How to Build a Powerful Personal Brand on LinkedIn
If you want your freelance business to succeed in today’s competitive and global freelance market, it’s crucial that you know how to build yourself a brand. With so much high-quality talent out there, how do you make yourself stand out from the crowd?
During our recent Beyond 24-hour global virtual summit for digital business, Founder & Chief Content Strategist of VB Consulting and LinkedIn Marketing expert, Virginia Bautista shared how you can leverage LinkedIn to build a powerful personal brand that attracts ideal clients and positions yourself as a recognized expert in your field.
To learn more on how to build a powerful presence on LinkedIn and take your freelance business to new heights, watch the full session now!
Why Freelancers Should Build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn
As Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon once said, “your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Companies and businesses who are seeking quality freelancers want to make sure they’re working with reliable professionals that can truly bring value to their business. Before they even make the decision of working with you, they could easily google your name to check your past. No matter what past or professional record you may hold, you definitely want to avoid any type of background check so that there isn’t any misconception about your brand.
Remember, personal branding is not just promoting yourself and your career, it’s more than that. As mentioned in the session, personal branding is about being visible, defining and communicating your value, adding value to others and embracing authenticity. People should know you and have the ability to easily find you. The more authentic you are, the more people will appreciate you, but you’ll have to first be clear about who in fact you are.
It’s suggested to maximize LinkedIn in order to build relationships with potential clients or with those who could refer you to others. In other words, network, network, network!
Getting Started on LinkedIn
So why LinkedIn? Millions of freelancers typically flock to freelance platforms in order to find work, but most of the time, it can be very cut-throat.
Let’s dive deeper into the 3 V’s in order build a powerful personal brand:
- Visibility
- Value
- Vulnerability
As mentioned earlier, people must know who you are. You may very well be a talented video editor, but if your audience doesn’t know that, you won’t be able to grow your business. By building a strong presence on LinkedIn, you won’t have to constantly seek clients, instead, they’ll be reaching out to YOU.
In addition, you can also grow your brand via inbound leads (clients who approach you).
So, how do you increase your visibility on LinkedIn? Here are some points you can’t miss.
- Keyword-optimize your profile – use the right keywords that include your niche/expertise (e.g. content writing, video editing) and place your keywords on your job title and on your about section on your LinkedIn profile.
- Grow your network – the larger your network, the quicker you’ll be found.
- Connect with relevant and active LinkedIn members – don’t just connect with everyone, connect with people you can help and that can help you.
- Tag relevant connections – your connections can help share your content with an even larger audience, exposing your brand even more.
- Use relevant hashtags – LinkedIn helps boost your posts when you add relevant hashtags that your potential clients are following.
- Stop ‘sharing’ other people’s content – Share original content and tag the person you originally wanted to share instead which will boost your visibility.
- Curate third-party content that matters to your audience – provide your audience with value and with content that will be useful to them and they’ll associate you with being credible.
Skyrocket to Success with a Powerful Personal Brand
Building your brand takes time and patience is key. Remember, be real with who you are, know your worth and be relatable to the audience you are trying to reach.
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