LinkedIn: Mastering your Personal Brand

1. Introduction - LinkedIn: Mastering your Personal Brand: Hello and welcome to the Linked in mastery class, Crafting a powerful personal Brand on Linked. In, in this course I'll be talking about how you can build a strong personal brand and going through the required steps, because building a strong personal brand on linked in requires a strategic and consistent approach. In this class, I'll be going through step by step guides in order to help you take that personal branding to the next level. As you can see from the content here, what I'll be talking about is optimizing your profile and looking at determining key post types. Talking a little bit more about consistent posting, catching up on networking and collaboration. And lastly, talking about your analytics and adaptations. These will be the units covered. You can click around on the side to each of the units, but I suggest just sitting back taking notes and watching from the beginning, and then clicking back and forth afterwards. If you have any more questions at the end, I will also give you some final thoughts and some concluding ideas. Make sure to ask any questions you have in the comment section. And if you don't, then let's get ready and let's jump right into the first step. 2. Chapter 1 - Optimize your Profile: So let's jump right into the first step here, which is optimizing your profile. So when it comes to optimizing your profile, there's a couple of things that you have to consider and a few items that you have to check off to make sure that they're good. So first, let's talk about your profile picture. You have to use a professional and clear profile picture. This is not Instagram, it's not Twitter, it's not Youtube. You can't use a casual, funny, you know, just picture in the middle or whatever it is with filters and stuff like that. Try to have a clear head shot, a high quality head shot where you appear approachable and confident, right? You want to make it seem professional. It is a professional website, right? It's not Facebook, it's sientagram. You can't just have a selfie or anything like that. Try to have a high quality head shot. Now one of the tricks is you don't even have to hire someone. You don't have to get someone to take a photo for you. You can even use AI in order to create high quality head shots. So make sure you have that checked off. Next, let's look at the headline in the summary. You want to craft a compelling headline that reflects your current professional status and goals, right? You want to write a concise and engaging summary that highlights your skills, achievements, and aspiration. Think of it as like a 12 sentence elevator pitch of yourself. What are you good at? What do you want to do? You know, aspiring UX designer looking to branch out. You know, that was a bad headline. But just to give you an example, right, you have to craft it compellingly and customize it to your exact goals and of course what you can already do, right? If you're a published author, you can write. Published author, you know, end writer, award winning writer, always ready for conversation to something like that, right? You want to make sure it's compelling. You want to make sure it reflects what you actually do and what you want to do next. Let's look at the experience and skills. You want to showcase your relevant experience and skills, right? You want to use action verbs and quantify your achievements where possible. So similar to a resume, you want to have powerful words that describe what you did and then help use numbers to quantify those achievements, right? So if you're in sales, you say, you know, sold $100,000 worth of whatever marketing material, whatever it is. So quantifying things just like a resume can really help you get that message out there of what you have done. And lastly, let's look at recommendations. For recommendations you want to request and display recommendations from your colleagues and clients to build credibility, right? Nothing works better than social proof. So I'm sure you've seen skills being endorsed. Everything you can ask your friends, you can ask your colleagues to help endorse your skills and leave it. Maybe a quick comment or review. Think of it, almost like a Yelp review for a restaurant, right? That's what you are. And if you have clients and colleagues that can leave social proof such as it's been a pleasure to work with him. He always gets everything done on time. You know, he always is ready to take the next step, whatever it is. Let them leave a one to three sentence blurb about you. And if it's hard to get some colleagues, maybe you can just ask some friends to leave something about you. You could probably even write it for them and then give it to them if they sign off on it. Right. And they're like, yeah, that looks like something I would write. Make it as easy as possible for other people to help endorse you and help build you that credibility. So that's it for step one. Let's move on to step two. 3. Chapter 2 - Determine Key Post Types: Now let's move on to step two, determining your key post types. Right, So let's go through some of the options that you have when it comes to posting content on linked in. First what you want to focus on is stories that evoke sentiments, right? What does that mean? Well, it means that you can share personal stories related to your achievements and challenges, right? Reflect on significant moments in your career education or you can of course, use graduation or milestone pictures to convey some key lessons. Sure, if you go on linked in right now, some of the most popular types will be like, you know, I grew up never fitting in, and now I graduate from MT. If you have shared personal stories, you can do something like, oh, you know, everybody told me I'm not going to be anything. And now my business just hit hits first hundred customers, all right? I just got fired five years ago. And now I'm, you know, CEO of a new company reflecting on significant moments, for example. So these are all kind of personal achievement stories that people will always love because it inspires and it evokes that sentiment, right? As much as people focus on themselves. They also love to see stories like that because it motivates them and inspires them. And those kind of things work really well. And linked in because people are linked to connect. People are linked to become better. People are linked to learn, right? And they want to see people go through those kind of moments. So if you