It’s 2020 and personal branding is no longer a thing reserved for celebrities, reality stars and your colleague who went to that workshop on social media marketing. Today, virtually everyone has an online presence, which means we all have a personal brand whether we’ve opted to take charge of it or not.
If you want to know what it looks like to really take charge, you need to look no further than the abundance of social media “influencers” out there. Whatever your personal thoughts may be, there’s no question that many of these people are masters of personal branding. Every post is carefully crafted to align with the image they’ve cultivated, and many are wildly successful at it.
Now, if someone can use personal branding to sell mushroom tea cleanses (or whatever the trend du jour may be), you can certainly use similar techniques to cultivate a personal brand that “sells” your professional skills and experience.
We’ve written before about optimizing your LinkedIn profile to get noticed. If you haven’t run through those basics yet, do that now because the personal branding tips and strategies below take things a step further to really dig into cultivating a professional presence online that puts you in the spotlight.
Without further ado…
LinkedIn for Personal Branding: The Ultimate Guide
1. Determine your purpose to create a branding statement
Purpose is different from reason. The reason you are doing this may be to land your dream job, but your purpose is about what you want to achieve or create professionally. Maybe you’re really passionate about accounting and have a knack for digging into the numbers and thinking critically about budget distribution. That’s your purpose!
Once you know your purpose, you want to craft it into a solid personal branding statement. This will be used within your profile but also as something for you to continually refer to as we move along.
Blogger, designer and entrepreneur Melyssa Griffin has a great example of a descriptive personal branding statement. It is: “I help heart-centered high achievers grow their income and impact online.” There are 2 key elements in that statement: it says what she does and what value she brings. Your statement should do the same.
Using our accountant example, you might craft your statement to be something like “I am a rock star accountant that helps companies streamline their budgets, cut the fat without cutting corners and open up new revenue streams.” Or maybe “as an experienced Accountant, I turn dull spreadsheets into dynamic maps of where you’ve been, where you are and where you need to go to grow your revenue and thrive in evolving markets.”
Practically every job on earth has boring bits. To craft a statement that really represents you, focus on the parts that excite you to get at the heart of why you do it and what value you bring.
Use the statement as your LinkedIn headline and/or as the first line of your summary. You may need to do a shortened version for your headline as it has a 100-character limit. If so, remember that the priority for your headline is to make it clear what you do. You may have something like “Experienced Accountant & Spreadsheet Wrangler” as your headline, while your full statement is used to start off your summary.
2. Align your LinkedIn profile with your personal brand
Your personal branding statement is kind of like your slogan. It’s your version of Nike’s “Just Do It,” except more descriptive. One thing social media influencers do really well is staying “on brand.” They do that by aligning everything they put out there with the image they want to cultivate.
Using your branding statement like a guiding light, create or edit the other elements of your LinkedIn profile to reflect your personal brand. You can find some great LinkedIn personal branding examples from LinkedIn themselves. You’ll see in the summary examples that the summaries tie in really well with the headlines and showcase the person’s passion and expertise. There’s no question what their focus is and what they bring to the table.
Your experience section should also be aligned with your brand, which means you may choose to leave some things out if they don’t tie in (remember: the best influencers stay “on brand”). In a previous post, we looked at Jessica Alba’s personal brand, which allowed her to grow her childcare product business, The Honest Company. She’s also a talented actress and may have plenty of other skills, but to grow her company, she crafted a personal brand around being down to earth, natural and nurturing. She deliberately focused on the parts of herself that aligned with the company purpose — i.e. its brand.
Likewise, put your focus on the aspects of your work experience that align with your branding statement. Let’s say that in addition to being a rock star accountant, you also volunteer to walk dogs at your local animal shelter. You can still put that in, but instead of focusing on the tasks involved, word it in a way that keeps you on brand, such as, “I spend my free time counting paws and budgeting treats as a volunteer dog walker.”
3. Become a “LinkedInfluencer” to grow your personal brand
It’s time to grow your brand! By that we mean taking an active role in the social aspect of LinkedIn. As a social network, LinkedIn isn’t as dynamic as Instagram or Facebook, but there’s still a lot happening there. Remember: your reason for doing this is to land a great job, promotion or even client. Establishing an active presence on LinkedIn is a great way of demonstrating that you are proactive about your passion, field or industry.
LinkedIn has an official “Influencer” badge, but it’s reserved for high profile members like Richard Branson and Melinda Gates. So when we talk about becoming an influencer, we’re talking about being active on the platform and not necessarily striving for the official badge.
