Personal Branding on LinkedIn

1. What is personal branding on LinkedIn?
2. Why is LinkedIn suitable for personal branding?
3. 6 Tips for Personal Branding on LinkedIn
4. 3 Don'ts in Personal Branding on LinkedIn
5. How to build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn?
6. What tools are suitable for building a Personal Brand on LinkedIn?
7. Conclusion

Personal branding - a new buzzword, one might think is currently very trendy. However, the fundamental idea of personal branding is by no means new. Personal branding relies on the fact that people trust other people more than product brands or companies, and thus personal brands can enjoy higher trust.

The good thing: Everyone already owns their personal brand. This brand is shaped by the things you are perceived for. Character, hobbies, appearance, interests, everything you consciously or unconsciously reveal to your environment.

The even better part: You can actively shape this perception yourselves. In other words, through active personal branding, you can determine how and for what you want to be seen by others. The digital transformation has opened up numerous additional opportunities for this.

Particularly LinkedIn offers an ideal platform in a professional context to set the agenda for your personal brand. Charlotte Saebsch explains how this works and which tips you should definitely follow in this article.

What is personal branding on LinkedIn?

Personal Branding simply refers to the building of a personal brand. No company or product, but the individual is in the spotlight.

It's not about changing your own personality, but rather about putting your own strengths at the forefront of your personal brand.

The goal is to become visible to a wider public with the respective expertise and passion, as well as with individual achievements and performance. At the same time, the aim is to anchor one's own person in the top-of-mind of the target group. Ideally, your target audience should think of you as an expert and solution provider when certain topics or problems arise.

Transferring personal branding to the digital world can also be understood as managing your own reputation in the online world. A reputation over which you can have control like never before. An image where you can influence how you want to be seen by deciding what, for example, will be revealed about you in your social media profiles.

LinkedIn, as the world's largest business network, also enables its users to appear with their own created content. This created and shared content pays into your personal brand, i.e. your online reputation. You become known for your content through continuous posting and can position yourselves within the LinkedIn network according to your focus topics.

Personal branding on LinkedIn therefore means being perceived for a certain topic through distributed content and thus being sustainably associated with it.

Why is LinkedIn suitable for personal branding?

With almost 830 million monthly users, LinkedIn is the world's largest business network. The trend is rising.

Those who think LinkedIn is only for job seekers are far from correct.

On LinkedIn, recruiters, decision-makers, management, business owners and CEOs alike are found. In theory, anyone can be seen.

If you google your own name and aren't exactly named Max Mustermann, the first Google hit usually leads you to your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is your online face in the business world.

A conscious personal brand build-up on LinkedIn is worth it for everyone.

As an employee in a company, you hardly have the opportunity to underline your expertise internally, or your services often only reach other departments or even higher management through gatekeepers. On LinkedIn, however, it is possible for the CEO to directly read about you, your achievements and your skills.

In addition, it can also be very valuable for your employer from the perspective of Corporate Influencing (as marketing) if you report about professional topics that shape both your personal brand and him as an employer.

And of course, the job market never sleeps. Even if you are not actively looking for the next career step, recruiters or other companies will notice you and may present you with interesting offers without you ever having to write an application.

Self-employed and entrepreneurs can build trust and credibility with their target group through building their personal brand on LinkedIn. This in turn pays off on the sale of products or services. People always trust other people before they trust companies or product brands. With a well-established personal brand, you will rarely have to actively do sales or even "cold calling". Personal branding thus also provides an important foundation for Social Selling on LinkedIn. 

In general, you should build your network and your personal brand before you need it.

Personal branding is not to be understood as a sprint, but as a marathon. It takes time and continuity until it has established what you are experts for.

One point is crucial: Get started.

6 Tips for Personal Branding on LinkedIn

Rock your LinkedIn profile

Before actively starting to shape your personal brand with your own content, you should be sure that the groundwork has been laid. The groundwork in this case is your LinkedIn profile or, in other words, your digital business card.

Just as little as you appear on (business) events in a jogger, should your LinkedIn profile not look hurriedly thrown together, but undergo a profile optimization beforehand.

Be focused

Or better yet, have a focus at all. Before you start, consider what your niche topic should be or what you want to be seen for. Too many topics dilute your personal brand and make it unclear in which area you actually have expert status. Therefore decide beforehand on a positioning that is beneficial for you. This can reflect things that you are particularly good at or a topic area that you are particularly interested in. Of course, your range of services or professional expertise in your job can also be focus topics.

