How to Grow your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

Looking to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn? You’ve come to the right place.

Just to address the elephant in the room, “everyone has a story worth telling” – something our friend Christine Gritmon said again and again.

On LinkedIn, you have the potential to get thousands of views from day 1, all without spending a penny. What other platform has that kind of potential right now?

Plus, LinkedIn previews seven new features coming in 2023, including improved video accessibility, updates to job search, post scheduling, and content analytics.

With these easy-to-follow steps, you can create and cultivate a personal brand that will help you stand out from the crowd and make meaningful connections with potential employers, colleagues, and beyond.

Learn how to set up a profile that gets seen, network like a pro and more!

Define your LinkedIn goals

Setting better goals for yourself on LinkedIn can help you make the most of your time and energy invested.

• Take some time to identify why you are on the platform, what value you provide and what you hope to get out of it.
• Prioritise the activities that will help move you closer to your goal, and set realistic targets that are tailored to achieve these objectives.
• Recognise successes when they come, celebrate small wins and be mindful of where improvements need to be made in order to reach greater success.

What about my audience?

If you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no-one.

Personal branding isn’t about trying to plaster your name on every corner of the internet. It’s about starting small and growing intentionally. Before you hit “post” you need to be clear on who your target audience is.

Those insights form the core messages you want to be sharing with your followers. It’s much better to be missed by a small group than forgotten by a big one. Think tiny tribe over an enormous audience. Yes, building a personal brand takes time.

Who are you looking to reach on LinkedIn?

First, remember that tour profile isn’t a digital CV. It’s a landing page that’s geared towards your audience.

In fact, the problems they face and the value you deliver should be weaved into your title, summary and experience.

A 3-step LinkedIn strategy to grow your personal brand

You can think of your LinkedIn strategy as 3 distinct parts.

• Boosting Your Profile
• Optimising Your Content
• Growing Your Network

They need to be done in that order too. For example, you can’t bring people into your network without an optimised profile or content to show them, and similarly your content won’t be anywhere near as effective without a thought-out profile to send them to.

Showing up consistently is half the battle

To get the most out of LinkedIn, showing up and engaging consistently is half the battle. For example, just a few minutes each day devoted to replying to comments, DMs and connection requests can help you build an engaged audience and develop your personal brand.

• If you are just starting out, consistency is key. In fact, you only need to spend a few minutes each day engaging and sharing some of your own insights.

• More experienced users should break down their LinkedIn usage into manageable tasks. For instance, replying to comments, DMs and connection requests. Finding a time slot of 5-10 minutes for each task during the day will help keep your head above water.
• Posting content early in the working day can also help increase its visibility. With these tips, you can boost the potential of your personal brand on LinkedIn!

Why engagement matters on LinkedIn

Expanding your network can feel like a all-consuming task. You’ve posted the content, and that’s the part that matters… right? Not quite.

The fact is, engaging with your audience is part of the process. Especially, when you are looking to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn. You probably wouldn’t buy from someone you’ve only heard of once, so why expect the same result on LinkedIn?

Relationship building takes time, and LinkedIn is no different.

Plus, it’s wrong to assume you can get results purely with the audience created on YOUR content. For example, you need to be intentional about going to THEIR profiles, and engaging with your audience’s content too.

Engaging with someone else’s content implies your respect for them, and increases the chances that they’ll care about what you do too.

LinkedIn misconceptions when building a personal brand

LinkedIn is much more than a job board

For many, the power of LinkedIn is often overlooked and underestimated.

In December 2022, there were around 34.9 million LinkedIn users in the United Kingdom, up from 34.8 million in the previous month. LinkedIn user numbers have steadily grown throughout 2022. Needless to say, it’s an invaluable tool for anyone wanting to build a successful personal brand.

Cashing in on its unlimited potential without spending a penny is well within your grasp!

Get creative and make use of organic strategies to reach your target audience, build engagement, and ultimately gain more interest in what you can offer. Don’t miss out on the amazing opportunities that this platform has to offer.

We should only connect with peers

Professionals often spend too much time looking to connect with people who see the world in a similar way, and share the same opinions.

This can be dangerous because it can trap you in an ideological echo chamber where your opinion becomes more “valuable”, making it difficult to understand other points of view.

Empathy is key for professional success and having the capacity to understand different perspectives will help you to progress and stay competitive in your field.

Setting better goals on LinkedIn will help guide you on this journey, so take time to identify what you want to achieve and set realistic targets to reach them.

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