you’re distinct from other professionals in your space.
- A “Featured” section that has a selection of work that you’re proud of.
By checking these boxes in a way that’s aligned with your particular audience and goals, you’ll be able to snare people’s attention from the moment they land on your page, and encourage engagement with your content rather than letting your audience click along to the next profile or business.
3. Post High-Quality Content
Having a strong LinkedIn profile will help you make a good first impression with people who discover you for the first time on the platform. However, to maintain that interest and move users towards a conversion, you need to keep proving your expertise with high-quality, authoritative content.
Building a portfolio of authoritative and useful content will show your audience that you’re an expert in your field, with proven knowledge and experience that will be an asset if they choose to work with your organization.
Some of the main content forms you can post to help your LinkedIn personal branding include:
Short-form posts, where you can share quick, easily-digestible summaries of a certain topic, and link to longer, more detailed content pieces that will develop your idea further.
LinkedIn Pulse articles of a thousand words or more, where you can share more substantial thought leadership. LinkedIn also has a collaborative articles feature, which allows you to invite fellow experts in your niche to contribute their takes on a particular topic, and allow you to tap into their network for greater exposure.
Documents such as whitepapers and other multi-page PDFs for when you want to get into more detail than an article can provide.
Like any other social media platform, we recommend strategizing your posts through a long-range content calendar that allows you to set a consistent schedule and choose the topics you’re going to focus on well in advance. This kind of forward-planning will help you align the flow of your content with your LinkedIn personal branding goals, and eliminate the risk of getting to “posting day” and having to scramble to come up with an idea.
4. Interact With Your Community
While the way you curate your profile and share content will give your personal brand a strong foundation, you’ll need to engage in conversations to give people a real idea of the person behind the screen.
Engaging in pertinent discussions on LinkedIn will not only increase your overall visibility, but also provide another great platform to showcase your industry expertise and fortify your personal brand in the eyes of your audience. Aside from this, getting involved in discussions will help expose you to diverse points of view within your industry, giving you a chance to build on your expertise and keep on top of emerging trends in your industry.
Of course, there’s a right way and a wrong way to approach discussions on LinkedIn, and it’s important to approach community discussions with thoughtfulness and tact.
Some best practices to bear in mind include:
- Inject personality, but keep your tone professional and accessible to avoid alienating your audience.
- Be consistent with your participation, keep responses as timely as possible, and don’t leave conversations prematurely.
- Don’t jump the gun when commenting on industry developments and make sure you’re up to date on the most recent news.
- Share your experiences and reference original case studies or client success stories, without being overly promotional.
- Ask open-ended questions to draw other people in and deepen the topic that’s up for discussion.
- Don’t just engage in conversations that you start or control, and make a habit to engage in others’ posts.
By sticking to these practices and regularly interacting within industry spaces, you’ll gradually build a clearer picture of your personality among your audience and fortify your personal brand.
Mastering LinkedIn Personal Branding
Though LinkedIn marketing drives can cover a range of different methods and tactics, having a strong, well-defined personal brand at the core of it will give you the essential foundation you need to get seen and make this platform work for you. We hope these best practices serve you well as you develop your personal brand, build your network, and drive more sales traction for your brand.
For more support with your LinkedIn analytics, scheduling, and content creation, sign up to Highperformr for free today!