have a well done story with nice pictures and a well crafted caption and pair graph that really goes through that story. Those kind of story can really take off and do well on linked in. Now. Next well you can focus on is statistics related to your chosen profession, right? You can be more of an educator. You can share insights into the time it takes to achieve specific milestones, right? And you can highlight personal achievements and how you overcome those challenges. And of course, you can provide statistics about common issues in your profession, right? You can say, for example, okay, whatever these numbers will be wrong, but only one out of 1,000 people will become a Dr. Right? And I have become a Dr. It took me 10,000 hours to study for this test. Right? It took me 5 hours a day for 2.5 years to pass this exam. All right? So you can really dig into that kind of statistic and numerical number, numerical story and include those in your posts. And they will give them more credibility. And of course it'll be interesting, would be like, wow, I didn't know that only one out of 10,000 people will get accepted to. So for example, right? Of course, these numbers are often just using it as an example. But if you use real numbers and backed them up with your own story, and also tying it to that first point of evoke sentiments, right? These kind of posts can do really well. Now next you can have surprised and contrarian opinions, right? You can challenge common perceptions about your industry workplace, right? You can address problems in your profession and suggest alternative solutions. For example, every time I create a marketing template, most people do this, but I have found out that it's easier or just as easy to do this, right? Every time you do this in your industry, whatever, you, every time you want to become a chef, most of you go and do this kind of degree or act to school. I have found that, you know, being a practitioner of the skill is a lot more helpful. All right? And it only costs me this much. All right? These are, again, of course, just examples. But those are the kind of things that you can also do, right? People love to see tips and tricks. Love to see shortcuts, love to see things that cost less. So if you have any kind of opinions or stories about things that you've had in your profession or your experience, people love to see those stories. Next you can talk about personal and professional experiments. All right? You can document personal challenges or experiments related to field. If you're starting a business, why not log it? Right. You can do a new linked and post every day, you know. Day two of Building a Start Up. Day four of Building a Start Up. Day 205 of Building a Start Up, and you can document your personal struggles and challenges and lessons that you learned along the way. People love to follow those kind of stories, right? Then you can share the outcomes and lessons learned from your experience, right? Maybe you don't even have to do every day. You can do like weekly check in of my start up and then a monthly, you know, kind of recap. You're like, okay, this month I achieved this, but I learned this, I had this setback, but I learned this, you know, and you can use that to provide actionable advice for others interested in those similar experiences, right? Somebody wants to be an entrepreneur and start a clothing brand. You're like, okay, you know, I spent this much money trying to figure out a supplier. But you know, it only cost me this much in the end or it took me this much time and I should have done this in the first place, so on and so on, right? And people will see those things that they're interested in as well and use it as a lesson. And so those kind of posts can do well as well. So next one is you can have an analysis of a case study, right? You can break down success stories in your industry and you can extract actionable takeaways for your audience, right? You can share your insights and others can learn from these case studies. For example, if you're in the stock trade, right? You can have a quick rundown of Warren Buffett's life and see, you know, where he started and what he did to become successful, right? If you're in the car industry or an engineer, you can talk about kind of engineering stories. You can talk about, you know, for example, what it took Elon Musk to create a car company, right? You can do all sorts of things. You can talk about Henry Ford, what it took him, what he did to create a company in the car industry, right? You can do any kinds of things. You can break down success stories of your own. Or if people let you know, for example, you know, maybe somebody that isn't even unlinked in, right? Maybe you're a young guy who's unlinked in. And then you have an uncle who has his own business. Be like my uncle never even uses the internet, but he built a business from the ground up. This is what he did over the last 25 years, right? And people love to see those kind of stories because otherwise they wouldn't have heard of it. Because it's your uncle who owns a store middle of a country but never even use is linked in, right? But if you bring that to the internet and tell those stories, people love to hear those kind of stories. And last but not least, you can have comparisons, right? You can post comparisons related to your personal or professional grows. And you can use visual such as before and after pictures to engage your audience, right? And you encourage your network to share their own grave stories, so that really catalyzes that interaction. And of course, the engagement on your post with likes, comms and so on. For example, maybe you're a personal fitness trainer, you'd be like, okay, I started out at this weight, then I said, enough is enough. I became a fitness guy, and then I became a personal trainer because of that. And now I have my own personal training business. So this is what I looked like ten years ago. This is what I look like now, right? People love to see those kind of stories. And then you can post your own growth in the comments. And then people can post your own weight loss journey, for example, in the comments. And then there you go, more comments. You get more likes, more engagement, which will drive the posts as well. So it's a win win. Yeah, these are basically all the kinds of posts, of course, there's a lot more, but these are the main ones that I would focus on. You can take 12,345.6 write it down. And write yourself some examples on what you could post on these kind of stories. And if you do that consistently, I'm sure you can find some great content to post. Very, very consistent. Which of course, brings us to our next step. So let's move on to step three. 