With the influx two months ago of $53 million and a membership roster of over 25 million professionals, LinkedIn is the online business networking place to be, especially for executives.
Even John McCain has a LinkedIn profile.
For a step-by-step guide to leveraging your personal brand and LinkedIn to spread your unique message wider and faster, go to Luke Harvey-Palmer’s post “LinkedIn, Your Personal Brand and creating more buzz!” on his blog, The Chief Brand Officer.
He shares the “40 things you must do on LinkedIn to build your Personal Brand”.
Another point I can add to his list is regularly refreshing the “What are you working on?” feature at the top of your profile. This is a great way to keep you top of mind with your LinkedIn network.
I don’t entirely agree with his point #9 – “Don’t just post up your resume” for your profile. If you have a standard, flat executive resume, he’s right. It probably won’t ignite much interest in you.
Once you’ve crafted a vibrant, brand-focused executive resume along with collateral career marketing documents (leadership initiatives brief, executive career bio, etc.), you’ll have just about all you’ll need to create an on-brand, high-impact LinkedIn profile.
Your value proposition statement should go directly under your name (the first thing people will read about you) and your brand statement should lead your summary section.
With LinkedIn’s high Google Page Rank, your profile will land within the top few results of a Google search on “your name”. Your value prop statement will come up with your name – a powerful first impression to attract recruiters and hiring decision makers who are vetting candidates.
I can tell you from personal experience that, once you have a smart, branded LinkedIn profile in place, people will be drawn to you. When I first joined LinkedIn, I put together a perfunctory profile, then forgot about it and didn’t get any action.
When I came back to it and powered up and branded my profile, I started getting buzz within a week or so. People I didn’t know, within my executive target audience, began approaching me to join their networks. These are people who probably wouldn’t have found me otherwise.
Related posts:
Get LinkedIn and Attract Recruiters and Hiring Decision Makers to Your eBrand
LinkedIn and Blogging, Cohorts in Personal Branding and Executive Job Search
Luke,
Thanks for commenting and for your kind words.
Keep making your blog the kind of place I like to return to.
Meg
Meg, great to see your thoughts on the post! Appreciate your feedback around point #9 – maybe more of my clients need to be spending time with you prior? Keep up the great work…