LinkedIn is a fantastic tool to help showcase your personal brand. But how should you approach it in 2024? Digital Director Emma Maule explains how to supercharge your LinkedIn presence.
As a new year dawns, many of us are turning our thoughts to self-improvement and what we would like to change.
Exercise, self-care, work-life balance, and decluttering may feature on your list. But have you considered your personal brand? It’s a key area that can boost your career, increase your visibility, and ultimately, your bottom line.
And what better way to showcase your professional story than on LinkedIn? As the top platform for the legal community, it’s a must-have tool in your arsenal.
So, as you make your new year’s resolutions, consider adding LinkedIn to the list. It may just be the missing piece to your career puzzle.
What might your LinkedIn resolutions be? Here are some great ones to take on board.
- I will post more content around personal storytelling. Authentically sharing about personal aspects of your life, or revealing successes, mistakes and lessons learned from your professional life, will get hugely more traction than a 1000-word essay on property law. People want to know about you and what makes you tick – so let them in.
- I will post consistently, not over-posting or under-posting. If you post more than once every 18 hours, you will damage the traction of both posts. And if you post less than once a week, LinkedIn will downgrade the reach of your next couple of posts. Aim for once to twice a week on weekday mornings for best reach.
- I will diarise thinking and posting time to make myself accountable. While you consume content and go about your everyday life, keep what you’re going to post about in your mind. Use a notepad app to jot down ideas or dump article links to use later. If you go out with your team for a meal, take part in charity work, attend an event, write a blog, or read an interesting article – these are all great things to post about.
- I will optimise my profile. LinkedIn rewards users who have completed their profiles to ‘All-Star’ level with around 40% more reach for their posts. So make sure you’ve filled in all the core sections and pay attention to the top – prime real estate! Include an eye-catching, on-brand banner, a recent professional headshot, and add keywords into your headline.
- I will nurture my posts. Warm up your timeline by logging on around 30 minutes before you post and engaging with some aspects of the platform. Then do your post – but don’t ‘post and ghost’! Stick around and engage with three more people’s posts, ideally by writing a comment underneath, to see 30% more reach. Then like and reply to all comments under your post to see its reach snowball.
- I will be generous. If you engage, others will reciprocate – do not just broadcast a couple of posts a month then log out. Stick around to like, comment on, and share others’ content. If you only have 10 minutes, an instant repost, a comment or a DM will all count towards engagement that will boost your next post.
- I will always include images or video. LinkedIn, like most other social media platforms, is now primarily image-led. Did you know that the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text? Be visual and memorable. People like looking at images of real people best, so take pictures at events, during charity work, of your team when you get together and don’t be afraid of a selfie or two!
Finding things to post about can be tricky, but remember that people are most interested in celebrating your successes and learnings, and seeing what you do as a team and when you’re away from your desk. Make it your resolution to try a more personal post today – we promise you’ll see results.
We are running personal brand group training sessions starting in March, for Partners and Associates. For more details, get in touch.
