LinkedIn Personal Branding is an essential part of Businesses that want to grow quickly and sustain themselves through the Networking space. Networking is essentially building mutually beneficial relationships with those individuals who are very similar to yourself (hence, networking). This helps to build credibility and reputation, as well as establish an image of expertise and authority. As such, the personal branding strategy within LinkedIn consists of creating content and engaging in conversation with others in your field.
Social Media Branding – A Modern Necessity
You can easily build your LinkedIn personal branding on almost any platform: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Google+ among other platforms. While there certainly are no hard and fast rules saying that LinkedIn is the sole platform to use for this kind of branding, here are some good reasons why so many individuals do this: First, LinkedIn is very popular among business professionals. The platform has close to 756 thousand active users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, including 90 million registered LinkedIn Influencers. This is not to say that everyone you meet on LinkedIn will become an immediate subscriber to your network, but it is a safe assumption that most of your audience members will be linked in one way or another to LinkedIn.
The Influence Of Google
Secondly, if you want to use LinkedIn for your own personal branding, you have access to arguably the biggest search engine on the planet: Google. While Google is certainly not perfect, it is the second largest search engine behind Yahoo. Therefore, if you want your brand to appear in Google, you need to make sure you are logged in and making the effort to connect with those LinkedIn contacts that are linked to you via the social network. The third reason why most businesses choose to participate on LinkedIn and YouTube is because they both offer huge audiences and easy methods of connecting with other influencers.
YouTube, on the other hand, is not as well-known as LinkedIn, but it does have its uses. If you are not connected to a LinkedIn contact, then YouTube can provide you with a great way to establish personal branding. You can create a YouTube channel that is tightly linked to your channel on LinkedIn and invite your Facebook, Twitter, and other social network friends to contribute to your new channel. By encouraging your audience to engage with you and visit your channel, you can increase the reach of your brand. By attracting enough viewers to your video, you can increase your presence, build trust, and expand your target market. All of these strategies will help you to establish an identifiable online personal brand that is strongly linked to your business.
Free To Use
The fourth reason to consider YouTube for your online personal branding efforts is that this platform is free for anyone to use. You can upload and share your content with anyone in the world, regardless of their connection to LinkedIn. In fact, there is no limit on the number of people who can sign up for your account, so long as they meet the requirements. YouTube is also a great place to showcase your content to your audience. By providing your audience with creative ways to interact with your content, you can encourage them to engage with you on a deeper level.
In addition to leveraging the reach of YouTube to reach a global audience, another benefit of using this platform for your LinkedIn personal branding strategy is that it allows you to put a face to your name. As a professional business owner, your business identity is often your most important asset. A large portion of your company’s reputation is built by the audience that engages with your brand. YouTube, however, tends to be more casual than other websites. When you are posting your videos on this site, you need to remember to provide your audience with context. The information you share with your audience should be helpful and educational, but you should avoid using profanities or offensive language when doing so.
Sharing The Right Content
When you begin using LinkedIn for your personal branding, you can also leverage the social media platform to share educational and motivational content on a daily basis. In addition to posting updates on your professional profile, you can also begin to share links to engaging videos and articles that are related to your industry. You can use this video and article links in advertisements or on your website to help add value to your site. The more that you are able to incorporate content that helps to enhance the experience that your target employers have when visiting your website, the better chance you have of increasing your credibility within your industry.
For many business owners, the benefits of social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter outweigh the benefits of creating a personal branding strategy. LinkedIn allows you to add value to your target organizations while simultaneously building your online presence. Twitter is a powerful tool for social media influencers as well, providing you with the ability to reach a wide range of potential customers from across the globe. While you may not be able to completely duplicate the successful strategies that online influencers are utilizing on LinkedIn, you can learn what makes them effective and incorporate those strategies into your own strategy.