Your LinkedIn Presence Reflects on Your Brand

Do I want to do business with this company? Are they thought leaders in their space? Is the owner trustworthy? Are their employees excited to work there?

If your employees are happily sharing company wins on LinkedIn (that’s the bragging I mentioned) it is clear that they are proud of your shared work and that can only improve your brand reputation. How do you get your team more active on Linkedin to increase reach? You set the tone by starting with yourself.

You have probably read many think pieces about your personal brand and know it is important for your overall reputation. How people collectively perceive you is important, and you want to be known for certain things that make you unique. Your personal brand extends to your business, and you want your Linkedn profile and interactions to reflect what you are about. You can easily control this perception by painting the best picture of yourself via your profile.

Here are 10 tips to improve on your LinkedIn personal brand:

1. Take the time to update your account with a current headshot that conveys who you are professionally.
2. Use your masthead background on your profile to showcase your company brand.
3. Make your description clear about what you are an expert of, what your unique value is, not just your professional title.
4. Share what you are passionate about in your “About” section, not just what you “do”. Adding some personal details makes you more relatable and approachable. Are you an avid skier? Foster rescue pups? Go ahead and include that.
5. Update your experience and try not to use robotic language. If you have some press or case studies showcasing your work, link to it in each experience.
6. Add contacts to your “Network” to add some reach. LinkedIn does a great job of suggesting them to you, take advantage. It is ok if you don’t personally know the people, if they are in your industry, they could benefit from connecting with you!
7. Ask a few of your trusted colleagues to write a recommendation for you on your profile and have them endorse some of your skills.
8. Add organizations where you are volunteering to show you care about important causes.
9. Start to engage with your employees and your contacts in your feed. Congratulate wins and add to the conversation. But remember, each time you engage with a post, everyone in your feed sees it. Try to be mindful of what you are “liking” and commenting on. Nothing political or polarizing unless your brand or organization is political.
10. Read up on trends and new best practices on LinkedIn for leadership and try to have one interaction on LinkedIn once a day to increase the frequency of you showing up in feeds.

After you get your profile tip top, work on your company’s LinkedIn profile page and make sure that your description is going to help you with SEO. Start posting as a company at least monthly sharing your work and articles where you are featured. Work your way up to once-a-week so your partners and clients can see what you’re up to on a regular basis. Don’t be afraid to re-post some content that does well engagement-wise. If you are ready to ramp it up to next level thought-leadership content, you can do so with blogging and newsletters.

All of this is a process that you need to keep up with but remembering that this is a free platform where you can attract customers and partners, you can see the value in sinking some time into it.

By increasing your personal LinkedIn presence, future partners and customers will see that you are a leader that wants to learn and interact with others. If nothing else, it shows that you are approachable which is what every trusted business needs: a transparent leader who celebrates the wins of their employees, colleagues and customers.

This simple (and free!) practice is like a dynamic digital business card that can only help increase your connections and leads.

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