Don’t overlook LinkedIn when it comes to powerhouse personal branding. This platform may seem featherweight, but rest assured it is not.
It’s easy to overlook LinkedIn branding when much online chatter focuses on the aesthetic features of social media. YouTube has the swagger and Instagram has the glam. But LinkedIn is where the rubber meets the road. And where your resume will do the most good.
Good LinkedIn News
In fact, many individuals mistakenly believe LinkedIn is just a location to post your résumé to show prospective employers. Not everyone has realized that LinkedIn is a true social network, with all the networking (socially) that comes with it.
Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has recently increased its ad possibilities. This is good news for personal trademarkers. This year, it redesigned LinkedIn Market Solutions and steadily expanded its products.
This might be linked to Microsoft’s acquisition. Microsoft will want LinkedIn to make the most money. Promoted content, sponsored email, text ads, dynamic ads, and programmable display ads are now available to marketers. There are also many other new features.
- A/B Testing
- Contacting
- Getting Leads
- Gen Forms
- Website Stats
- Retargeting
- Accountability
- Ad Network
Additionally, the Insight Tag is a simple piece of code that you can put to your website to monitor campaign-driven traffic. This measure is great for measuring the impact of your influencer marketing.
Brand Influence
Many famous and powerful individuals utilize LinkedIn effectively. True, many of them aren’t LinkedIn influencers and have acquired popularity elsewhere, but they are also successful on LinkedIn.
However, almost all renowned bloggers and topic specialists have a profile. Similarly, most of them will share their content with their followers.
Brands are generally tagged if mentioned. Even if no money is exchanged and the brand mention is natural, it is still influencer marketing.
Sure, some influencers are more calculated. As a result, they intentionally choose to utilize LinkedIn as an influence channel and post content to promote a business.
Influencers Flocking to the Platform
The irony is that LinkedIn is ideally suited for influencer marketing. Even the wording used indicates valuing influencers.
Your contacts’ talents are endorsed. Likewise, get recommendations from coworkers, it says.
Also, who are the really influential? LinkedIn labels them as influencers and provides them a badge. LinkedIn was made for influencer marketing.
Brand Like There’s No Tomorrow
It’s admittedly not simple to become an accredited influencer. “LinkedIn Influencers are a worldwide community of 500+ of the world’s top thinkers, leaders, and innovators,” says the LinkedIn helpdesk. These folks debate hot themes including the future of higher education, Amazon’s corporate culture, the drop in oil prices, and politicians’ mistakes.
Not being able to shake hands with Richard Branson, Bill Gates, or Ariana Huffington does not exclude you from becoming a micro-influencer on LinkedIn. Many topic-based LinkedIn Influencers will never be able to wear the coveted badge. However, that’s OK.
The platform launched Pulse a few years ago to allow influencers to publish blog entries directly on the network. True, anybody may contribute an article for Pulse, but only the greatest writing from LinkedIn’s most important users makes the cut.
Remember Your Audience
Producing anything that would be shared on Snapchat, for example, is unlikely to work. To be effective on LinkedIn, you must create a Pulse article with that in mind.
Using a LinkedIn influencer to promote (and potentially author) a Pulse post is useless if your target market does not use LinkedIn. B2B marketing works well, but not so well for toy sales.
The outcomes improve when an author writes more long-form items on LinkedIn Pulse. Yet another incentive to collaborate with an influencer. They’ll have amassed a post library. If you start writing hoping to distribute your own goods, you’ll be an unknown, and your article’s reach will suffer.
Brand Employment
For employment, many individuals choose specialized postings over broad ones.
Develop your personal brand on this platform. This is your online resume. It’s frequently the first thing people see on LinkedIn. Additionally, since your profile sells you to anybody who looks at it, the quality of your profile determines if someone wants to connect with you.
To be an influencer, you must seem to be able to influence. Likewise, you must seem to be a leader in your profession. That implies your whole profile must reflect thought leadership in your field.
Start with a picture. Remember, this is a professional network. That lovely kitten photo you have on your Facebook page won’t function here. Your primary profile photograph should be a professional headshot.
Worth a Thousand LinkedIn Words
To start, optimize your cover photo. If you want to look important in a certain field, then use a cover picture that portrays that. It’s even better if it shows your influence.
Secondly, you may use a picture of yourself speaking publicly on your specialty. If you personally know an influencer, you may use a snapshot of the two of you as your cover photo.
Next, optimize your primary heading. Don’t let LinkedIn rehash your newest job description. If you haven’t already, ask former coworkers for testimonials and recommendations.
Your title should reflect your thinking leadership skills. In addition, help yourself by proving your assertions. Detail your bio. Avoid jargon and promote tangible results. Finally, optimize every element of your profile to maximize your LinkedIn branding.