My Top 3: Tools To Help You Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

By Brenda L. Peterson, The Layoff Lady

About Personal Branding

Whether you're actively job searching or just trying to build your professional network, sharing content on social media is a great way to demonstrate your value. By identifying topics that people with your professional focus care about and sharing related content, you will help people associate your name with those areas of expertise. 

While regularly sharing content is valuable, it can also be time-consuming. Here are three tools I regularly use to organize and streamline this process.  

Google Alerts

On LinkedIn, you will share some content that you directly create. This might include a post about an event you attended, your career news, or your observations on a given topic. When it comes to LinkedIn, most of my content includes articles on critical topics of interest, with some introductory commentary framing the value I see in the article. 

This means I need to locate and collect those articles to post them as needed.  

One way I locate helpful content on each topic is to set up a Google Alert for keywords or phrases relevant to my professional skill set. Each Google Alert sends you an email with new online content regularly. Here are a few examples of what Google Alerts you may want to set up:
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• As a project manager, you may set up alerts for keywords like these:
  agile, change management, project management, scope creep, Gantt Chart.
• As a salesperson, you may set up alerts for keywords like these:
  social selling, prospecting, lead generation, territory management.
• As a learning & development specialist, you may set up alerts for keywords like these: instructional design, e-learning, facilitation, training needs analysis.

After you identify the keywords for topics that people in your industry talk about, create alerts to keep a steady stream of content coming to you. 

Flipboard

Flipboard serves two essential purposes. First, you can follow exciting topics and see content other users share. Second, you can use Flipboard to create magazines on a given subject area and bookmark content that interests you for later use. 

Here are a few ways you might find content to save in a Flipboard magazine: 
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• As a project manager, while scanning a newsletter from the Project Management Institute, you read an article entitled "Top Five Causes of Scope Creep." You save the article in your Project Management magazine for later reference. 
• As a salesperson, one of your team members mentions an article they found on Hubspot about sales prospecting techniques you should use according to data. You Google the phrase and save the article you find to your Prospecting magazine to review later.
• As a learning & development specialist, while reading through blog articles from your favorite talent development blogger, you run across a great article  about the importance of choosing the right graphics for an e-learning course to minimize learner cognitive load. You add it to your Instructional Design Best Practices magazine to share on LinkedIn or with collegues at a later time.

Gathering possible information to post when you run across it, organizing it, and making it easy to access will save you a lot of time figuring out what to post.

Buffer

While the other two tools are about finding and organizing possible content to post, now let's look at a tool to schedule those posts.

There are several tools available to help you manage social media posts. Currently, I use Buffer. This online platform has a free version that will enable you to manage posting on up to three social media platforms. When my goal is building my professional network and job searching, I focus on LinkedIn. 

Buffer enables you to create, schedule, and update posts as needed. When searching for a new role, I may post as often as daily. When focusing on building or maintaining my network, I may post once or twice a week. The Learn More section includes recommendations on how often and at what times you may want to share content for the greatest impact.

Creating  A Post

When I create a post to share an article, I often include the following details:

• A short statement framing up the article I'm sharing.
• A link to the article.
• One to five hashtags to drive viewership.
• Optional: a call to action.

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Here are a few examples:

• As a project manager, you might post the following:
  
  I'm a project manager who leads enterprise-wide software implementations and focuses on keeping my projects on time and within budget. Part of that is staying clear on what is "in scope" and "out of scope" for projects.
  
  Check out this article on the "Top Five Causes of Scope Creep" for a reminder on root causes and how to manage them. Number three is the one I battle constantly: http://www.scopecreeparticleurl.com
  
  #projectmanagement #scopecreep
• As a salesperson, you might post the following:
  
  As a high-performing salesperson, I'm always learning new ways to find new potential clients. This article from HubSpot outlines data-driven sales prospecting techniques you should add to your overall prospecting strategy: http://www.salesprospectingarticle.com
  
  What is your go-to strategy for prospecting?
  
  #sales #prospecting #pipelinebuilding #sellallthethings ​
  
• As a learning & development specialist, you might post the following:
  
  If you've ever taken online compliance training, I'm sure you've seen courses where the content is not aligned with the graphics. Why in the moment, those "group of people in suits with their thumbs up" pictures may just seem oddly placed. In reality, those unrelated pictures make learning harder. This is due to the additional cognitive load required for the learner to grasp the information. 
  
  To learn more about cognitive load and how to manage it well, check out this article: http://www.cognitiveloadarticle.com 
  
  ​#learninganddevelopment #instructionaldesign #elearning #cognitiveload​  

Learn More

• The Layoff Lady: The Why and What of Posting on LinkedIn
• How To Set Up a Google Alert
• Flipboard
• Buffer
• The Layoff Lady's Ultimate Guide To Answering The Question, "I Just Got Laid Off--Now What Do I Do?"​
• The Layoff Lady Book: Seven Lessons From Seven Layoffs: A Guide​​​