How Can I Use LinkedIn To Grow My Business & Brand?

LinkedIn Expert & Speaker Based In Denver, Colorado.

When you’re jumping into LinkedIn for your business, you need to start thinking about it from a personal branding strategy perspective.  When you approach your LinkedIn experience like you do branding, it begins to make more sense and it makes it easier to know what to do with this social media platform.

Branding Foundations

In order to do proper branding, you need to do a branding study, create a logo, create a tagline, build a website, print business cards, and produce marketing materials.  These are all foundational pieces that allow you to properly inform the public about your brand.

LinkedIn foundations include fleshing out your profile from the pictures (you HAVE to have a picture) to your summary to your relevant work experience.  Then, go the extra step to include volunteer efforts, portfolio items, and other pieces of media.  The next step in building foundations on LinkedIn is connecting with the people you know.  Once you have built out these steps, you can focus on growing your exposure through new connections, groups, posts, and interactions.

Consistency

Think about your business branding.  You create a logo with certain colors and fonts to have a specific tone.  Good branding means that you stay consistent with that logo and color and fonts whether you are putting your logo on a mug, on your business card, or on your website.

The same is true on LinkedIn.  You want to make sure you are consistent with your message in what you say, your profile picture, your posts, and your interactions.  Everything you post onto your profile or onto your updates needs to have that filter of consistency with who YOU are.

Consistency Of Posting

One of the key rules of branding is to put your brand wherever you can, whether it’s on a blimp or faded on the corner of a picture you post.  Customers rarely convert on the first interaction, therefore you need to connect with them 5-7 times or more, to continually remind them of your brand and their need for your brand.

On LinkedIn this translates into constantly staying in front of your audience.  You can do this through REGULAR updates, publishing posts, liking, commenting, and sharing others’ content.

Do Good

We all love brands that give back, right?  Most companies have some sort of charity they support to give back to the community.  Often this gives positive morale to the connotation of that brand.   Let’s apply that to LinkedIn; you can see it in recommendations and endorsements.  You can help others out by endorsing them for specific skills, or going a step further and giving written testimonials.  I always strive to give more recommendations than I actually receive.  Usually when I give a recommendation, that person will reciprocate and give one back.  I love these tools because they are more social proof that I know what I’m talking about, and they have more depth because it took a few minutes to write out those thoughts.

Build The Relationship

People do business with those they know, like, and trust.  LinkedIn is a great place to start those relationships, but you need to find ways to take them a step further.  Joining and interacting in Groups are great ways to interact with current and new connections.  Creating custom messages when you ask to connect, or respond with a personalized message after you connect with someone are both great ways to go a little deeper.  Look for specifics that you have in common, as it shows that you actually read their profile and care about getting to know them!

Ultimately, you want to look for ways to take the relationship offline if possible and when it makes sense.  If someone is local to you, go meet them for coffee.  If they aren’t local, hop on a phone call, video meeting, or live streaming session to get to know each other a little more.  Go check out their website and other social media profiles to learn more about them.

 

As you begin to approach LinkedIn with the filter that it is a tool for branding yourself, or you as an agent of your brand, you can start to see the immense power that is behind LinkedIn.  Branding is just as important on social media as it is on your website and business cards.  Don’t let this great opportunity to brand yourself get away!

Homework Assignment:

  1. Go give one person a recommendation today.
  2. Go walk through the list of business cards and list of people in your social circles and make sure you’re connected to them on LinkedIn.
  3. Download the app to make it easy-peasy to stay connected on LinkedIn on the go.