Creating Clarity Newsletter #014
Later today, I’ll be speaking in front of an audience at a conference for the first time in two years. The topic is how to grow your brand using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is an excellent place for individuals and brands to raise brand awareness and build an audience with the right strategy. During the presentation, I will highlight the three strategies you need to focus on to find success on LinkedIn.
- Connection
- Cohesiveness
- Consistency
While these three strategies might seem obvious, most people won’t implement them because they can’t be automated using 3rd party extensions or tools. However, if you do implement these strategies, your brand will reap the rewards for years to come.
Connection.
At its core, LinkedIn is about making connections. To take full advantage of LinkedIn’s potential, you need to consider it a social networking site where you can build connections and relationships. It helps to keep these three things in mind.
1 Your LinkedIn profile (company page) may be about you, but it is NOT for you.
For your profile to be effective, it needs to reflect the objectives and obstacles your customers face. So instead of talking about what you did, you need to talk about how you help.
2 Your customers (prospects) are selfish.
When a customer first visits your profile (company page, website, marketing materials, etc.), they do not care about you or how long you’ve been in business. Instead, they care about themselves and the obstacles they are facing.
3 You need outward-facing messaging.
When you look at LinkedIn as a resume, your messaging will be inward-facing, meaning it’s all about you. It’s hard for people to understand how you can help them when you only talk about yourself. Your messaging needs to speak to your prospects.
The quickest way to start creating outward-facing messaging is to replace these words, I, me, my, we, our, and ours, with you, your, and yours. Do this, and your messaging will start speaking to the selfish side of your prospects.
Cohesiveness
Your LinkedIn profile will be the first thing that comes up in a Google search for your name for many people. You can leverage this to create a cohesive brand by connecting your LinkedIn activities with your external brand assets.
1 Your LinkedIn profile.
Everything under Connection above applies here, but to take it one step further, make sure you take full advantage of everything LinkedIn provides you in your profile to help you build your brand. For example, take advantage of the following things.
- The background image
- Your headline
- Add a profile video
- Add a Featured section – with top and bottom of funnel requests
- Write your About section to be outward-facing.
- Turn on Creator Mode
2 Your Company page.
Like your profile page, your company page is about you but not for you, so make sure the About section talks to your prospects. Additionally, take advantage of the following tools LinkedIn provides you.
- The background image – Align it with your personal profile
- The headline – Align it with your personal profile
- Complete all sections
- Add Hashtags
3 Your brand assets.
Your website is no longer the only place people go to learn more about how you help; it’s only one part of your brand now. To help prospects know your brand, all of your online brand assets need to “feel” like one cohesive brand. So take a few minutes and audit your brand for cohesiveness across your online assets.
- Social Media
- Association bios
- Your website
These assets should point align to paint a picture of your brand for prospects.
Consistency
Consistency is the most difficult for many to implement because it requires work. It’s not that we don’t want to do the work; it’s that the work requires time to realize the benefits. Unfortunately, most will give up before they reap the rewards.
Woody Allen once famously said: “80% of success is showing up.”
Being consistent is critical to your success on LinkedIn. You need to dedicate time in your week for LinkedIn activities. I schedule one hour each day for LinkedIn activities to remain consistent. I recommend scheduling time for yourself as well.
The following are the three minimal things you should do during your dedicated LinkedIn time to help grow your brand.
1 Like, share, and comment
2 Post content
3 Find prospects
Repeat these three steps every day in order, and you’ll start building a “consistency muscle” you can use to become more successful on LinkedIn. `
That wraps up this week’s Creating Clarity Newsletter.
Until next week.
Cheers,
Ryan
