While it’s not as trendy, youthful or quirky as Instagram or TikTok, LinkedIn has a lot of value to offer, especially when it comes to benefiting your business, brand, or personal profile.
LinkedIn used to be viewed as the ideal platform for businesses to scout new talent and likewise the first port of call for job seekers. Over time this powerful platform has expanded its offering which has allowed them to establish themselves as the modern-day professional networking platform. According to LinkedIn, their mission is to “Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”
In this blog, we will explore some of the key features of the platform and how you can best use them to elevate your business, brand, and personal profile to foster a valuable community and potentially engage worthwhile leads.
Elevate your LinkedIn profile
Your business, brand and personal profile is a business card, elevator pitch and mini resume all in one. This is where potential customers or employers will go when they want to learn about your experience and offering. Because of this, it is integral that you get your profile up to date with correct and suitable information stat! Some key areas to focus on when updating our profile include:
1. Your profile picture
Whether that is your brand logo or headshot, having a picture on your profile makes it 14 more times likely to be viewed by others.
It is important to keep in mind specs, formatting, and style too. Ensure that the image is clear and not pixelated and if you are showing your face, use a professional and clear image.
2. Headline
Your headline is the section just below your profile picture. It is important that you don’t just put your job title in here, as this is the primary area employers or business associates will look at when viewing your profile. Expand on this area to let your audience know what you do, how you do it and what drives you to keep succeeding in your role.
3. Summary
If you have skipped past the summary section because you feel like it’s too hard, please go back and revisit it! This is your time to shine, share your story and let people get invested in you, your business, your brand and what you can offer. This is where you can expand on your elevator pitch and really sell your story.
This is only skimming the surface. When it comes to elevating your profile, there is much more you can do, including adding media and applicable documents and updating your education and previous job list. Hopefully, these initial steps will have you feeling inspired to keep going!
Building your connections and community
Another key focus for using LinkedIn is networking! We don’t just mean handing out a virtual business card to people and hoping they contact you in the future. This involves a lot more, including.
1. Connection requests
It is important to keep in mind that you don’t just send connection requests to everyone who is recommended to you on LinkedIn. Treat this like you would a face-to-face business networking event, review their profiles, and if you feel they can benefit your growth and vice versa, then send them a connection request. Follow this up with a personalised message. It is important to ensure you are making valuable connections and not just filling your profile with meaningless relationships that don’t go anywhere.
2. Skills & Endorsements
You can select up to 50 skills to feature on your account which apply to your area of expertise and experience. This can include but is not limited to, skills such as Communication, Growth Marketing, Team Leadership, and Customer Service. Once you have determined your skills, your valuable connections can then endorse these skills, which become visible to anyone who views your profile. You can also head over to your colleagues, customers, and employer’s profiles to endorse their list of skills too! This is a great way to encourage reciprocal endorsements.
3. Recommendations
To take this a step further, you can then provide and receive recommendations. These act as a personal review or mini recommendation letter that will be housed on your profile permanently. Branding expert Samantha Nolan, put it perfectly when saying, “Nothing adds as much credibility to your profile as real-world reviews from people who have worked with you.” The best way to get an endorsement is to offer them to others. Of course, you can always ask colleagues and managers to provide them too, especially if you are moving on from a current role and would like to add further credibility to your profile.
We understand that asking for endorsements and recommendations may feel uncomfortable, but this is the best way to elevate your profile with real-life testimonials to support your body of work. Focus on believing in your experience and abilities, and this will give you to courage to seek support from your community.
Engage and share
If you have built up a valuable audience base, it is now time to start engaging! You can start small as you ease yourself into this stage and build your way up to some more robust content sharing. See some easy steps to begin with below:
1. Sharing images
It has been found by Inc.com, that images will gain up to 6 x times more engagement than text-only content. This means that if you share an original post with an image or reshare a piece of content with a hero image, your content will most likely gain more likes, comments and reposts. Keep in mind that when you are posting, you are sharing things that have meaning to you or your business and furthermore that align with your values.
2. Create your own content
Instead of resharing others’ content, it is vital that you also generate your own content to share and house on LinkedIn. This can be created from a range of ideas, such as staff spotlights, case studies, business wins, or announcements. If your content is of interest and engaging to others, they will feel enticed to comment, like and share on their own accord, giving your brand valuable support and reach.
3. Like and Comment!
When you open LinkedIn, you will be greeted with a newsfeed like Facebook and Instagram. This is where you will see a range of original posts from other professionals and businesses you follow. To ensure you are actively networking and fostering your valuable connections, it is important that you are commenting and liking others’ content too. This can be a simple comment such as “Well done, Dave. Your hard work is valued!” or you can even add a reaction to someone’s post, including actions such as like, support, celebrate, love, insightful and curious.
Now we have given you some easy tools to engage, you can begin to participate in meaningful networking, plus this activity will end up in your audience’s newsfeed, giving you further exposure and keeping your name, brand, or business in the forefront of their mind too.
Once you have completed these steps, your LinkedIn profile will have been given a much-needed lift giving you the opportunity to enhance your brand or business profile. In addition, your audience will be a valuable base of contacts who will genuinely be interested in your offering, giving you further opportunity to generate brand awareness and potentially gain a suite of new customers, clients, and networks.
If you feel you require further support to enhance your LinkedIn presence, please don’t hesitate to reach out and seek our support. Although LinkedIn may not be as popular as Facebook or Instagram, we assure you it’s a great resource, and we’re here to help. The true value of this platform is often underestimated, and we would love to support you in growing your business, brand and personal profile.
To learn more about how LinkedIn can benefit your business, read this blog.