4. Chapter 3 - Consistent Posting: So now let's move on to step three, which would be consistent posting. Consistent posting. So these are the couple of things that I want to cover when it comes to the idea of consistent posting. First, let's focus on frequency. Frequency, You want to establish a consistent posting schedule, right? So just like with a lot of social media, you want to have something that not only people can look forward to but also for yourself. So you know when you schedule it and you know when you're going to post it. Right? You want to aim for at least a few posts per week to maintain visibility. So let's call it every two days, right. Every other day you want to post something, whatever it is, a picture, video, content. In terms of text content like a paragraph or something or blog post, you just want to focus on the frequency. And you want to create a calendar where you can really break down what you're going to post and when you're going to post it. So not only is it for your audience and not only is it for maintaining that stability, but it's also for yourself. So you're not running over the place like, oh, did I post yesterday, did I post tomorrow? Oh, I did. Let me check. If you create a content calendar for 30 days and you say every two days, you're going to post. So 15 pieces of content, not only do that, but you can also plan ahead, which will save you time, right? You don't have to post every two days and come up with that content right there. Maybe you can Sunday afternoon and you can come up with ten content ideas, save them, and then you can post them every two days, so you have them ready to go. And you can just knock them out in one like batch session. Right? Which is of course, very, very good, because that's how you create a nice flow. You create a frequency, and of course, it saves you time. Next, you want to focus on engagement, right? Not only do you want to post and log out, and then you go do something else, respond to comments and messages promptly, right? You want to engage with your community. You want to engage with other people's content and your own content, right? By commenting and sharing insights and somebody comments on your post, you can like it. You can respond to it, whatever it is. But of course, you want to actually use Lincoln as well, right? Get your name out there. If there's a big post out there, comment on it, share your own insights. Maybe 200 people will like your comment. And one of those 200 people will click on your profile because they're wondering what kind of things that you said. And then they see your post and then they follow you and so on. So if you keep doing this consistently, you will get somebody that clicks on your post and you will get somebody that clicks on your profile just from you commenting on other people, right? So you want to not only get your name out there from your own content, but we want to get your name out there by engaging with the actual community. That's how you build a network, right? Then of course. Third, as with many, many social media sites, you want to use the right hash techs, right? You want to use relevant hashtags to increase the discoverability of your posts. Linked in especially also works well with hashtags because it still has that kind of ecosystem that a lot of social media sites use. But Linkedon uses hashtags very relevantly. So you get those hashtags up for whatever for use. Maybe you get some hash techs that you use consistently, so use the same ones over and then try to flush out new ones as well for specific posts. Right? And of course last. But at least you want to focus on having multimedia content, right? You want to incorporate visual visuals such as images and videos to make your posts more appealing, right? You can have a text post, that's totally fine, right? Those can do well. But having videos and pictures help as well. Sometimes of course, you don't want to overload it. If you have six pictures in one video and some text people won't even look at it because like, that's just too much content. But if you have a nice story, for example, a nice sentiment story, and then you have a picture of it, that'd be great, right? If you have a video of cool advertisement that you created, and you talked about the story of creating that ad, right, the behind the scenes look. And then you say, here's the ad, right? That would be a great post. So something like that. Switch it up for example, especially too, right? You want to switch it up. You don't want to have a text post every other day, right? You want to have a text post today, then a text post with an image the next day. And then after that, just a video with a caption, right? And then after that, you just have some pictures and with a caption after that you have a long story post with a video and so on. So switch it up, mix it up, and you can have that content. That really switches it up. You have some frequent content, and of course, you want to create that calendar, focus on those things when it comes to creating a consistent, posting schedule. 5. Chapter 4 - Networking and Collabs: Let's move on to step four, which would be networking and collaboration. When it comes to networking and collaboration, there's three things that I wanted to focus on. First, connecting, strategically connect with professionals in your industry and related fields. Don't just spam out any connections. So your account says 500 plus connections. You want to try to use that and actually connect with them. People that are relevant to you because it helps because A, you not only lose track of who they are, but B, if you only always add people that are related to you in your field, you know that most connections that you have will be relevant to you, right? Unless it's people that you obviously know. But if it's random people that you're just searching for to try and network out there, try to make it relevant to your industry, because then you know that there are relevant to your industry once you go back through them in six months and you've forgotten who half of them are, right. And of course, once you connect, try to introduce yourself, right? Have a one or 2 seconds introduction of hey, I'm going to say minitry wanted to connect. You know, we'd love to talk some time or whatever it is. Sometimes you can just connect