LinkedIn marketing tips to grow your personal brand

Are you a doctor with a private clinic? Or a lawyer with his firm? Like a doctor or lawyer, you need to spend a lot of time on your profession so you may not be able to devote enough time to market your brand. In today’s world, however, personal branding in the online space is very relevant for legal and medical people, because most searches occur online.

Remember as a doctor or lawyer you are the only ambassador of your brand. Creating your personal brand is a must from the long-term perspective of your professional practice. But the most important question: do you use LinkedIn to promote your personal brand and build your network?

One of the most effective ways to grow your brand is to create a strong and effective LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is among the most used social networks today with over 690 million global users. 

LinkedIn as a platform sometimes gets overlooked by many in the wake of several new platforms. However, LinkedIn can be the most critical tool for the promotion of your brand if you use all of its unique features.

About LinkedIn and its marketing process

LinkedIn is a professional network that helps in networking and building professional relationships. LinkedIn enables you to connect with potential customers, employers, partners, and colleagues.

LinkedIn is an important part of the marketing campaigns of many successful professionals today because of its effectiveness in the growth of professional networks. If you market your personal brand using LinkedIn, you will have access to valuable insights, partnerships, and brand building features, just to name a few.

LinkedIn is a very powerful and uniquely built marketing tool. Read on to find out the most comprehensive tips for LinkedIn marketing that will make people aware of your brand.
 

Important characteristics of LinkedIn marketing and how to use it for the growth of your brand:

LinkedIn enables you to grow your network, identify potential customers, and share your expertise with them. Here we will find out the most effective ways to use LinkedIn to grow your brand and make your business successful. 

1. Create your own unique address

On LinkedIn, while creating an account, you will receive an auto-generated address which is a combination of randomly generated numbers and letters. To start with your LinkedIn marketing efforts, create your customized address, and edit the public profile URL with your name or the name of your firm.

You can edit your public profile URL by clicking on the view profile section. Using the edit public profile tab you can customize your sharable link. This will give your profile the desired professional look and also make it easy for you to remember and share the link with others.

 2. Add a profile photo along with a personalized background image

A nice and professional picture is one of the basic elements of any LinkedIn profile. According to a recent study, the presence of a picture improves your profile visibility by 14 times. Your profile picture is the initial touchpoint of your LinkedIn profile, so make it look professional. Also, try to dress in an outfit that suits your profession. LinkedIn also enables you to add a background photo of your choice. By adding a professional background image, you can give your LinkedIn page a perfect look. Choose the background image in tune with the professional setup of LinkedIn. In case you are already having a logo or brand colour for your firm or clinic, you should use that in your background image. LinkedIn allows you to add a background photo of size 1584 X 396 pixels. The photo has to be in JPG, PNG, or GIF format with a maximum size of up to 8 MB.

Your professional and personal profile is a narrative that needs to be represented uniquely and excitingly by choosing the right pictures for representation on LinkedIn. 

3. Connect your website and other social media channels with LinkedIn

You should also add a link to your website and social media accounts on your LinkedIn page. Linking your website and business information will help to generate traffic for your website and potential leads for your business. 

Consider adding your social media account with your LinkedIn profile. This will help you to leverage potential customers from other platforms. You can also share your LinkedIn profile updates on other social media channels. This will help you to improve your follower on other platforms as well as improve the count of your LinkedIn connections.

You can use the dropdown menu on LinkedIn update composer and select the public and other channel options to post it on other social media channels as well as LinkedIn.

In case you have already published any blog on any other platform, you can also add a link to that on your LinkedIn platform.

4. Make your profile easily identifiable

You need to make sure that your visitors should identify your LinkedIn profile very easily. One of the easiest ways to make it identifiable is by putting your name, title, and other parts of your profile under your other marketing materials. Make sure that your profile identifiers remain unique in accordance with your brand perspective.

To highlight specific information on your LinkedIn profile, you can rearrange different sections of your profile and edit them as per your requirement. Hovers your mouse in the desired section to make the rearrangement as per your choice.

Finally, you need to make your profile setting public so that the profile is easily searchable by the audience and remains visible to everyone.

5. Optimize your LinkedIn profile

Search engine optimization is one of the most critical elements of LinkedIn. So after you create your LinkedIn profile, you should optimize it so that it can be discovered by potential customers.

