Why is it important for your company to have a good presence on LinkedIn? This social network is the ideal platform to generate contacts, show your value proposition and attract talent to your company; but as well as providing the space to have a corporate profile, it can be the tool for your employees to position themselves as expert leaders.
But, how do you achieve this? Through optimized profiles in which valuable content is shared that allows the community to hear the messages that your company wants to transmit, but through real people who have direct contact with your business.
Having expert spokespersons in your company allows you to generate great reliability in your industry, since people have more confidence in what a person says than in what company says. Therefore, working on the personal brand of your employees allows your business to grow and position itself with a good brand reputation.
Why is LinkedIn important for your personal brand?
Talking about personal brand in LinkedIn is focused towards the labor and professional market, since it is the core of this social network. Developing your branding on this platform allows you to communicate your skills, knowledge and opinions to position yourself as an expert in your industry.
Currently LinkedIn has over 12 million active users in Colombia, and 29% of them are high-level professionals and company executives. What does this tell us? That here we can establish valuable connections, either for searching for employment, talent or strategic alliances.
LinkedIn allows you to have an opportunity to establish yourself as an opinion leader – the famous LinkedIn Top Voices– since through quality content you can let yourself be known and build a solid personal brand that contributes to your professional growth or that of your company.
If you are the director of your company, you cannot leave aside your personal brand: thanks to it you will not only make yourself known as the owner of your business, you can let the person behind it be known and how your knowledge has led you to where you are. This is essential for your business, as by letting yourself be known as an expert leader, your community will trust more in each message from your company.
Business profile and expert leader profile: How are they different?
In LinkedIn there are two types of profiles: The business profile; which is created to develop your business, and the expert leader profile; used to position your personal brand. We are going to know some of the differences between this type of profile.
The business profile, as we mentioned before, is focused on your business: from there you can advertise job offers to attract talent, communicate products, services and corporate news to increase the recognition of your brand and make it visible in a specific territory.
On the other side, the expert leader profile is created to consolidate the personal and professional brand of each person: from there you can expand your contact network, do networking through groups with similar interests, contact with leaders for strategic alliances and stay updated about relevant news of your industry. It also allows you to have an online resume where you can disclose your professional and educational career and the achievements you have reached in these aspects.
An expert leader profile gives you the opportunity to connect with people and have a relationship with your community; by focusing your strategy in making your profile and that of your employees one of an expert leader, you have the possibility to communicate the messages of your company through this profiles, which are going to be trustworthy sources for your contacts.
5 reasons to be an expert leader in LinkedIn
It is clear that LinkedIn has many more tools than being a platform to help you find a job, because by positioning your personal brand as that of an expert leader, you will not only be able to obtain a personal benefit, you will also be able to give it to your company.
- A human approach
You can humanize your brand through your employees, because by establishing a personal brand of themselves, they will be able to present their knowledge and create relationships with people interested in the topics they discuss, generating in that way valuable connections for your company.
- A brand with essence
By building human relationships, it is possible to connect based on who we are: What motivates us? What inspires us? What is our opinion on current subjects?It is easier to connect with the community from a profile of an expert leader because it will be seen as reliable, transparent and real.
- A greater reach
An optimized profile in LinkedIn not only makes the personal brand of your employees stand out, it also allows for each message to have a greater reach and reach people who are interested in a specific corporate industry.
- Trust and prestige
When your profile is classified as that of an expert leader, it makes it stand out in an increasingly competitive environment, and thanks to this your notoriety and the value of your brand will increase.
- Beneficial networking
Thanks to consolidation as an expert, you can let your professional career and areas of expertise be known, making networking allow a relationship full of benefits.
Basic requirements to optimize your profile on LinkedIn
Optimizing your profile is the most simple part of positioning as an expert leader: you just have to follow certain basic requirements of the platform so you can make yourself known. But, which are the characteristics of a good profile on LinkedIn?
First there is the URL, this cannot be the one generated by the platform automatically; you must set an address that displays your first and last names separated by hyphens. Another fundamental aspect is the profile photo, since it must convey empathy, but remain professional; a good option is to take a picture with a solid background where face is clearly seen.
And speaking of photos, it is also very important to have a good banner that is associated with your brand and communicates your value proposition. Continuing with the analysis of a profile, we come to the headline; this aspect is essential, since through it they will find your profile, so you must use keyword related to your profession or industry and separate each of them with the symbol ‘’|’’.
The “about’’ section must tell a story without sounding commercial, it must also be written in the first person and give an “opener” about who you are and what you have achieved professionally, remember to include the keywords of the headline to achieve a better positioning.
Regarding the experience and education, you must describe the role you have fulfilled in each position and your notable achievements in them.
Another section where you must consider the keywords is in skills and validations, since there will be your skills, and if you get your contacts to validate them, you will have more weight in your profile. Recommendations, on the other hand, are “comments” left by people in contact network and thanks to these, your community can see that other people confirm your skills and knowledge.
Last, but not least, are interactions: it is necessary to share corporate publications about news of your business or industry, as well as generating value content about what you contribute to your company. Here is where you must define the content pillars that you are going to cover in your profile and establish formats and hashtags to vary them and give your community valuable content.
A good LinkedIn profile can open for you doors to a broader professional world thanks to building a solid personal brand, as well as being a perfect tool to make known the values and talent within your company. Not all influencers are on TikTok making trending dances; in LinkedIn your “influencers” are expert leaders that give the community content that allows a corporate and professional growth.
