Personal branding is important and you definitely need it but before we can discuss how to make that happen we need to accurately understand exactly what personal branding is.

 

What is Personal Branding?

Personal branding, according to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. That is completely true. If someone was asked what your business does would they represent it the way you would represent it? If not, then there is a personal branding problem. 

 

Why is Personal Branding Important?

If you are employed with job security, why would personal branding matter to you? Well, if Covid has taught us anything, it’s that there really is no such thing as job security. Companies can go through an unforeseen crisis and you could lose your job at any moment. Companies can downsize. You might get a new manager you don’t agree with. There are all kinds of things that could happen so personal branding is critical.

 

The Stats

70% of employers will use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process. 43% of employers use social media to check on current employees. It’s a huge benefit to have such a substantial brand that when people look at you, you stand out. 

 

How Does it Benefit Your Company?

 

Personal branding also benefits your employer. When an employer allows you to represent them either at a conference or online, they are developing themselves and providing the organization with more exposure. Your employees become ambassadors for your company.

 

How Does it Benefit You?

 

First of all, it demonstrates your expertise. It can be a great resource tool, especially for sales. LinkedIn is a great resource tool for sales. 

 

What is the Best Tool for Personal Branding?

LinkedIn is the best tool for personal branding. It’s the business version of Facebook. It’s where people go to see the business side of you. It’s easily accessible. Google indexes LinkedIn and LinkedIn posts so it’s very visible as well. When you are on LinkedIn and posting regularly, it really demonstrates your knowledge and expertise. This makes you stand out for yourself and your company. 

 

LinkedIn has the most robust search feature of any platform. It allows you to search based on industry, location, and even degrees of separation from you through your connections. It allows you to gain social proof of your skills and talents with your recommendations. 

 

LinkedIn allows you to follow your competition and keep up with what they’re doing in an open way. It also allows you to network through groups. You can access your ideal client that you would normally not have access to and see a list of them right there in the group. It allows you to network with people in your industry or people in your area. It’s just a great networking tool. 

 

Why LinkedIn?

 

LinkedIn has 722 million members and 40% of those access it on the daily. That’s huge. 77% of recruiters are on LinkedIn. If you’re job hunting, that’s very important. 92% of Fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn. 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision-makers are on LinkedIn. The numbers are tremendous. If you’re looking for a CEO, CIO, or CFO they’re going to be there and it’s the easiest way to get to them without having to go through a gatekeeper. 

 

87% of millennials are on LinkedIn. It doesn’t matter if your audience is older or younger because there is very even representation there. 76% of LinkedIn members say the top site feature is the “who has viewed your profile” feature. It’s nice to be able to see who is checking out your profile, especially if you’re job hunting. For 91% of marketing executives, LinkedIn is the top place to find quality content. It’s the number 1 platform for content marketing. Also, since you have over 700 million users but only 3 million users post weekly, what a great way to stand out by just sharing content. 78% of business-to-business marketers say that LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform for content marketing. 

 

Our team attended a conference last year where we did LinkedIn audits. To prepare, every member of the team updated their profile and began posting regularly. Guess what happened. The leads started rolling in. This really works. We each got messages directly to our inboxes asking for information about our company.

 

Personal Branding is Important

 

Yes, personal branding is a big deal. It can help you find a job or keep the job you already have. It can even help you get promoted within the company you work for already.