6 Strategies to Grow Your LinkedIn Brand

Ever felt like LinkedIn is a big, busy party where everyone's talking, and you're just trying to find your spot?

Well, guess what?

With the right tips and a sprinkle of fun, you can not only find your spot but also make it the coolest corner of the party!

It's all about showing off the UNIQUE you and letting people know what you're all about.

LinkedIn's vast user base offers boundless opportunities that helps you grow professionally and personally.

However, to transform these possibilities into reality, you need a blend of authentic strategies and powerful tools.

Here's your complete guide:

1. Be Story-Driven:

Beyond job titles and accolades, people connect with stories. Use your experiences, triumphs, and even failures and craft a compelling narrative. Regularly update your narrative as your journey evolves. Whether you transitioned careers, took a sabbatical, or started a new venture, every chapter adds depth.

Tools You can use:

• StoryChief: A content marketing platform assists in telling your story more effectively. It offers analytics and insights, allowing you to understand which parts of your story resonate most.

• Scrivener: A robust writing platform that allows you to organize your story, create character profiles, and track plots. It's particularly favored by novelists and screenplay writers.

• Hemingway Editor: This online editor highlights lengthy sentences, adverbs, complex words, and passive voice, helping simplify and clarify your writing.

2. Optimize Profile Elements:

First impressions last. Ensure your profile embodies professionalism and uniqueness. You must revisit and refresh your profile to capture the evolution over time and it must reflect in your presentation. Testing different headlines or profile summaries and gauging the engagement will help you optimize your profile for more effectiveness.

Different Profile Elements:

1. Profile Photo: A headshot that represents you. It's the first thing people usually notice, so a professional, clear image is recommended.

2. Headline: A brief statement, right below your name, summarizing your professional identity. It might include your current role, expertise, or value proposition.

3. Background Cover Photo: A larger image at the top of your profile. It's an opportunity to reinforce your personal brand or showcase something meaningful to your career.

4. Summary (or About section): A detailed section where you can provide an overview of your professional background, aspirations, and what you bring to the table.

5. Experience: Lists your job roles, responsibilities, and tenure at various organizations.

6. Education: Details of your academic background, including institutions attended, degrees earned, and any other notable achievements.

7. Licenses & Certifications: Any professional certifications or licenses you've earned.

8. Skills & Endorsements: Specific skills you possess and endorsements from your connections validating those skills.

9. Recommendations: Written testimonials from colleagues, supervisors, or clients attesting to your abilities, character, and work.

10. Accomplishments: This can include publications, courses, projects, honors, and awards.

11. Featured: A relatively new section where you can showcase key achievements, articles, posts, or any other content that you're particularly proud of.

12. Interests: Displays the companies, groups, and influencers you follow.

13. Contact Info: Provides ways to get in touch with you, including email, phone, connected social profiles, and your personalized LinkedIn URL.

14. Network Information: A snapshot of your connections, showing the number and any mutual connections you might have with a viewer.

Tools You can use:

• Photofeeler: This platform provides real feedback on your profile photos, ensuring your image aligns with your brand.

• Hemingway Editor: This tool helps you refine your profile's text, making your summary and descriptions clear and engaging.

3. Showcase Your Projects:

As you accumulate more projects, curate this section. Prioritize showcasing diverse skills and significant achievements. Static descriptions can only say so much. By showcasing tangible work, you validate your skills and express your unique value proposition, automatically showcasing you as an expert.

Tools You can use:

• Behance/ GitHub: Depending on your profession, these platforms display your portfolio or code repositories.

• SlideShare: Ideal for those in consultancy, training, or sales, allowing presentations to be shared directly on LinkedIn.

4. Engage, Don't Just Exist:

Allocating specific times weekly for LinkedIn activity for engagement. Beyond posting, engage with your network by commenting, endorsing, and joining groups relevant to your industry. Passive presence is noise. Active engagement is music to your audience's ears.

Tool You Can Use:

LinkedIn's native analytics:

You can understand your post engagement helps refining future content. Here's how to use it:

1. Engagement Metrics: You can see metrics like impressions (how many times your post was displayed on someone's timeline), clicks, likes, shares, and comments. This helps you understand the overall reach and impact of your posts.

2. Audience Demographics: LinkedIn provides details on who viewed your posts, including their job titles, companies, locations, and more. This is invaluable for understanding if you're reaching your target audience or industry peers.

3. Trend Over Time: The analytics showcase the performance of your content over time, helping you identify patterns, best posting times, or content types that resonate most.

By consistently monitoring these analytics, users can understand what type of content their audience prefers, which topics garner the most engagement, and what times or days are optimal for posting.

5. Regular Posts with Personal Insights:

You must establish a content calendar.

Mixing original posts, shared articles, and interactive content like polls ensures variety.Curated content is good, but personalized content is memorable.

You are Share your unique perspective, personal learnings and experiences that help you IMPACT with authority.

ToolsYou Can Use:

• Feedly: Stay updated with industry trends and news, acting as a base for your personalized insights.

• Canva: Design customized graphics to accompany your posts, enhancing engagement.

• Notion: Utilize Notion to organize projects, take notes, set tasks, create collaborative documents, manage databases, and even build personal wikis or websites.

6. Collaborative Content:

You can leverage the knowledge and reach of peers, amplifying your visibility and cultivating relationships with influencers in your industry. Even a simple Q&A session with an industry leader can significantly boost your profile's visibility.

Tools You Can Use:

• Zoom/ Microsoft Teams: Facilitate virtual collaborations, from joint webinars to panel discussions.

• Otter.ai: Record and transcribe sessions, making content digestible in various formats.

Closing:

Being active on LinkedIn is like working on a personal project. It's all about showing the real you, having a plan, and being ready to change things up when needed. With the tips and tools we've talked about, you're more than ready to stand out. So, go on and make your mark on LinkedIn. It's not just about being there; it's about making a difference and being remembered!