Linkedin might be even more suit­able for per­son­al brand­ing than it is for busi­ness brand­ing, but the two can very well be com­bined. Whether you have thou­sands of employ­ees or less than 50, you can use them to help your brand get great new busi­ness from LinkedIn. Here are a few things that will help you pro­mote your per­son­al brand on LinkedIn.

Your Profile

Just a few facts: the num­ber one activ­i­ty on Linkedin is check­ing out pro­files, when search­ing for people’s names almost every time the Linkedin pro­file will show up in the search results and when link­ing to a per­son, their Linkedin page is the most linked to page. So you bet­ter make sure your pro­file page is set up per­fect­ly!

Design

Every­thing starts with design. It’s the first impres­sion peo­ple get about you in many cas­es. You know what they say: you can only make one first impres­sion.

So when it comes to design you want to do a few things right:

Make Your Profile Publicly Visible

Many peo­ple still for­get to do this. You want to make sure they can actu­al­ly see you.

In your pri­va­cy set­tings select “what oth­ers see when you’ve viewed their pro­file” and check off “Your name and head­line (Rec­om­mend­ed)”.

Have A Clear Profile Picture

Make sure peo­ple have a good view on who you are so make it a clear pic­ture where you can see your face, prefer­ably smil­ing. If peo­ple don’t see your face, they won’t click or con­nect.

Create A Nice Background Image

Again, like Face­book and Google+ you can now cre­ate a very nice back­ground image, a head­er. This is a huge one (like on Google+) and can real­ly make you stand out.

Be sure to design what you want to be seen as. For instance, in my case, I’m show­ing me speak­ing because this is busi­ness, where­as on my Face­book Page you can see a more per­son­al back­ground.

Description

The descrip­tion is vital­ly impor­tant. This is what peo­ple will read first.

It starts with the head­line. You want to make sure that in the head­line peo­ple instant­ly know what they can expect from you. So instead of say­ing ‘Work­ing at com­pa­ny X as Y’, why not tell them what you actu­al­ly do?

In my case, I chose this head­line: “I help busi­ness­es get an under­stand­ing of their audi­ences by speak­ing, pub­lish­ing, train­ing and con­sult­ing.”

It helps peo­ple under­stand how I can help them and it at the same time tells peo­ple how I do that.

Then there is the actu­al descrip­tion. Again, you have to think audi­ence first. This means you want to make sure peo­ple quick­ly under­stand what they can expect from you and you try to keep them with you.

When it comes to the descrip­tion, the key is to speak to the audi­ence from their per­spec­tive and at the same time describe what you do, prefer­ably in a sto­ry. This can be a chal­lenge, but it is doable.

For exam­ple, I start by describ­ing the issue that many of my (poten­tial) clients run into. And that is exact­ly what I can help them with. I then describe in a nar­ra­tive how I do that. That way I keep peo­ple inter­est­ed and make them want to see more.

The Rest Of Your Profile

Nat­u­ral­ly the rest of your pro­file is impor­tant as well, but you will have to think about what is and what isn’t impor­tant for the read­er. Does it real­ly mat­ter where you worked 15 years ago or what type or your inter­ests? Or are awards more impor­tant? Or skills?

It might dif­fer from per­son to per­son and from the goal that you have with your brand­ing efforts. For exam­ple, I use the option to show videos right below my descrip­tion because it’s one of the most impor­tant things I do: speak­ing.

If peo­ple can see me speak on my LinkedIn pro­file, that’s great! But if I would focus on con­sult­ing I would prob­a­bly choose a dif­fer­ent order.

Updates

There are two types of updates you can use on LinkedIn. There is the pub­lish­er tool, which we’ll get to in a minute, and there are the updates.

LinkedIn updates are what peo­ple see when they log in. And an impor­tant thing to know here as well is that these updates are con­nect­ed with Pulse. Pulse, a dis­cov­ery tool, was acquired by LinkedIn and inte­grat­ed in the prod­uct, mak­ing your updates poten­tial­ly more vis­i­ble for your fol­low­ers and con­nec­tions.

This means you want to think about what you share: the changes in your pro­file are one, links to arti­cles you write anoth­er. There is no harm in post­ing these links there as long as they are rel­e­vant to your audi­ence. Only then peo­ple will like them or com­ment on them, which will make them more vis­i­ble.

Groups

When it comes to groups there is a dual “feel­ing” with me. I most­ly use groups for research (see my next arti­cle), but it can be used to show­case you as well. You just have to be very care­ful with it.

If you become a mem­ber of a group you can choose whether your mem­ber­ship is vis­i­ble in your pro­file. Being part of the right groups makes your pro­file more impres­sive.

When it comes to being more active with­in the groups you want to make sure you aren’t using it as a bill­board. Just post­ing your own links and shout­ing about your­self will only be bad for your per­son­al brand­ing. You want to get involved in dis­cus­sions and actu­al­ly help peo­ple, that’s how you can use LinkedIn Groups to build your per­son­al brand.

The Publisher Tool

Final­ly there is the pub­lish­er tool. This LinkedIn fea­ture was orig­i­nal­ly only giv­en to influ­encers, but has since opened to more of the pub­lic. If you haven’t got it yet you will prob­a­bly get it in due time, they are rolling it out slow­ly.

The pub­lish­er tool is very use­ful. Many see it as anoth­er place to pub­lish your con­tent, but when used prop­er­ly it can real­ly push your per­son­al brand.

What you don’t want to do is repeat your updates here. Peo­ple won’t want to read, com­ment, or share it. What you want to do is cre­ate spe­cif­ic con­tent for LinkedIn and in only some cas­es dupli­cate con­tent from else­where.

When you think about your audi­ence this will help you get a lot more vis­i­bil­i­ty. For one because the updates appear on top of your pub­lic pro­file, show­cas­ing your thought lead­er­ship and knowl­edge. Sec­ond­ly you can make sure it gets shared on Twit­ter as well, dri­ving more traf­fic to your LinkedIn pro­file.

When pub­lish­ing you will want to think about the same things as you have to when pub­lish­ing on a blog: write good con­tent, make sure you have a fea­tured image and images inside the con­tent, and think about what your audi­ence wants to read.

Have you used LinkedIn to grow your per­son­al brand, and in doing so grown your busi­ness? Share your suc­cess sto­ry in the com­ments!