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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Sandra Long
Read between
April 27 - July 30, 2022
Your LinkedIn profile is your best opportunity to presell yourself for any professional occasion.
Thought leadership is the new marketing. Consider sharing your expertise to open up new industry opportunities. If you’re collaborating within your industry or want to become known as an expert, as a thought leader, or as a speaker, then LinkedIn is essential to you as well.
Who will be reading your profile page? And what do you want to have happened as a result of him or her reading your profile?
Let’s review the benefits of using LinkedIn for your personal branding: 1.Increased sales, recruiting, or consulting opportunities 2.Acceleration of your career 3.Improved speaking or teaching opportunities 4.Leadership and board opportunities 5.Partnering opportunities 6.Enhanced credibility and name recognition
Personal branding is actively managing your image and defining your unique value. It incorporates your digital and in-person presence and impacts your prospect’s impressions of you, your career, and your business.
You may have heard about the concept of “creating a personal brand,” but in all reality, you want to be true to yourself, your skills, and your personality. It’s more about showing or demonstrating your best genuine self than creating anything new. You don’t want to be creating a false impression or presence.
Tom Peters wrote “The Brand Called You” in 1997 for Fast Company. Peters says: “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”
In addition to experience and skills, personal branding may incorporate your personality, passion, drivers, values, and vision.
Make sure your profile leaves someone thinking, “I want to know more!” or “I have to meet this person as soon as possible!” or “We need that type of person on our team!”
Transform any weak language to verbs, achievements, and accomplishments.
Make sure your previous positions are written in the past tense. Your current experience should be written in the present tense.
Your thought leadership brand. Are you a speaker or presenter? Consider uploading videos and presentations to your personal profile or as a home feed post. Consider creating LinkedIn articles or posts. Creating or sharing content is one of the most powerful ways to share your expertise and personal brand. (See content chapters 14-20.)
Generous leadership. Recommend and endorse employees and partners when appropriate. This action is an excellent reflection of your leadership brand and values.
If you sit by the sidelines and wonder why LinkedIn isn’t working, it’s because you probably need to actively participate to a higher degree.
Use LinkedIn for relationship building, sharing expertise, and starting conversations. Once you are active and helpful, you can expect the following to happen as a natural outgrowth: •Introductions and referrals •Likes and comments on your posts •Sales and career opportunities
Here are just a few recommendations: •Always add a personal note with your invitations to connect •Write a recommendation without being asked •Authentically endorse someone after they helped you or offered advice or just because you were thinking of them •Send a charming message with a link to an article they are interested in •Create valuable and helpful content •Congratulation and @-mention someone who achieved something new •Comment and start a conversation on your friend’s post or article •Send an audio or video message to a new connection
Content leads to conversations, which in turn lead to collaborations, sales, interviews, and partnering.
Consider creating or curating content that: •Addresses pain points, or answers frequently asked questions from prospects or current clients •Provides your unique perspective on a typical buyer’s standard problems or issues •Educates your connections with a helpful step-by-step tutorial, detailed graphic, or handy checklist •Helps prospects make a mindset shift by overcoming a limiting belief •Discusses industry trends, opportunities, or issues •Shares lessons learned
Consider creating or curating content that: •Addresses pain points that employers are likely experiencing, with helpful suggestions in which you have some demonstrated expertise •Displays your learning journey •Highlights significant opportunities for your industry •Discusses industry trends or issues •Shares stories of how you overcame adversity in a business-related environment
Ask yourself: is this mention serving the other person or me?
According to Wordstream, 59 percent of executives say they would rather watch a video than reading text.
Answer common questions often asked by prospects
If you’re going to dive into the LinkedIn video scene, start by noticing, viewing, and interacting with active creators to get a sense of current best practices.
Use these fantastic poll opportunities to ask relevant questions that your network will WANT to answer. For the most leverage, a poll should be compelling to the reader and also tie into your personal brand, voice, and expertise.
Five Benefits of Blogging on LinkedIn 1.Enhance your thought leadership brand. Writing on LinkedIn builds your brand as a thought leader. The topics you select are a direct tie to you and your work. LinkedIn Articles provide you the opportunity to create and display a portfolio or body of work. Articles become your long-term evergreen brand asset. And now, you can highlight them on the Featured section of your profile. 2.Expand your visibility. As your friends and colleagues like and comment on your article, your more extensive second- and third-level connected network will become exposed to
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Select the right headline for your post. Here are three great reasons: Your potential readers will immediately notice your headline, so you want to make it enticing to read and like. Your headline and image are viewable on your LinkedIn personal profile. And finally, your headline is searchable by Google. 4.Incorporate great images. Add a header image that pops and ties into your blog post. Also, consider adding multiple images within the article.
Offer congratulations, write recommendations, and endorse liberally!
