3 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand on Your LinkedIn Profile

How can you build your personal brand on your LinkedIn profile? ✨

People often ask that question in the talks I give on personal branding at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Here are 3 actions to get started in sharing your unique value on your LinkedIn profile. You can make them easier to do by tackling one each week.

⭐ CUSTOMIZE YOUR HEADLINE. Don’t let your current job title be the default. Instead, tailor your headline. Focus especially on the initial words. Why? The first 2 to 3 words appear under your name in search and comments. Weave in keywords for skills and accomplishments you want to be known for and found for.

⭐ REFRESH YOUR ABOUT SECTION. Tell your professional story in an engaging way. Share insight into your values and motivations. Let your personality come through. Open with a compelling first line that will encourage people to read more. Add up to 5 skills you want to be known for and found for.

⭐ TURN ON CREATOR MODE. Choose up to 5 relevant content hashtags that will display on your profile. These should reflect your professional interests and expertise, both what you want to be known for and what content topics you post about. Post content that you create or curate at least once or twice a month.

Remember that your LinkedIn profile is a work in progress, just like you and your career. Your profile should change and evolve as you do. And if you don’t like something you’ve changed on your profile, you can simply change it again. Experiment to see what works best.

What do you want to know about building your personal brand?

 

How to Share Your Great Speech on Your LinkedIn Profile

iStock.com/momnoi

Do you give speeches, talks and presentations as part of your work?

Have you wondered where to share them on your LinkedIn profile?

It’s a bit of a conundrum since there isn’t a specific section for speeches and talks at this time. But that gives you options, depending on how much you want to emphasize the speaking you do.

There are a few starting places. You could showcase them in your summary, as part of a specific job, or as a separate job listing as a speaker.

Another option is to use one of the Accomplishments sections. In this area, you can provide content for:

  • Honors & Awards
  • Publications
  • Certifications
  • Projects
  • Patents
  • Test Scores
  • Organizations
  • Courses
  • Languages

At this point in my career, I hope no one would be interested in my GRE or GMAT scores, even if I could remember what they were. I’m still struggling to learn Spanish. And I’m not anticipating a patent any time soon. So test scores, languages and patents are off the table.

But speaking engagements?

In reflecting on this year alone, I realized I’ve given a talk at least once a month – at mentoring circles, at a legal conference, in town hall meetings, at a women’s leadership event, in a video series, at a sales and service center, in a social media podcast, and so on.

My LinkedIn profile was missing this important aspect of my work. In updating it, I discovered some tips that may be helpful to you in determining the best ways to share your own speeches.

A bit of research led me to a decision point between Publications and Projects.

I already had one project, Social Media for Innovation with Michael Ambrozewicz, Thyda Nhek Vanhook and Gerry Ledford. It was a series of case studies and innovation experiments on engaging employees and customers through social media. It was clearly not a speech. So there would be some cognitive dissonance to overcome in including speeches alongside this project.

That’s where the dictionary came in handy.

A publication according to Dictionary.com is “(1) the act of publishing a book, periodical, map, piece of music, engraving or the like; (2) the act of bringing before the public; announcement.”

And publish means to “(1) issue for sale or distribution to the public; (2) issue publicly the work of; (3) submit online, as to a message board or blog; (4) announce formally or officially; (5) make publicly or generally known.”

The sense of bringing something before the public felt analogous to giving a speech and sharing information publicly.

How about a project? It’s “(1) something that is contemplated, devised or planned; (2) a large or major undertaking, especially one involving considerable money, personnel or equipment; (3) a specific task of investigation, especially in scholarship.”

In a stretch, a speech could be considered a project. But to me it feels more like a publication.

And the information fields for both areas in LinkedIn are very similar. One minor difference is a Publication lists an author or authors, and a Project lists a creator or creators. Also, the Project entry lets you identify which specific job or educational degree the work is associated with.

Ultimately it’s up to you which area to choose. The good news is you have options. And perhaps a future LinkedIn update will add a “Presentations” or “Speeches” section to Accomplishments, making this a moot point.

What’s a good way of choosing which speaking engagements to include in your profile? In my case, there were three criteria.

  1. Could it be shared publicly, i.e., was it not confidential or sensitive?
  2. How relevant was it to my current and future work?
  3. Was there a public link to the video or audio?