You should add the targeted keyword in various places of your profile like headline, profile details, and work experience. On LinkedIn, you can add 3 links to your profile. You can use this option to add your website or link to your blog with your LinkedIn profile. 

6. Use the LinkedIn group to promote your brand

LinkedIn as a platform enables you to join different groups according to your requirement. The LinkedIn groups are a great way to make a connection with the people who are from your industry or who are interested in your services. Using the LinkedIn group you can expand your contact list, share content with them, and establish your authority as an expert.

There are multiple benefits associated with LinkedIn groups. For example, by joining a group you will be able to understand the different new developments happening in your field. You can also be involved in a regular discussion with fellow members of the group.

By participating in groups, you can check out the complete profile of other members even if you are not connected. The LinkedIn group also allows you to send 15 personal messages to other fellow members of the group. Normally you can do this only if you are a first-degree connection.

You can create your own LinkedIn group based on your connections and invite others to join your group. A group not only helps you to evolve as an industry leader, but you can also grow your community, generate new customers, promote your brand, and get some new ideas using LinkedIn groups.

One of the biggest advantages of having your own LinkedIn group is that you can create a group post or send a direct message to your group members and initiate discussions in the group.

Remember, you should try to go in small groups rather than giant ones. In a small group, people do read each other’s posts and become involved in conversations because of the limited number of postings. 

7. Manage your LinkedIn connections efficiently

LinkedIn can help you to grow your professional network and make new connections. Your LinkedIn connections can help to generate traffic for your website. Use your connections systematically to get the maximum benefit out of it.

Import your contacts from all other sources like email, and personal contact lists, and stay in touch with them through LinkedIn. Leverage the existing contact details of your colleagues, and potential and existing customers to spread your content. Use LinkedIn to make them learn about your business and explore various benefits associated with it. You can also customize your connections in several ways depending upon your requirement and add or remove them from the list as needed.

LinkedIn also enables you to control your viewer setting as you may not want your competitor to see your list of connections. As a professional, you can take advantage of LinkedIn endorsements by efficiently managing your connections. LinkedIn endorsements help you to get endorsements and testimonials from your connections.

A new visitor can recognize your skill sets and expertise by looking at the endorsement sections. You can also recognize the skill set of your connections using this feature by promoting and endorsing them.

8. Check out LinkedIn network updates at regular intervals

Check out the network updates which are available on your LinkedIn homepage. This will essentially give you an idea about the different activities of your customers, connections, and competitors and their choice of content. You can sort the network updates by relevance or date according to your choice and may sign up for notifications for regular updates.

Remember, LinkedIn status updates are a great tool for highlighting your work updates, sharing your industry knowledge, or promoting your brand. You should always share updates about your services and products in your timeline to keep your connections engaged. As a professional, you should also share any important published content related to your industry and services which make your profile a credible one.

According to a recent study, the ideal length of a Linkedin post should be between 21 to 25 words for business to customer marketing. 

Try to post short status updates at regular intervals on various aspects related to your service.

9. Try out the LinkedIn premium

On LinkedIn, if you want to make connections with potential customers or influencers you need to send them a personalized message. However, LinkedIn allows you to send a message only to your actual connections.

That’s why the LinkedIn premium is a very effective tool for the promotion of your brand. Only Premium account holders can send messages to any member. Being a premium member, you can use In Mail to send messages to other connections.

Once you complete your LinkedIn profile it is very important to check who is viewing your profile. This will give you a fair amount of ideas about your audience and potential customers who are checking out your profile and content.

LinkedIn Premium enables you to check the complete list of people who have visited your page. You can also try a 1-month free offer of LinkedIn Premium to check out the various unique features associated with it.

Are you ready to use LinkedIn for your brand promotion?

LinkedIn is regularly updating itself with unique features which make it one of the most important platforms for personal branding for professionals like doctors or lawyers. Start marketing your services using LinkedIn in association with a renowned digital marketing agency like SMON and make the most of your business.

The targeted marketing done by SMON not only helps you to generate more leads for your professional practice but will enable you to network with the biggest thought leaders in your profession.

Leverage LinkedIn in the marketing plan for the maximum growth of your brand.