By Jo Evans
As the fresh financial year takes shape, it’s the perfect time to embrace that classic mantra of ‘new year, new you’. At least when it comes to your LinkedIn presence. Here are six compelling reasons you should revisit and refresh your executive profile to amplify and expand your professional brand.
- Its reach is unparalleled. LinkedIn remains one of the easiest, most credible avenues to reach your clients, customers, team members and wider network of contacts and stakeholders. Estimated to have more than 400 million users globally, it puts you in front of your target audience, while also bringing you to the attention of prospective business partners, investors, staff members, innovators, entrepreneurs and organisations – all at the click of a mouse.
- It puts you in the spotlight. Once you have their attention, LinkedIn lets you keep your wider network up to date with your achievements, insights, awards and career wins. In controlling the narrative, you’re able to share and detail critical facets of your working life in real time and with greater outreach than would otherwise be possible. This storytelling also humanises your career trajectory and showcases your areas of expertise.
- It is a machine that favours content, celebration and connection. Like all social media, LinkedIn loves fresh content, which opens up an opportunity to be creative and prolific. By making a point to refresh your profile – and keep on doing so – you’re able to create and share new ideas, angles and reasons for people to connect with you. Think of LinkedIn like a hungry beast – it must be fed, and a showcase of your expertise makes a tasty meal.
- It puts you in the driver’s seat. One of LinkedIn’s key advantages is not only the chance to raise your profile and credibility, but also to flesh out your professional persona. To this end, a succinct, compelling profile should include:
- a thought-provoking headline
- a summary of your working life to date
- extra information about your interests (don’t be shy here as they can be a great ice-breaker and point of connection)
- an attached resume and
- a photo that captivates
- It taps into the digital age. LinkedIn lets you go beyond static, templated CVs in favour of creative profiles featuring all manner of digital assets, including videos, graphs and data. Colour and movement are guaranteed to capture attention, so make use of them. Even the most serious and exacting profile can be brought to life through the judicious use of imagery, footage and more. Could your profile do with a creative refresh?
- It prizes the real you. Authenticity is the holy grail of social media. And that’s exactly what LinkedIn allows you to showcase. Unlike other social media channels, where successful outreach can depend on tapping into trends or slavishly following what other people are doing, LinkedIn is all about you, your career, skills and working life. And that’s a powerful platform.
As you can see, LinkedIn can be an incredibly powerful and personable platform – when used to its maximum advantage.
If you’re ready to be heard and seen this financial year, but don’t know where to start, Bespoken’s seasoned storytellers are experts in helping to create tailored text and meaningful messaging.
With our exclusive SOFY package, we’ll not only reshape and refresh your executive LinkedIn profile, we’ll also give your peers, collaborators and colleagues a reason to read all about you.
Get a head start on the competition by reaching out to us at [email protected].
