If you are going to choose only one personal branding tool to invest time in, choose LinkedIn. With a savvy profile and spot on strategy, LinkedIn can become your powerful partner in long-term branding and career management. Your reach is huge on LinkedIn. I personally have started to receive messages and requests over the past 6 months just simply by honing in on my LinkedIn profile.
For starters, you want to connect with decision-makers.
LinkedIn has passed the 100 million user mark. According to this infographic from Hupspot, 50% of LinkedIn users are decision-makers.
If you have a complete profile that highlights your specific skills, one of the thousands of potential customers could come to you. LinkedIn also has additional features, such as InMail or introductions to increase the likelihood that potential customers will respond to you.
Regardless of what your job is, you must stay current in your niche – your trade – your industry!
Whereas other social networks get flooded with status updates about what exercise was just done, meal consumed, movie watched, etc., LinkedIn focuses on professional interests ONLY. You can join groups to trade tips on on just about anything. For example, find a group specifically geared towards WordPress and share your favorite WordPress plugins. You can skim niche-specific headlines on LinkedIn Today, or follow companies that may have a need for your services. All of these features are focused on helping you stay current in an age of constant change and information overload.
LinkedIn is great for staying in touch with past and present colleagues and clients.
By adding colleagues and clients to your LinkedIn network, you can see when they get promoted, get praised through a written recommendation, land a new client, or share an interesting article. Likewise, they can see when you share a website you worked on, announce a new product, or speak at a conference. Since LinkedIn is focused on business, you probably wouldn’t be posting photos from a night out on the town, so you don’t have to worry about creating circles or friend lists like you do with Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google +.
As with all social media platforms, you must position yourself as an expert.
Having a strong and healthy presence on LinkedIn can only be to your benefit. Update your Summary and Skills sets. Get people to write a personal recommendation for you. Use your keywords in your profile descriptions and summaries. That’s right – SEO is important even in your social media! This is a great example of how you can incorporate your SEO from website to social platform.
Driving traffic to your website, blog, or product/service page is your number 1 goal with social media.
LinkedIn is great for referral traffic.
LinkedIn’s sharing features makes it easy for users to circulate your content, but you can use services like BlogLink to syndicate your blog to your own LinkedIn profile. It’s also possible to syndicate your Twitter feed.
Have questions on how to optimize and/or utilize your LinkedIn account? Please don’t hesitate to contact me for a free 30min consultation! Every business deserves to network for business growth!