Be yourself

As already mentioned at the beginning, personal branding is not about changing your personality, but rather about making your existing personality visible in a pinpoint manner. Hardly anyone wants to read high-flown press spokesman texts on LinkedIn when it comes to personal profiles. The most important thing about a personal brand? The personality! Show some of it and be authentic within your posts. You will be thanked with trust and reach.

Tell a story

Don't just put your product or service in the store window. Don't just shout 'Here I am and this is what I can do!', but tell the story around it so that the audience can interact with it. People love content that they can identify with, that inspires them or teaches them something. This builds trust and credibility and remains memorable in the long term.

Be consistent

Personal branding is not a sprint, but a marathon. Especially at the beginning, your numbers won't skyrocket as desired. It takes time to build a social network and form a community. Therefore, don't give up too early, but remain consistent in your content planning and posting rhythm.

Find role models

Orient yourself to people who are already where you want to be. Look for already successful personal brands and see what they are doing right.

3 Don'ts in Personal Branding on LinkedIn

Posting without added value

Yes, one can also share posts without added value. For example, by posting that you participated in conference XYZ and it was really great. This post usually doesn't provide any real value for your network. This post only gains value when you share, for example, what your key learnings were at this conference.

Not planning time

Personal branding on LinkedIn is not something that happens on the side. In addition to the time you plan for your own content creation, you should also take time to interact with the content of others. Your comments should also create value for others and can contribute to your personal brand. On average, at least 15 minutes per day should be scheduled for LinkedIn.

Not getting started

Many are of the opinion that they have nothing worth mentioning to report 'Who would be interested in this?' or are afraid of what others will say and therefore don't even start to step into visibility. At the beginning, there will certainly be less reaction, but there will always be someone who is in similar situations, who will be inspired, who will take away added value even if they may not make themselves noticeable.

Not starting and not building a personal brand is a missed opportunity in professional career planning.

How to build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn?

To build a personal brand on LinkedIn, the foundation needs to be right. Your LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile should reveal at first glance in which area you want to position yourselves.

The title picture is a suitable first starting point for this. Don't waste this space. Of course, you can use a suitable photo according to your topic, or your employers may also provide suitable corporate cover pictures. In addition, you can design your cover image yourself with Canva, for example, and cover it with keywords or even a positioning statement.

Just as important as the cover image is of course your profile picture. Here, too, you can set a branding statement by, for example, wearing a striking color or applying a background in a corresponding color. This also creates recognition value and stands out.

Further important sections that you should use are the profile slogan and the selection of hashtags in creator mode. Your expertise and your topic should be immediately visible through this as well.

After the duty comes the freestyle. And this is under the motto: Only those who are visible also exist. In order to be seen as an expert on a topic, one must naturally also prove and demonstrate one's expert status.

Ideally, you think of a sustainable content strategy that continuously pays into your positioning. You should also always pay attention to the resonance with your personal brand when designing your content. A too broad range of topics dilutes your personal brand.

You can find content ideas, if not from your own experiences and experiences, for example in newsletters from your industry, in (online) newspapers, from well-known LinkedIn influencers (e.g. the LinkedIn Top Voices) or also in your network. But don't be a copy cat, but give the contents your own perspective and let your expertise flow into the contribution creation.

In addition to the creation of your own posts, you can also gain visibility by commenting on and interacting with posts in your network. Also here it makes sense to comment on the contributions of others that fit your chosen positioning.

What tools are suitable for building a Personal Brand on LinkedIn?

The nice thing is: in principle, you don't need any additional tools to build your personal brand on LinkedIn.

However, there are some helpful tools that will make your life easier when preparing and planning content.

For those moments when you come up with exciting content ideas or come across interesting articles and newsletters that could later provide a suitable content basis for a post, good idea is to use a note application like Evernote. These make it easier for you to collect, organize and find notes.

Also Notion or Asana can be used very well for notes or for the clear content planning.

Of course, no one is perfect, but especially in a professional context, you don't want to stand out negatively due to spelling mistakes. To check your contributions for typos and commas in advance, applications like LanguageTool are recommended.

In addition, the LinkedIn algorithm is positive towards accompanying media, such as photos or videos.

For cutting videos, you can rely on classic iMovie or other video editing tools.

To visually prepare the content and give it a supporting, visual branding, Canva Pro offers, as a web-based design program, the simplest solution without having to have a great design knowledge.

Conclusion

Building a personal brand on LinkedIn can become a decisive advantage in all hierarchy levels, sectors and professions. Personal branding opens doors and is one of the best investments in a professional career.

Everyone can use and shape personal branding for themselves. You don't need a change of personality, just the courage to step into visibility.