While LinkedIn company pages are one channel to promote a brand, LinkedIn personal profiles can also be a powerful tool for raising brand awareness and audience growth. Through building a strong network of personal connections on LinkedIn to sharing thought leadership content and cross promoting your brand’s content, there are multiple strategic opportunities for leveraging LinkedIn profiles as a brand marketing channel. Follow these LinkedIn marketing tips and strategies to take advantage of your own profile: 

1. Add Your Company as a Place You Work

LinkedIn profiles act as a digital resume listing the places you have worked, and the job roles and responsibilities you had at those roles. If you have a LinkedIn company page setup for your company, you can list your company as a place you work on your profile and what you do there (i.e. Founder/CEO). That way, anyone who visits your profile will see your company logo and a link to your company LinkedIn page as the first field in your list of current and previous jobs.

2. Feature Your Company Name in Your Profile Headline

The LinkedIn Profile headline is a one sentence description where people typically list where they work, what type of work they specialize in, or the industry they work in. Add your brand name here and job title within your company to give it top level when your profile comes up in search results visibility.

3. Mention Your Brand In Your LinkedIn Bio

Your LinkedIn bio is an opportunity to put what you do, your expertise, and ambitions into your own words for your professional network to read. Business owners can take advantage of this LinkedIn profile real estate to mention their brand, explain why they founded the company, what role they play, and what the company offers.

Get tips for writing your professional bio in this blog post: Personal Branding Tips: 5 Things Every Professional Should Have to Build Their Brand

4. Share Your LinkedIn Page Updates With Your Personal Network

In a previous post on LinkedIn marketing using a brand page, we went over posting strategy. Once you have a brand page setup that has regular updates being shared from it, you can share these company posts with your personal LinkedIn network.

When sharing a LinkedIn post from your company page, add additional copy that puts the company post into your own words and discusses it in the first person. This will increase impressions and exposure for your company page updates, and also enable you to add your own commentary and expertise to personalize it.

5. Contribute to LinkedIn Groups

Being active in LinkedIn groups related to your industry niche will expand your personal network, and in turn expand the potential audience base for your brand. While you can use groups to share updates from your company, this should be done sparingly, and in an organic way vs. posts that feel overly promotional or spammy.

Make sure your LinkedIn group contributions add value rather than coming off as self serving. For example, share updates that spark conversation on a challenge or new trend in your industry, respond to questions from other group members, and offer support and guidance based on your expertise. 

6. Invite Connections to Like Your Page

LinkedIn company pages feature a tool for inviting your own LinkedIn profile’s connections to like your company page. Under your company page’s admin tools, select the invite connections option to send your LinkedIn connections an invite to like your page. This will expand your brand’s reach, and leverage your personal network’s growth as a boost for your brand page’s audience.

7. Go on LinkedIn Live

Sharing updates about your day-to-day professional life, offering your take on industry news and trends, and sharing a behind-the-scenes look at your company’s operations are all ways to leverage LinkedIn Live to engage your network. LinkedIn Live will enable you to stream video content while receiving live comments from people tuning into the stream. You can also repurpose the video recording after the fact as another piece of content to share across your marketing channels. 

8. Post LinkedIn Stories About Your Company

When LinkedIn added its Snapchat and Instagram style stories feature, it introduced a new, personalized way for LinkedIn users to interact with their connections. Use stories to show a behind the scenes look at your day-to-day work at your business, share your thoughts and ideas, and ask engaging questions. Using stories will both promote growth for your personal network, as well as awareness for your brand. 

9. Make Meaningful, Value-Based Connections

Building a network of quality LinkedIn contacts is an invaluable asset when building a business or personal brand. The component of this that people often forget is that connections are a two way street, and you should only make connections you feel you can offer value to in terms of contributing to their own network and sharing content they will find useful. 

Seek out LinkedIn connections in your industry, and think of ways to provide them real value in order to build a network that reciprocates it and becomes a member of your own network. One great piece of LinkedIn advice is to only add connections you’d be willing to do a favor for, and vise versa.

10. Share Thought Leadership Content

Sharing content that demonstrates thought leadership in your industry is an excellent initial strategy to start building a following and reputation for you and your brand. Found an article you found useful? Share it with your network and explain why. Have tips for how to solve or think about common problems in your industry?

Share those thoughts in a LinkedIn Pulse article, or via LinkedIn Live video. Thought Leadership content represents one of the biggest opportunities to leverage LinkedIn as a marketing channel, because it requires a low investment (your time), and delivers high ROI (your audience’s attention and trust).

Not only will sharing valuable content at a regular cadence improve your LinkedIn personal branding, but it will also draw people to your company's brand as well.

LinkedIn personal profiles can be leveraged as a channel to raise brand awareness and build a network of customers and fans for your brand. Follow these LinkedIn marketing tips to turn your own profile into a platform for brand development.