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2024 is upon us, and it’s time to leverage LinkedIn’s full potential to supercharge your personal brand and career trajectory. Whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder, branching out as an entrepreneur, or planning to polywork, LinkedIn remains an invaluable resource. Here are actionable steps to elevate your personal brand, enhance your LinkedIn presence, and expand your network and thought leadership.
1. Update Your Profile
You likely accomplished a lot in 2023. Ensure your LinkedIn profile accurately reflects these accomplishments. Pay close attention to your Headshot, Headline, and About sections—these elements create your digital first impression and should provide viewers with an authentic, compelling and current story of your personal brand. Before updating your About, measure it’s impact, then refine it to make it more magnetic and memorable.
2. Align Your Profile With Your Aspirations
Incorporate keywords relevant to your career goals into your profile. This not only enhances your visibility for the right opportunities but also ensures your digital persona is in harmony with your real-world aspirations. Effective personal branding is rooted in authenticity and allows room for aspiration. Consider the aspirational elements as “planned serendipity.”
3. Refresh Your Network
Review your connection requests (your probably have many that are pending) and accept those who meet your criteria. Adopt a broad networking strategy—diverse connections can lead to unexpected and valuable opportunities. Initiate conversations with your new connections to start building relationships.
4. Give And Ask For LinkedIn Recommendations
Endorsements and Recommendations are the currency of credibility on LinkedIn. They validate your skills and professional standing. Request recommendations from colleagues and others whom you met in the past year. Reflect on 2023, and proactively offer unsolicited recommendations to those you’d like to acknowledge.
5. Grow Your Thought Leadership And Content Strategy
Turn on Creator Mode on LinkedIn to amplify your personal brand. Select up to five hashtags that define your areas of expertise (they show up right below your headline), and consider linking to a personal website or another social media profile to guide followers to content that helps bolster your professional identity.
6. Engage With Your Community
Engage with content that aligns with your professional interests. Like, comment, and share to foster connections and demonstrate your engagement with your industry or job function.
7. Curate A Powerful Content Plan
Develop a content strategy for 2024. Aim to share articles, posts, or videos that showcase your expertise and insights. Maintain consistency in your content, ensuring it reflects your point of view. Establish a regular cadence and commit to maintaining that frequency.
If demonstrating thought leadership is a 2024 goal, consider launching a LinkedIn Newsletter (you need Creator Mode turned on). Establish a publication frequency that aligns with your schedule and content capacity—be it daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. And focus on one topic – something that will be of interest to your audience. Strong personal brands are clear, consistent and constant.
8. Embrace Visual Storytelling
Rich media can dramatically increase engagement and add visual appeal to your profile. Share photos, infographics, short videos, your video bio and visually engaging insights that reflect your professional narrative. Use the Featured element of your profile to host this multimedia content.
9. Track and Measure Your Impact
LinkedIn provides data that can help you refine your communications plan. Use LinkedIn analytics to refine your strategy. Assess the reach and engagement of your content and adapt your approach based on what engages your audience most effectively.
By implementing these nine strategies, you’re setting the stage for a transformative 2024. LinkedIn is not merely a platform, but a vibrant community where your brand can thrive. Harness its power and anticipate the interesting opportunities that come your way this year.
William Arruda is a keynote speaker, co-founder of CareerBlast.TV and creator of the 360Reach Personal Brand Survey that helps you get candid, meaningful feedback from people who know you.
Sophie Anderson, a UK-based writer, is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
