Social media is an excellent avenue for building a personal brand and when it comes to building a professional brand and network, LinkedIn is the place to be. With over 875 million members and over 58 million companies on the social media site, LinkedIn is the top professional platform and the best place to build your professional brand.
LinkedIn is used by 134.5 million users each day, many of which are professionals who are key decision-makers in their companies, making it a great way to make professional connections.
To build your brand and network on LinkedIn, the key and most important thing you need to do is to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. By posting original content, connecting with fellow industry professionals, and establishing yourself as a key player in the industry, people will want to follow you. This all contributes to building your professional brand.
Here are three key things you’ll need to do to establish yourself as a thought leader and use LinkedIn to build your professional network and brand.
Optimising your profile
The first step to any transformation is a makeover, and for LinkedIn, that means you’ll need to spruce up your profile and make sure it’s all in order, before starting to create content and make connections. There are a few things you will need to do to make sure your profile looks good before making those crucial connections.
- Have a good profile photo. As one of the first thing users see when they look at your profile, your profile photo is crucial in setting up your brand. It should be a simple but high-quality professional photo that accurately represents you.
- Create a short but interesting headline. Your LinkedIn headline is one of the other things users will see first and should describe your skills and expertise in a sentence. Keep it short and sweet!
- Work on your profile summary. Your profile summary is basically your 30-second elevator pitch of your brand on LinkedIn. You can include a little more about your field of work, highlight your key accomplishments, and show a bit of personality. You get a little more space as compared to your headline, but make sure it isn’t too long and draggy.
- Make your profile search-friendly. To make your profile easy to search, use industry keywords to describe your skills and experience in your profile headline or summary.
Creating original content
Content is king in the digital world and LinkedIn is no exception: the platform rewards fresh and unique content that resonates with your audience by boosting it on the algorithm. So, focus on creating interesting and unique content that is useful and will resonate with your target network. Get creative with your content types too: content can be in the form of short posts, long-form content like articles, infographics, and even video content and memes!
Increasing visibility in your industry
Besides creating interesting content, you should also be interacting and engaging with other good content creators. Liking, sharing, and leaving relevant comments on posts is a good way to start. You can even reach out and build connections with other leaders in your industry by sending messages and discussing what you have in common. Most people on LinkedIn are also looking for connections and will be happy to chat with you.
Besides making one-on-one connections, another way to increase your visibility in your industry is to get involved in your industry. You can start by joining LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your industry or niche. Once you’re in, join in the conversation by sharing your insights and helping others by answering questions. This is a great way to establish yourself as a leader in your industry or field.
Final round-up
These are just a few simple tips to help you get started on building your professional network and brand. As LinkedIn continues to grow as the top professional social media platform, there are an increasing number of features that you can utilise to build your LinkedIn brand, such as newsletters and live sessions.
Reach out to us to find out more about building your brand on LinkedIn.