To get started as an influencer, there are 3 things to focus on:
Influencer Tactic 1: Share content
Share articles, videos, podcasts and other media from reputable sources that aligns with your personal brand. You’re a forward-thinking accountant, so share an article you found about new ideas for predicting revenue trends. Maybe you’re an HR professional who’s passionate about employee engagement. In that case, you might share the latest statistics on happiness in the workplace.
Include your personal take on what you’re sharing or even open it to feedback. You might say something like, “this is an interesting take on predicting revenue growth. I can see it having applications in larger companies but wonder if it has value for startups. Any startup accountants out there have insight?” As a best practice, keep things positive. If you disagree with an article, it’s usually better to just not share it.
Influencer Tactic 2: Publish content
This can be a time-intensive effort but it can also pay off in big ways. Use the LinkedIn publishing feature to post your own articles on the platform to share your expertise. People in your network get a notification when you publish and if you have your profile set to public, even people outside your network may see what you’ve published.
Publishing content of your own can really set you apart from others in your field and strike a good note with potential employers. Go back to your personal branding statement for inspiration and make sure everything you publish is aligned with it.
If you’re struggling for inspiration, start by keeping it light but professional. You might try things like, “10 Things I Wish I’d Known About Fiscal Planning When Starting Out”, “The Ultimate Quarterly Report Survival Kit” or “How I Use Accounting Principles for Time Management.” When you get more confident about publishing content, you may start to dig further into the nitty gritty of your field.
In terms of publishing frequency, focus on quality over quantity. You might want to post once a week in the beginning to get the ball rolling and build up content, but after that, once a month, or even once a quarter is plenty. You want to publish enough to show that your passion is genuine and that you’re able to think independently, but you don’t want the task to become onerous and risk lower quality posts for the sake of content.
Influencer Tactic 3: Connect with people in your target audience
If you’re like many people, your LinkedIn connections include past and present colleagues as well as friends, a few family members, people you went to high school with, etc. That’s fine, but you also need to cultivate a network that aligns with your brand. Influencers do this all they time. They identify their target audience and go after it.
Seek out people in your target audience: big players in your field or industry, people who hold positions you might aspire to, people who belong to groups aligned with your brand, and so on. For example, you may do a search of “senior accountant” and send connection requests to people in that role at companies you admire. Be open about why you’re connecting. For example, you may customize your connection request with something like:
Hi John Moneyman,
Your profile came up as I was searching for inspiring leaders to follow in the accounting field. As a fellow accountant, I’ve been following the news about XYZ Inc., and was really impressed with the recent deal announced with BigGuy Bank. If you ever have a free moment, I’d love to get your thoughts on the best skills to cultivate to advance in the field. Can we connect?
Thank you so much,
Jane Superstar
You may not get a direct response, but even if you just get your request accepted, that’s a first step. If you do get a response, you may gain insight about your industry or even the beginnings of a mentorship relationship.
4. Join (or create) LinkedIn Groups that align with your purpose and brand
When it comes to celebrity and social media influencers, you may have noticed that they often interact with each other online by commenting, liking, sharing, etc. Aligning with like-minded people or groups can be a powerful way of growing a personal brand.
When seeking out groups to join on LinkedIn, you want to be sure the group focus aligns with your purpose and brand, but also that it is an active group with content being shared and constructive discussions going on. It’s okay if activity only happens every few days or so. As we said before, LinkedIn isn’t as active as other social networks, so focus on the value over the frequency.
Once you’ve joined, you also must be an active member. Keep it positive and inquisitive. Being curious is the ultimate conversation starter, so ask for people’s opinions or feedback and be open to what they say.
Now, the greatest influencers are also trailblazers, so why not start your own group? Once you’ve built up your profile, your network and your activity, get a group going around your branding statement. You don’t have to be a leader in your field to start a group. You can also be curious and eager to learn. Start a group focused on sharing ideas and start inviting those people you’ve connected with to join. You’ll probably have to take the lead on getting conversations going at first, but if you keep at it and stay on brand, the activity should pick up steam.
These days, it seems that everywhere you turn someone is calling themselves an “influencer”. A true influencer is someone who impacts how others see things. When you cultivate a strong personal brand on LinkedIn, you can impact how others see YOU. And that is a huge advantage when it comes to advancing your career. Take a lesson from influencer culture and take control of your online presence. It’s a solid bet that potential employers will check you out online. Your personal brand is how you influence what they find when they do.