How To Measure Your Personal Branding Success On LinkedIn

BY GERRY MORAN

The power of your personal social brand impacts the effectiveness of your overall marketing, selling and social selling strategy and activity. The more visible and more acknowledged as an expert you are, then your chances that you will be successful will increase. An important start to establishing your presence and expertise is to use LinkedIn as your branding hub. Being found and extending your content and messaging is key!

Your Personal Branding Strategy

Establishing your credibility and awareness is important for you to become an earlier part of the new buyer journey. You can’t be a part of that early-funnel conversation unless you can be found and have a value-add point of view that helps a customer solve their problem vs. just sell a solution. 75% of B2B decision makers say that B2B marketers were too heavy-handed with the sales messaging in their content (Source: 2012 DemandGen Report “Content Preferences Survey), so changing the early sales-cycle approach is critical.

In a prior post, I reviewed how to keep a LinkedIn profile active and relevant to help establish and maximize one’s visibility and expert positioning. Here is how you can measure how many times that your LinkedIn profile shows up in search and the impact of your content and messaging.


Measure The Impact Of Your LinkedIn Branding Strategy

Get Your LinkedIn Profile to Show Up On Search More. The more times that your LinkedIn profile show up in search; the chances that you will be found are increased! LinkedIn reports that 40% of users profiles are not complete! Don’t be in THAT group! Keeping your profile’s headline, summary, and job experience current and refreshed with relevant key words will increase the amount of times that you will show up in search. The more you are found on search, your social selling, marketing and personal branding success rate will increase!


Increase The Potential Reach Of Your Personal Brand And LinkedIn Profile.

More daily updates and LinkedIn Group updates will increase your potential brand impressions. When you send out a LinkedIn update more than your followers see you message. 2nd-level and 3rd-level network contacts see your “smart” posts and will potentially click on your content and ask you to connect with them!


Increase The Amount Of Times Your LinkedIn Profile Is Viewed And Considered. 

Many things affect profile views, ranging from who you just met at a conference to the quality of content that you distribute on LinkedIn. When your weekly profile views increase on an ongoing basis, then you know you are likely doing something right on LinkedIn. And, if your profile views are not going up, then you should be prompted do increase the quality or your content updates, profile, and group activity.


Increase The Amount Of Expertise LinkedIn Endorsements That You Receive. 

When your network sees regular updates with great content, then you are likely to come to mind when they have the chance to give you a Skills and Expertise endorsement. Skills & Expertise endorsements are a key driver that impacts your search results, ranking you higher, in the consideration of the searcher, based on the amount of endorsements that you maintain.


Increase The Amount Of LinkedIn Invites You Receive. 

People like to associate themselves with people who will increase their knowledge and connect with them with others. Your inside-LinkedIn activity and your outside-LinkedIn activity, such as thought-leader blogging, speaking or networking, should lead to an increased amount of people who want to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Here are some other ways to improve your personal branding on LinkedIn!

1. Create the perfect LinkedIn profile

2. Run your LinkedIn profile like a PPC campaign

3. Use LinkedIn invites to deepen your relationships

4. Measure the success of your LinkedIn activity

5. Have a LinkedIn profile picture that does not scare your network away!


Follow these simple ways to see if people are finding you and if your expert positioning is valued? If you are not showing up in search, people are not reading your updates, or if you are not receiving invites or endorsements, think about adjusting your approach. Believe me … this works!

Do you have other measurable ways that you can see the impact of your personal branding strategy on LinkedIn? If so, please comment below. Or contact me directly on MarketingThink.com, on LinkedIn or on Twitter @GerryMoran.

http://marketingthink.com/measure-personal-branding-success-linkedin/