That’s what led me to add Publications entries with 5 talks so far this year, including as authors the people who interviewed me or produced the segment – Josh Ochs of the Smart Social Podcast, John Stancliffe who rebooted a Women in Technology video series, and Shelley Zalis who founded The Female Quotient.

And I’m excited about a few more talks in the queue.

On Monday, October 29, I’ll moderate a USC Annenberg Facebook live with alumni session on starting your own communications firm. These are learning sessions that Annenberg’s Leticia Lozoya creates a few times each year. In this one, business owners Maggie Habib, Tom Henkenius and Rebecca Meza will share an inside view of how to launch and grow your own company.

I’ve also been approached about giving a TEDx talk in spring 2019, speaking to professional associations, and talking about personal branding for women. The invitations often result from my presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media.

If you want to speak more to develop your career and your reputation as a thought leader in your field, consider adding your speeches to your LinkedIn profile and sharing your expertise through articles and posts.

You may be pleasantly surprised that you’ll be invited to talk about those subjects to audiences you care about.

Where do you share your speeches and talks in your LinkedIn profile?

7 Missed Opportunities in LinkedIn

Are you making the most of your LinkedIn presence?

Don’t overlook these seven often-missed opportunities to increase your effectiveness on LinkedIn.

1. Not completing your profile

The first thing to do in LinkedIn is create a complete profile. Here are great tips on being bold in your LinkedIn profile from the MAKERS Conference.

Be sure to complete every field, until LinkedIn identifies your profile as “all-star.” You don’t have do it all at once. You can set aside time each week to work on one section at a time. Start from the top and work down:

2. Not keeping your profile up to date

Each month, add something new to your profile. Did you start a new job? Take on a new project? Complete a course or a certification? Publish a paper?

If you finished a work project that can be shared publicly, add it to your profile. Maybe it’s a multimedia presentation or a video or a podcast. Just make sure it doesn’t include any company confidential information and that it can be made public.

It was a thrill to see my employer, AT&T, included again on Fortune’s 2018 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. As a proud member of our Employee Engagement Advisory Board to make the company a great place to work for all, I added the company news release to my LinkedIn profile. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)

3. Not customizing your public profile URL

Not personalizing your URL is like using an aol.com email address. It marks you as out of touch and not current.

Customizing your URL gives you a personally branded link to include in event apps where participants share their social media handles, your email signature, your bio if you’re giving a speech, and your resume if you still maintain a separate document from LinkedIn.

This feature uses your name in your LinkedIn URL, rather than a random string of numbers. It will appear like this: linkedin.com/in/yourname or in my case as linkedin.com/in/leachcaroline.

If someone else already has your name, try putting your last name first or adding your middle initial. Make your URL as similar to your other social media handles as you can.

In my case, based on what was available, I use leachcaroline for LinkedIn and Facebook and @caroline_leach for Instagram and Twitter.

4. Not personalizing your professional headline

Right under your name in your LinkedIn profile is your professional headline. It defaults to your current job title. But you can and should change it. Here’s why.

Your headline appears frequently throughout LinkedIn. It’s displayed in search results and when you comment on others’ content.

If you don’t personalize your headline, you’re missing a big opportunity to personally brand yourself.

Here are tips to make the most of your headline by using keywords and benefits statements about you and what you do.

Headlines have been limited to 120 characters. But Wayne Breitbarth shared a new tip about how recent LinkedIn changes benefit you.

If you update your headline in your mobile app (not your desktop), he says, you get 220 characters. As he notes, that 83% more space to tell your story.

5. Not using a background photo

Just as customizing your professional headline helps you better tell your story, so does adding a background photo. This is the photo that appears right above your profile photo.

If you don’t include a customized photo, your profile looks similar to everyone else’s with the standard blue background of connecting points and lines. It doesn’t stand out or attract attention.

Ideally, use a photo you’ve taken yourself that shows the essence of your professional self in an image. Here are other tips on telling your story through your background photo.

6. Not experimenting with content

If you’re not currently sharing updates and articles in LinkedIn, get started by observing what you gravitate toward in your LinkedIn “home” feed. What catches your eye? What makes you want to watch the featured video or click on an article link?

