LinkedIn: 10 features that make it the best friend of your personal branding
LinkedIn comes into every conversation that I happen to have on personal branding. And every time I am asked advice about social media marketing and personal branding, the discussion always includes LinkedIn because not all social networks have the same influence and the same credibility. It is the place to meet people, share content, create business relationships and consolidate your image: currently there is no more powerful tool for business networking.
Allow me to quote a definition by Mirko Saini, a leading expert on LinkedIn in Italy, who speaking about social media in an interview for the company stated: “LinkedIn is built to give maximum importance to our “professional self”. Objectively, there is no social where you can find the same tools in LinkedIn exclusively dedicated to the story of who we are as professionals. It is all that is needed to tell the story of our work identity.”
Let me start this fourth part of the mini guide on LinkedIn and personal branding by introducing some facts that I hope are a push to start to use it more actively and with more enthusiasm for your personal branding:
- LinkedIn has more than 380 million users from over 200 countries *.(* http://www.statista.com/statistics/274050/quarterly-numbers-of-linkedin-members/ )
- LinkedIn is considered the most effective social media for lead generation and B2B content distribution.
- Over 40% of LinkedIn members access their profile every day.
LinkedIn initially was considered little more than a resume online but quickly became a rich, customizable, multi-faceted platform of personal branding. In this article I will therefore help you discover various functions that LinkedIn offers you and make you understand why it is currently the best tool for personal branding on the web.
This social network carries out various roles for you, working on your behalf even when you’re not active. We can say that LinkedIn is your agent, your recruiter, your mentor, your teacher, seller and more. Now let’s analyze the 10 essential functions that LinkedIn performs for you:
- It is your agent.LinkedIn makes you visible to decision makers and those who are looking for exactly the services you offer. Filled with the right keywords, your LinkedIn profile connects you with the people who really need your services, and will help you to be found. Do you want to take advantage of all potential opportunities on the web? LinkedIn allows you to be in the right place at the right time!
- It is your representative 24/7.Your LinkedIn profile is you even when you’re not there! It represents the best of your ability and your potential even when you are not physically connected. If someone does Google searches, he or she is likely to end up on your page or profile on LinkedIn. This is because when someone searches for your name, LinkedIn will in most cases appear in the top results in the SERP – your profile will therefore be the most useful and important resource for information on you!
- It is your personal website and blog.LinkedIn allows you to present your professional experience and your skills and express your personality through the posts you write. The manner and style in which you write the summary, the shared content in your activity feed, the groups you belong to and the conversations that you hold, all of this helps to strengthen your personal brand. There are even ways to export your LinkedIn content within sites that can be considered as your personal website. Services like ResumUP and com using data loaded on LinkedIn as a base to build a mini site with all your info.
- It is your portfolio.With LinkedIn you can paint a self-portrait in 3D of what you can do, your skills, your personality and the services you offer. Once completely text-based, LinkedIn now allows you to integrate images, documents and videos to customize it to the fullest. You can then turn it into a true multimedia portfolio that shows who you are, what you have to offer, case studies of your customers and why people should choose your services.
- It is your applause.By enabling your community to appreciate and applaud your successes, LinkedIn provides feedback and social validation for everything you say about yourself. The awards will help to confirm your strengths and your skills. Recommendations and testimonials are very important to test skills learned and value provided in the roles you have played.
- It is your teacher and mentor.It helps you to learn and grow. LinkedIn Pulse helps you stay up to date on topics that interest you and news as well as allows you to follow the influencers who inspire you. The groups also allow you to stay informed about relevant issues and current affairs, helping to build relationships with people who could guide you in your career decisions.
- It is your HR manager.LinkedIn not only helps others to find you, but helps you to find the right people for open positions in your company. If you’re looking for staff, LinkedIn is one of the first tools to use to find potential candidates. You can understand much more a person from his LinkedIn profile than his paper resume.
- It is your seller.Because LinkedIn allows you to show your achievements, post your articles and express your skills, it offers many opportunities to be seen and contacted and, if it is well connected to your site or to your e-commerce, there is the opportunity to sell directly without having ever searched for customers. In addition, if you are looking for new clients or potential business partners, having a complete and convincing profile can make a difference. I suggest you use groups and the connections that you have to identify and create possible work synergies.
- It is a system of contact management.LinkedIn allows you to organize and manage all your contacts. You can add e-mail address and phone numbers for all LinkedIn connections – thanks to tagging, you can group your contacts and communicate with them by category.
- It is your search tool.If you have to do research in a new field, see who are the experts in a specific field, or know more about a particular company or product, LinkedIn provides a wealth of knowledge, content, information and analytical tools that can be extremely useful.
As you have seen so far, this resource offers ten key tools to improve, develop and consolidate your personal branding but these are just some of the tasks that this social network can do for you. As I said in one of the previous articles, I assure you that spending a bit of time on LinkedIn each day will pay off with big results. I encourage you to spend at least fifteen minutes a day to explore, experiment, share and expand your network via LinkedIn.
You won’t want to miss the next article which will be dedicated to helping those who already have a PMI or are CEO of a company to understand what the benefits of LinkedIn are from the corporate perspective and why it is good to educate employees on how to care for their personal branding.
If you like our ideas and are interested in learning more on personal branding for yourself or for your sma
ll business, if you want to learn to rely on your talents and improve your image, if you want to see firsthand our strategies and their results, if you want to be supported by a whole team dedicated to you that will help you bring out the best in you and really express your talent as you deserve, make an appointment with us for a free consultation and soon you’ll have the tools to soar. Fill out the Contact form on the home page, follow us on our Facebook Page Stand Out Communication and on our Twitter profile StandOutAgency to become part of our community dedicated to Personal Branding.
AUTHOR: Veronica Penzo – ( Twitter: LadyBitterHoney )
From a young age, used to playing with foreign children, with the desire to become friends with them, I thought: “the mind is not made to communicate in only one language! ” That’s why I chose to travel, to study 5 foreign languages, and to examine communication in all its forms, from PNL to verbal and non-verbal language! I decided to grow these passions for language and for people, first in international TV journalism working with NBC News, then in a communication field even more current: the web and mobile. I have therefore become an expert on all the major social networks, and am up-to-date on all topics of webmarketing, social ads, lead generation, neuromarketing and personal branding.
A social media influencer on Twitter and Instagram, I am now leading the social media management for Stand Out and HRD Training Group and I write and coordinate the Stand Out blog.