Easy to do steps you can take today to start promoting your personal brand.
Your personal brand is your unique value proposition, your digital footprint that sets you apart in a sea of professionals. Building a robust personal brand enhances your credibility, opens doors to opportunities, and helps you connect with your target audience more effectively.
Maximizing the Impact of Your LinkedIn Featured Section
Many professionals use LinkedIn to showcase their experiences, but they often overlook the power of the Featured section.
The Featured section is your personal showcase.
Use your featured section to highlight your best articles, popular posts, portfolio pieces, showcase your personal website if you have one and share ways people can reach you (how about calendly coffee chats 🤔).
Start with your top top-performing articles and posts. Once you have one or two of those, pull a portfolio piece if you have one to showcase your skills.
Design visually appealing cover images for each of the featured section items to catch people’s attention.
Give people a way to reach you – whether it’s a personal website or your calendly link and include that in the featured section as well.
Elevate Your Social Media Presence to Become a Thought Leader
People often use social media for personal updates, missing out on the chance to establish themselves as industry thought leaders.
You can use your social media for personal updates as well as sharing about your professional life too.
On LinkedIn this might seem a little more obvious, but on Facebook and Instagram, it might be less obvious.
On Facebook, you can separate your friends into lists. I have a list for family/friends who I exclude when I post business posts and I choose to only share with when I post personal posts. I wrote about Facebook Lists long ago if you want to learn more about this.
Regularly share your thoughts on industry news, trends and engage with others’ content to spark meaningful discussions.
Follow and engage with the industry influencers, this can boost your credibility especially if you engage regularly, you are exposed not only to top leaders but anyone who follows them.
Mix it up with personal and professional insights and experiences. It doesn’t have to be all work and your social media accounts can be more than just a personal space.
Doing this can attract like-minded professionals and expand your network.
Personal Branding Across Platforms
When you bring together your social media profiles, podcasts, and other cool projects, you’re basically crafting this super smooth online identity that makes it a breeze for people to spot you and connect with you.
A few ways to apply this is to add your social channels, podcast and personal website to your personal email signature.
Be sure your social media bios highlight your projects. Share what you are doing in your industry on social media – articles, interviews, things you work on in the real world.
Use consistent profile pictures and cover images across platforms. Consistency is just as important as it is for companies.
Showcasing Recommendations from Peers in Your Personal Branding Strategy
Many professionals overlook the importance of peer recommendations in building trust.
Just like with a business, social proof helps others to believe in your skills and expertise. That is why LinkedIn has a “recommendations” section. It’s evidence of your skills, character and expertise.
Ask for recommendations for LinkedIn and then use those on your website and on social media.
Create a “brag book” where you store client, boss and colleague kudos to share on your website and social media.
Recommendations can be potent tools in establishing trust.
A Personal Website for Personal Branding
Many marketers neglect the idea of having a personal website.
LinkedIn is great and all but a central hub provides a place for people to see more about who you are.
When I hired my virtual assistant, she had a personal website with samples of her work, her achievements, recommendations from former colleagues and clients along with some background about her and her family.
It made a huge difference in how I saw her as a candidate. And she got the job!
It doesn’t have to be complex, create a one-page personal website with essential information about you and what you do, if you write about your industry this is a great place to include that, along with achievements.
Don’t make this hard or overthink it. Grab your name for the domain www.YourName.com (If your name is like mine you might have to add in your middle initial or middle name).
I’d say build a one page site, but I’ll challenge you instead to build a simple website, include pages for your key accomplishments and achievements with recommendations from peers, and an about page with your professional bio, and a blog page with your thoughts, opinions and musings about the industry.
Be sure to include a way for people to reach you. And provide links to your social media profiles and any other resources you can link out to (portfolio information, projects and samples).
Spice up your personal brand game and turn it into something that will shine a spotlight on you! I know that is hard for some of us.
These strategies will boost credibility and crack open doors of opportunity in the marketing world.
First off, give that LinkedIn featured section some love. Show your stuff, flaunt your wins and let the world know what you’re made of.
Next, hit up social media like a champ. Share your thoughts, become a thought leader and keep the online party going consistently.
Don’t forget to sprinkle some testimonials in there – let others sing your praises.
And last but not least, whip up your own personal website. It’s like your online home base, where people can really get to know you.
Remember, your journey to pro success? It’s all about investing in yourself and boldly showing off your expertise to the world.
You’ve got this!
Whenever you’re ready, here are two ways I can help you:
- Download the Asana Starter Kit. This is the system I use for my clients and my own business.
- 1:1 Strategy Session to work with you and your team to implement a holistic marketing strategy from start to finish for your clients. Including content creation, ads management and setup, social media strategy, email marketing and list-building strategies.
