LinkedIn: Profile Building and Personal Branding
This article is a continuation of sharing my experience and learning from the ScholarX mentorship program by the Sustainable Education Foundation. In the past few months, I have learned a lot about my career and professional networking from my mentor Dr. Sumudu Tennakoon. You can read my second article here where I have discussed the differences between the three most common data roles — Data Engineer, Data Analyst, and Data Scientist. In this article, I’m writing about the most famous professional networking platform LinkedIn. I hope this article will help you to build your personal brand on LinkedIn and to boost your profile.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a professional networking and career development social media platform. LinkedIn is the largest professional network on the internet, with nearly 800 million users in more than 200 nations and territories throughout the world (Source).
Like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and a slew of other platforms, LinkedIn is a social media platform. But unlike other social networks, LinkedIn is a professional networking site, designed to help people connect and strengthen professional relationships, share their experiences and resumes, find the right job or internship, and learn the skills you need to succeed in your career.
Why Should You Be on LinkedIn?
As we discussed, LinkedIn is a professional network platform where people can connect with professionals. LinkedIn attracts people from all walks of life, including small company owners, CEOs, social media influencers, students, job seekers, and recruiters.
If you are serious about your job and professional growth, you’ll need an optimized and up-to-date LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your opportunity to get your name and face in front of hundreds and thousands of industry experts. If you are a job seeker, having a LinkedIn profile is essential nowadays. It is not only beneficial for job seekers but also for students who can connect with professionals and advance their knowledge.
Profile Building and Personal Branding
Everyone is on LinkedIn now. It’s not enough to just have a LinkedIn profile. You’ll need a LinkedIn profile that stands out, says the right things, and allows you to connect with people who can help you advance your career. Creating a unified, appealing personal brand for yourself on LinkedIn is the best method to increase your exposure among your peers and create a standout profile.
Let’s discuss some of the most important things that you need to consider to build your profile and personal brand.
1. Profile Picture
First and the simple thing to start with is to add a profile photo to your LinkedIn profile. Yes, it’s important to have one, members with a profile picture receive 21 times more profile views and up to 36 times more messages (source).
Choose a simple headshot that shows you facing straight ahead. Your photo does not have to be boring or unnatural, and it should not be. You do not have to dress professionally if that is not your style, but you must appear professional and friendly. Remember that a smile goes a long way in making you appear dependable and trustworthy. People remember faces more than names, after all. As a result, the importance of having a clear photo of your face on your profile.
2. Headline
Your headline appears directly beneath your name on your LinkedIn profile and is the first thing that visitors see. It should be brief, straightforward, and concise in expressing who you are and what you stand for. Within your headline, you have 120 characters to describe what you do. This will be filled in with your current position by default. Although this is good, a far more successful strategy to use LinkedIn is to select descriptive and appealing keywords that make you appear as marketable as possible while also assisting you in being discovered by the appropriate individuals. So, make sure your headline includes keywords that may be utilized to quickly locate you and determine exactly what you do.
An example headline for a Data Scientist looking for a job in the healthcare space can look like the above picture.
3. Summary
You have the opportunity to express your narrative in your LinkedIn summary. Your summary can be a longer version of your headline; you have 2,000 characters to deal with, so go into more detail. Don’t just concentrate on your past experience; think about what you’re good at and what you can offer a potential employer. Use keywords that you want to be associated with in your field. Use your imagination to create a picture of who you are as a professional.
The above picture shows an example for the summary section.
4. Experience
This is your LinkedIn profile’s key content and the most important part for job seekers. After all, your experience is the most important component in determining whether or not you are qualified for a particular position.
Include any jobs that you believe are related to the direction you want your career to take and utilize two to four engaging and impressive bullet points for each one. Use strong action phrases to demonstrate not only what you performed, but also what you accomplished in each position. The goal is to show how much of an impact you’ve had, the changes you’ve implemented, the initiatives you’ve led, and the outcomes you’ve achieved.
5. Skills and Endorsements
This is also an important part of the LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn gives you a limit of 50 skills that you can add. Add your skills that are relevant to your career and ask your coworkers and former colleagues who are on LinkedIn to endorse your skills. You can repay the favor by offering to endorse them as well.
6. Recommendations
Recommendations are one of the most important tools for establishing your professional reputation. Recommendations provide social proof to your profile by demonstrating that your coworkers and peers rate your abilities highly.
Employers, colleagues, mentors, satisfied clients, or anybody who has worked with you and benefited from your talents or suggestions can all make recommendations. You must be proactive in requesting recommendations, following up, and staying on top of things.
7. Personalized URL
LinkedIn URL is the web address for your LinkedIn profile. Your name and some random digits will appear in the default URL. For example, the default URL will look something like linkedin.com/in/abc-1316576. So, customize the URL and make it personal for you.
Along the right side of your profile, you will see the option to Edit public profile & URL. Use that option to make your URL more concise and relevant to you.
8. Make Connections
Because of LinkedIn’s structure of first, second, and third-degree connections, you’ll need to maintain building your connections as you meet new people; having a large number of connections keeps you visible to others. If you decide to connect with people you’ve never met or don’t have a direct connection with, include a note describing who you are and why you’d like to connect.
9. Be Active
Like other social media platforms, LinkedIn is also a social media platform. So to get the most out of it you need to remain active like other social media platforms. Observe what others are saying, respond with insightful comments, and like and share those that you find useful.
Based on your interests you can also join groups on LinkedIn. Join one or two of them and interact with them. It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet new people and exchange ideas.
10. Keywords and SEO
Keep in mind that more than a professional networking platform LinkedIn is also a search engine where recruiters use the platform to search for employees. So, it’s important to use keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Proper keywords should be included in every element of your profile, including the headline, summary, work experience, and skills section to optimize your profile.
Summary
We have discussed the most important things to build and personalize your LinkedIn profile. Apart from these, keep in mind that you need to update your profile from time to time to stay current.
I hope this article helped you to understand how to build your personal brand on LinkedIn. Stay wise!! Stay Updated!!