with them like that. Some will won't accept them, some will even add to you, right? So try to build that network and those kind of connections by just reaching out. Next, you want to collaborate. So if there's people of brands or influencers and personalities on Linked in that you align with and that you could connect to, You could collaborate with them, right? Collaborate with others on Linked in by participating in discussions, group activities, or even content, right? You could guest post each other. You can share content, you can have a post together. And you could participate in general group activities and discussions. Right? Which can help build that network as well. And of course, it can bring that audience to your account. Last but not least, Linkedon articles. Consider writing long, er, form Linkedon articles to showcase your experces in depth, right? These are not just post, these are not just blog post. These are really long form linked in articles full on articles where you can go in depth about a topic that you're really an expert in, right? Let's say you're really, really good on whatever kind of topic that you choose, right? Building businesses, right? You are an entrepreneur and you build businesses for ten years, and you have built two successful companies. You can write a really in depth article on how to get started creating an article, right? You can just really write about something that you're well aware of, right? Whether it is being an entrepreneur, whether it is digital marketing, whether it is, you know, building things, whether it is a knitting or whether it is building an Etsy store or whatever it is, right? Find something that you're an expert in and write long from articles which can again build that network, build that audience, and drive people back to you and your brand. 6. Chapter 5 - Analytics and Adaption: Now let's move on to step five, analytics and adaptation. So what does that mean? Well, we're going to talk about analytics and adaptation and talk about analyzing your metrics, right? You want to give yourself an audit, regularly review the analytics of your posts to understand what resonates with your audience and what doesn't, right? If you post 20 times and you just keep posting, and keep posting and not looking at how your posts are doing, well then how are you going to know what to keep posting and what not to post? Right, Let's say you have 20 posts and five of them don't work at all, but 15 of them work great. And they're both different things, right? There are 15 text posts about a story and five of them were videos of your advertisements. Well then, you know not to post advertisements for now, or at least for a while, or maybe never again, because those five don't work and the 15 ones do, right? So adjust accordingly and of course, look at what you're doing, right? So when it comes to adapting your strategy, adjust your content strategy based on the performance of your post, right? Experiment with new post types and topics, right? Whatever you are in a specific topic, you can still adjust accordingly between different units and topics, right? So look at what's working, look at what isn't working. And then do more of what's working, obviously. And do less of what's not working, all right? Sometimes people just create content and they just post, post, post, and wonder why nothing's working. But they're not taking that step back and saying, wait a minute, this isn't working at all. And one of these things worked, I wonder why, right? Maybe one of them had more pictures in them, okay. Now, more pictures. Maybe one of them had less text. Okay? Now I know if I write three paragraphs, nobody's going to read it. If I write one paragraph, people are going to read it and like it, right. So adjust accordingly. You really have to audit yourself. Audit your account, and look at what you're doing, right? To know how to keep growing, right? What resonates with your topic, with your audience, right? Maybe if you, for example, if you have different niches. One niche loves videos and one niche loves photos, right? And the other niche only likes texts, right? Maybe you've tried different avenues of categories. And some people like more things than others, right? Some people like only texts, some people only like videos. And maybe that can be reflected with your audience as well, right? Really, really look at that. See what you're doing, right? And of course then do more of that and take that step back tap. Take the time to reflect and really see what you're doing. I would suggest depending on how much you post, but a weekly, if not monthly, audit of your account to see what's working and what is and be like, okay, this month this worked and this month this didn't work. All right, Now I can adjust and create more of this kind of content. Really take the time to do that and you will see improvements and you will see more success if you adapt your strategy. 7. Conclusion: So that was basically it for this course. Thank you so much for watching. Just some concluding thoughts. So just to sum up, if you follow these steps, step one, really looking at optimizing your profile. Step two, determining your key post types. Step three, focusing on consistent posting. Step four, looking at your network, at your network and collaboration availability. And of course, step five, antalytics and adaptation. Really looking at the content, what you're doing, Right, right. So if you follow these steps, you can enhance your personal brand on linked in, build a loyal audience and establish yourself as a thought leader in your chosen field, right? Just remember to stay authentic. Share content that generally reflects your professional journey and expertise. And with consistency and improvement, you will see good results on Linked in. So I hope this really helped you out. I hope this has become very helpful for you as a class. I would appreciate a positive rating and leave any comments, questions, thoughts you have in the discussion section. And of course, take a look at the project that I left for you and make sure to go on my channel, John Valentine, and check out some more videos. I basically cover everything that has to do with digital marketing, whether it's Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitch, and of course now linked in. Well, again, this has been John Valentine. Thank you so much for watching. I really enjoyed your presence here today and I hope to see you on other videos soon enough. Thank you and have a good day. Bye bye.