It’s no secret that LinkedIn is the best place to start building your professional reputation, but how do you start?
A personal brand is your reputation, and it will follow you wherever you go online. In our digital world, your personal brand is one of the most important assets that you have as a professional. It not only helps define who you are but also provides insight to future employers into what kind of employee or business partner you'll be.
“Your personal brand is what people say about you when you leave the room”
Your personal brand should be built around who you are as a person and not what just you do as a profession, so it's important that when defining yourself you consider factors like:
What are my strengths?
What are my weaknesses?
What are my hobbies/interests outside of work?
Building a personal brand on a professional platform like LinkedIn can be a powerful way to connect with like-minded professionals, establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and advance your career. Here’s how we’d get started.
Define your brand
As above, you need to define your brand. Who are you? What do you do? What are your passions and hobbies? What do you do outside of ‘work’? Once you have a clear understanding of your brand, you can start building your profile and content around it. Seek out some of your peers and see how they represent themselves on LinkedIn. It’s important to consider all factors of your life i.e. if you’re a volunteer - add that to your profile. It can be a great talking point and icebreaker.
Optimize your profile
Your LinkedIn profile is the cornerstone of your personal brand on the platform. Make sure your profile is complete and optimized for search. This means using keywords that are relevant to your industry and ensuring that your profile is up-to-date with your current job title, experience, and skills. It also means using a professional photo that encapsulates your personality and taking advantage of features like the header photo, headline, and about sections.
Create high-quality content
Creating and sharing high-quality content is key to building your personal brand on LinkedIn. It’s how you are visible and appear on connections feeds. This can include articles, videos, infographics, and other types of content that are relevant to your industry and showcase your expertise. It doesn’t need to be your own content, if you’ve read an interesting article or attended an event - post about it! Be sure to share your content with your network and engage with others' content as well. Visibility is key here.
Engage with others
‘Liking’ a post is fine, but if you’ve been on LinkedIn for a while you’ll see that the most exposure comes from comments. If you see something that resonates with you, comment! Just like Facebook, those connected with you will be able to see what you write, so make sure your thoughts are aligned with your brand.
Network, network, network!
Singapore is a small city and we benefit massively from having access to all sorts of professionals and people in our lives. You’ll be amazed at how willing people are to go out of their way to help you. Networking online can be daunting, but try to add value. If you want to pick someone’s brains or ask them to refer you to a job, make sure you inject personality and give something back to them. Networking is about the exchange of information and ideas.
Building a personal brand on LinkedIn takes time, so don’t feel disheartened if you don’t see results straight away.