So, you've upgraded your LinkedIn profile and have taken the first steps toward building your presence, but how is your brand stacking up? LinkedIn is only as lucrative a tool as you make it, so before you can expect a booming social media presence, you need to boost your brand on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn marketing is the strategic use of the LinkedIn platform to build your professional brand, generate leads, and establish authority in your industry. Effective marketing on LinkedIn offers several benefits to boost your brand:
- Optimizing your profile for SEO
- Adapting and updating your profile regularly
- Making your profile public to increase visibility
- Building a solid professional network
- Personalizing connection requests to improve acceptance rates
- Creating a custom URL for brand recognition
These strategies can significantly enhance your brand presence and networking opportunities on the platform.
SEO
SEO and branding go hand-in-hand. If you don't have your SEO basics down yet, then that's where you should start. SEO isn't just for Google, after all. All big social media platforms have their own built-in search engines, and if you want to build a brand on those platforms successfully, you should treat their internal search engines as you do Google or Bing.
To remind you of the basics, figure out your keywords, and include them in your profile (especially in your job title and headline), but don't overdo it. Keep things short and straightforward.
There's much more to SEO than keywords, but that's where you should start. You can find more on SEO in our previous blog on the topic.
It's a Work in Progress… Forever!
You need to understand that to have a successful brand on LinkedIn, everything is in motion. Industries go up and down, trends come and go, and behaviors and algorithms change. You must always adapt to your industry's present realities, your personal brand, and the LinkedIn platform. If you succeed in your brand-building project, the worst thing you could do is sit on your laurels. The only way to stay ahead is to put effort into staying on top of things. The moment you get lazy, you lose!
This means you will be constantly updating your LinkedIn profile. Key areas to regularly refresh include:
- Rewriting your summary to reflect new goals and skills.
- Updating your profile picture for a current, professional look.
- Redoing your skills list and seeking relevant endorsements.
- Performing a yearly cleanup of outdated endorsements.
- Posting status updates and adding new achievements to your experience section.
Your LinkedIn profile needs to take on a life of its own and keep up with the shifts and changes in your industry.
Make Sure Your Profile is Public
After putting effort into building a killer profile to boost your brand on LinkedIn, it would be a shame to keep it private. You need to have a public profile so that anyone can access your page, regardless of whether they are connected with you. Potential employers, clients, and employees can all find you through LinkedIn, but they can only do so if your profile is public. This is a straightforward setting change that could cost you opportunities if overlooked, so ensure your profile visibility is set to public.
I'd only recommend having your profile private if you decide to make substantial changes and are concerned about your profile looking unpolished for a day or two. If you're giving your page a makeover, you can always set your profile to private for a day or two (try not to do more than that), and once you're sure everything is in place, put it back to the public.
All Connections Are Good Connections
When building your brand on LinkedIn, you should generally accept any connection request you receive. It does not matter if the person is a stranger or if you think they are irrelevant to your field. LinkedIn connections do not always need to be immediately helpful; the long-term goal is building a broad network. You might be introduced to a valuable contact through a connection you initially thought was unhelpful. At the very least, it adds to your reach, which never hurts. You never know when an opportunity might appear and who will bring it to you.
This doesn't mean you have to force yourself to accept all connections. If an account is a bot, scam, or fake, you shouldn't bother with it. Also, if one of your connections ends up harassing you, you shouldn't feel obliged to keep them in your connections because of some brand-building strategy.
Just as you should be liberal in accepting connection requests, you should also take more freedom in making connection requests yourself. You don't want to make requests to anyone; that would be exhausting. However, if there are people in your industry who would be valuable connections, you should reach out to them. One of the most significant parts of building a solid brand is surrounding yourself with valuable people.
If you're making connection requests, you want to avoid being lazy with them. Personalizing your requests is the best way to ensure they are taken seriously instead of ignored. If you want to have someone in your network, research them, figure out how to approach them and personalize your request message to be specific to them. Personalizing your first message will increase the chances of that person accepting your request and make it easier to begin a conversation with them after they enter your connections.
Make a Custom URL
Creating a custom URL is an easy step you should not overlook when building your brand on LinkedIn. A LinkedIn custom URL is a personalized web address for your profile that replaces the default algorithmic characters that appear after "linkedin.com/in/". Setting a clean, custom URL is a subtle way to make your profile more professional, memorable, and accessible. For example, if Thomas Edison’s custom LinkedIn URL is set to "/in/Thomas-Edison," people can find him directly by typing the URL instead of searching. This is a small, one-time change that adds a professional touch.
Try your best to get your name as your custom URL. Try incorporating your job title or specialization if "Thomas-Edison" isn't available. Whatever makes you stand out and unique from other Thomas Edisons. Maybe try "Thomas-Edison-Light," or "Thomas-Edison-Inventor." Anything memorable while still simple will do just fine.
If you add your title or profession in your URL, update it if you change fields or start something new. You can change your URL once every 30 days, so double-check before committing to one.
As you can see, I've been using dashes instead of other symbols like underscores for my examples. Search engines read dashes as spaces, so it's best to use dashes since it's more likely that your LinkedIn will come up if someone searches "Thomas Edison" in Google if you use dashes rather than underscores.
Leave a Comment
Have thoughts on this article?
Share your feedback, ask questions, or join the discussion with our community.