It’s fair to say that LinkedIn is a hugely powerful business tool. With over 720 million users across the world, it’s the biggest professional networking platform available today – giving people the ability to forge relationships, share updates, recruit employees and more at the touch of a button. It’s no wonder that so many individuals use it to aid their professional growth.
While the benefits of the platform are undeniable, it can be tricky to master LinkedIn personal branding. Not only do you need the know-how, but if you’re constantly on the go with work, you may find it hard to make time to perfect your profile and build a strong network of like-minded individuals.
That’s why we’ve put together this handy guide of LinkedIn personal branding tips that you can use quickly and easily with your cell phone, tablet or laptop. So, whether you have a spare half-hour on board our aircraft or you’re waiting for your flight, you can take steps towards building a strong and effective LinkedIn profile.
No matter what industry you work in, it’s essential to create an engaging profile that showcases the need-to-know information about you, your job and your skills. Not only will this position you as an important contributor in your field, but it will also help you appeal to potential clients, business partners and colleagues. Firstly, make sure you upload a professional profile picture – avoiding images that are pixelated or too zoomed out. You should also write an engaging personal brand statement on LinkedIn that captures what you do, some of your biggest successes and any future goals you have.
After this, add your valuable skills to your profile – be it people management, data analysis, property development or anything else. You can also include past jobs that were integral to your professional development and any educational milestones you’ve achieved, like a college diploma. Showing your key skills, career to date and education is key for LinkedIn personal branding, as it gives people an insight into what you have to offer as soon as they visit your profile. Plus, these updates can be done quickly while you’re on the go with work, by simply logging on via your cell or computer.
One of the best ways to get real value from LinkedIn is to build a strong network of professionals. This can help to unlock a huge amount of fantastic opportunities for your personal development, like receiving invites to conferences, getting tips and tricks from influential individuals and building relationships with important clients or customers. The key to networking effectively on LinkedIn is to make smart connections, for instance with high achievers in your industry. A good place to start is connecting with people you know through work, including colleagues and clients.
You may also want to connect with people you went to high school or college with, who share your interests or took a similar career path to you. This is because they may have useful advice you could benefit from, future business opportunities or new roles that may interest you later down the line. Another way to grow your network is to join relevant LinkedIn groups, where you can have discussions with other professionals in your industry. This can help you to network on a nationwide and international scale, which may just help you take your LinkedIn branding (and your career) to the next level.
Once you’re happy with your profile and have started building a solid community, you should think about how to market yourself on LinkedIn through posts, discussions and messaging. What you share is a hugely important part of LinkedIn branding and should reflect who you are as a professional. For this reason, the best content will very much depend on your individual goals – but may include things like tips to position yourself as an industry expert, helpful advice for your fellow colleagues or exciting updates from your company.
If you’re keen to showcase your achievements and skills to potential clients or business partners, you may want to post about big successes you’ve had recently. Or, if your main objective is to raise awareness of your start-up business, you may want to share regular updates about your products or services. The most important thing is to prioritize quality over quantity, sharing content that will stand out from the crowd and impress your community. This means that it’s 100% achievable to market yourself on LinkedIn without investing huge amounts of time on the platform.
Hopefully, these LinkedIn personal branding tips have given you plenty of inspiration on how to improve your profile while you’re on the go. From making connections with professionals to writing personal brand statements on LinkedIn, each of these tasks can be completed whenever you have some time to spare.
Here at VistaJet, we know that busy professionals need to make the most of all the time they have, which is why we make our aircrafts a relaxing and inviting environment to work in. When you book a business trip on one of our private jets, you can enjoy spacious facilities, onboard WiFi and peaceful meeting rooms that are ideal for catching up on LinkedIn. Whether you want to connect with a meeting attendee or share an exciting company update during your journey, you can do so in the utmost comfort while we get you from A to B.
If you’d like to speak to our team about your next business trip, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.