Start to “like” content that reflects your professional interests. Engage further by adding a comment that adds another perspective or asks a follow-up question. When you @mention the author, they’ll be notified of your comment and are more likely to see it and respond it.

Once you’ve done that, you can start experimenting with content of your own. Here are some ideas for sharing an idea, a photo or a video.

I did a month-long experiment to see what would happen when I posted to LinkedIn every weekday for a month. You could experiment by using video, varying types of posts, using different lengths of posts, trying out different hashtags, and so on.

You might be surprised by what you learn, as I was when I dug into my analytics. I learned that posting an inspirational leadership quote along with a striking photo on major holidays rose to the top of my content with the most engagement.

7. Not joining groups

LinkedIn expert Donna Serdoula advises joining the maximum allowed 100 groups, to enhance your visibility. You can follow groups that align with your areas of focus in your career and on LinkedIn.

Beyond that, she takes an interesting contrarian view. Don’t limit your groups to those comprised of colleagues in the same field as you, she advises.

Instead, “think in terms your target audience,” she says in her book on LinkedIn profile optimization. Who do you want to be found by? Recruiters? Colleagues? Potential customers?

Groups are an area I’ll explore in future posts. Why? Recently I posted content in a group and discovered serendipitously a great way to get that content amplified. This will be the topic of my next post, followed by a more detailed exploration of how to make the most of groups.

What other missed opportunities do you see?

Be Bold in Your LinkedIn Profile

What’s one action you can take today to kick-start your career?

Tell a bold story in your LinkedIn profile.

Here are powerful strategies from this month’s MAKERS Conference. LinkedIn career expert Catherine Fisher and Landit CEO Lisa Skeete Tatum led a standing-room-only session on managing your personal brand.

What is a personal brand? The presenters cited Jeff Bezos, who says “your brand is what people say about you when you leave the room.”

To define your brand they asked a key question: what do people want you in the room for? Put another way: what is the best of you?

How you answer these questions will shape the story you tell about yourself in social media and in real life. (And if you’re looking to reinvent your brand, there are great ideas from bestselling author Dorie Clark.)

While a brand – for a corporation, a product or a professional – is built over time, here are actions you can take today for a bolder LinkedIn profile.

They’re from the LinkedIn tip sheet above, along with how I’ve made them work for me. (Opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)

  • Include a professional photo. According to LinkedIn, your profile is 14 times more likely to be viewed if you have a photo. Here’s how to take a great headshot. If you don’t have a high-quality recent headshot, get one done this month.
  • Personalize your headline. Don’t use the default of your current job title. Show what you do and what makes you unique. Look at a variety of headlines for inspiration to see what catches your eye.
  • Add visuals. There are 20 million pieces of content on member profiles. Is your content among those? Post videos and pictures of your best work. Upload relevant presentations that can be shared with the public.
  • Post a compelling summary. Make it 40 words or more. Include keywords for your industry. Read others’ summaries to see what appeals to you. Writing in first person is stronger and bolder than third person.
  • Cover your past work experience. Your profile is 12 times more likely to be viewed if you list more than one position. If you’ve been working for several years, though, you can omit earlier positions that don’t add to your story.
  • Include volunteer experience and causes. This information increases profile views 6 times. If you’re looking for areas to engage, get involved with your company’s philanthropic causes and volunteer opportunities.
  • Check out LinkedIn Learning. We all get to be lifelong learners, and this feature offers hundreds of online courses. It’s a great reason to become a premium subscriber, which I did a few years ago for the analytics.
  • Share your contact information. Make it easy for people to get in touch with you. Include your email address, your blog, your Twitter handle and your company’s website. However, consider omitting your cellphone number.
  • Customize your public URL. Here are easy instructions. For consistent branding, use your name in the URL the same way you use it in other social profiles. Put it on your resume, business card and email signature.
  • Add skills and get endorsements. Be deliberate about skills you list. Your top 3 skill endorsements display in mobile search, so reorder them to show the ones that best tell your story. Give back to your network by endorsing others’ skills.

One of my goals for the MAKERS conference was to meet new people in every session. At the end of each day, I looked them up in LinkedIn. If I only had a first name and a company, I was able to search with that and find the right profile.

Then I sent personalized invitations (don’t send the default invitation!). Now we’re connected and can easily keep in touch as we build on the conference learnings.

How have you been bold in your LinkedIn profile?