Brand Aid: Taking Control of Your Reputation--Before Everyone Else Does by Larry G. Linne & Patrick Sitkins

Author:Larry G. Linne & Patrick Sitkins [Linne, Larry G.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-01-06T14:00:00+00:00

MAKING THE MOST OF LINKEDIN

I have watched LinkedIn grow over the past eight years. In the beginning, it looked like a place for salespeople to market to each other. I felt like I needed to be there, but wasn’t too worried about anyone finding me on it except someone trying to sell me something. Since those early days, my view has changed dramatically. The site has become very robust, with a staggering increase in the number of users (according to Fortune magazine, an eye-opening 141 million unique visitors were on LinkedIn in April 2013 alone). These users spent an average of twenty minutes per session—longer than on many other websites. That is a serious brand communication opportunity.

Today, I manage my presence on LinkedIn carefully, and I consider it a primary tool for my brand management. I receive more than two hundred visitors to my page each month, and my profile appears in more than 1,800 LinkedIn searches monthly. That’s a lot of brand impressions, built and maintained over time.

The keyword is maintained. Whether you want them to or not, people—colleagues, potential employers, prospective new clients, and others—are looking you up on LinkedIn, and often forming a first impression of you there. As with all opportunities to shape our brand, we can take an active role, or we can let others come to their own conclusions without our input. The former is a far better strategy.

Patrick has developed a powerful LinkedIn management tool that provides insights into proactive use of LinkedIn for prospecting, personal profile management, data management, SEO, managing endorsements and referrals, and much more. If you want to maximize your efforts on LinkedIn, it would be best to take a class, call a consultant, or contact Quintain Marketing for this resource. I am going to pull some of the information from this resource, however, and combine with my expertise on brand management to give you my top ten critical ways to manage your brand on LinkedIn:

1. Make sure to have a good-quality, professional picture on your profile. This may be the first time someone sees you. Give a great first impression. Like it or not, in many cases people make decisions on relationships based on how you look. Have a welcoming smile, sharp dress, and look like the brand you want to portray.

2. Write a strong Summary statement. People are typically not going to read everything in your profile. One of the first things they will see is your Summary statement. Make sure to express your brand as clearly as possible in this section.

3. Make sure to have someone review your profile for spelling and grammar. You will certainly have a brand problem if someone sees errors throughout your profile.

4. Have your recommendations reflect what you want people to think about you. If the recommendations are positive but reflect commoditized, oversimplified, or outdated attributes, it could conflict with what you want people to think. For example, an insurance salesperson who wants to be known for helping with strategies beyond

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