Do your eyes glaze over when you think about using LinkedIn to grow your personal brand? Do you feel like it’s yet another platform to manage? Do you wonder what on earth you should post?
The professional networking site has gone from strength to strength over the last two years and can help you be found more easily through search engine optimisation, but without the right knowledge using it to build your personal brand is a timesuck. What if you had a basic strategy that only required 30 minutes a day?
Sound good?
My friend, Deenita Pattni is known as the Queen of LinkedIn. She helps entrepreneurs and industry experts to use the platform to elevate their visibility and attract the right business opportunities.
You can listen to our full conversation on our Interviews With Experts podcast.
How to optimise your brand
The first thing I wanted to know is what Deenita did to explode her own personal brand, and it turned out it was a lot more than simply choosing the right platform!
Deenita: “I thought I had to show up as perfect for people to want to consider working with me, but over time I realised I just needed to be authentic! It was a big shift for me to understand that I didn’t have to be like anyone else.
It’s a journey that I’m really enjoying and it’s also a journey that I have to keep working on; a good personal brand will continue to evolve. Me showing up as me, and knowing how to share my values so that I attract the right kind of people has made a huge difference. I’ve learnt so much about who I am.”
How to avoid perfectionism
Deenita has touched on a key point. It’s so easy for us to fall into the perfectionism trap, but it’s who you are that attracts or repels the right clients or partnerships to your business. I feel shy on video, but I’m more than happy sharing my expertise on Clubhouse or podcasts. If you want to build on your personal brand you must share valuable content; it’s no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s essential.
Building a personal brand online is not a popularity contest, it’s about bringing people closer to you and your service or product so that they can reach out when the time is right. Your commercial value is in your community, but it’s exhausting when you don’t know how to build or nurture your crowd!
Deenita has great advice to overcome those online nerves.
Speak directly to the problem
Deenita: “What type of people are you looking for? What problems do they face and how can you help? Now, instead of trying to be perfect, imagine your best friend sitting in front of you and you know that they need your advice.
You would not hesitate to share your wisdom or knowledge. Imagine that every single person is your best friend and you care about them. When you do this you start to build the right community. The focus is not on you, it’s about being in service. It doesn’t matter how big or small your crowd is, it’s the quality that counts.”
From experience I know that the more you show up online the easier it is to keep showing up, which means you automatically build confidence and a strong brand presence.
How 30 minutes a day can transform your business
Deenita also blew my mind by explaining that a daily 30-minute session on LinkedIn could transform your business!!
Deenita: “View LinkedIn as a digital room full of people you want to connect with and chat to, not just sell to. It’s not about sales, it’s about relationships.
If you know that LinkedIn is a platform where your crowd spends time you can be very strategic. Spend 10 minutes writing and sharing a post, 10 minutes sending out invitations or replying to messages so you can connect with more people, and 10 minutes liking, sharing, or commenting on other people’s content.
You need to earn the right to be on that platform and when you show that you’re serious about using it people respect that. Diarise it and give it the same priority as a business meeting or GP appointment.”
Deenita went on to share five tactics to help you get noticed, attract the right people and optimise those 30 minutes.
- Share valuable content
Writing and sharing blogs or features about your service or product on LinkedIn enables you to build your SEO for free. Google will show your articles from LinkedIn, even if the reader is not on the platform.
- Create polls
Polls help nurture your potential connections and grow your network. Ask a simple question that will help give you some business insight. Once the poll has ended, contact every single person who responded to it and thank them, or ask a follow up question. Create a mini ebook or document that outlines the findings of the poll and share them with that person (where relevant!).
- Share a quiz
Deenita uses a separate app to create a quiz which she uses as a fun way to engage her ideal clients. She created a LinkedIn influencer quiz to help you uncover what sort of presence you have on the platform, and whether you are making the most of the features to optimise your business.
- Use hashtags
Use two to three hashtags and a maximum of five. Once you start to use hashtags effectively, magic will happen.
- Make the most of the search box
The search function can help you find your target market and understand what they are writing about or looking for. Use keywords to search for content and join in the discussion so people get to see and know you.
Deenita is an expert when it comes to sorting out your LinkedIn life! And, if you’re raring to go but wondering if your personal brand is up to scratch you might like to check out our personal brand scorecard. It’ll help you identify the areas you can tweak to boost your visibility and credibility.
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