Using LinkedIn to Grow Your Personal Brand.

Megan MacNeill is a Scottish lass, living the dream in Western Australia, teaching people across the world how to position themselves and get noticed.

Usually found on LinkedIn but I am partial to a good old scroll on Instagram too. 

She's also the host of Personal Branding Exposed podcast where she gets awesome people from around the world to tell us how their particular skill or niche feeds into personal branding. She also likes debunking myths - like Personal branding is all about ego (wrong - you'll need to listen to find out why)! 

Megan started Relevant in 2019 because she wanted to use all the skills she had learned over the years working for not-for-profits and show people that not only not-for-profits do great things, companies and individuals do too. Everyone has a story worth sharing!

If you’re attracting high level execs, then LinkedIn is where you want to be, but always choose your platform for your audience.

It’s got this amazing organic reach. A week later I can still be getting engagement on my post.

Stop thinking of your profile as your resume. It’s a really amazing high end converting landing page if you use it properly. Make sure it’s filled out properly. Don’t make it about you. Nobody cares about you, only about what you can do for them, so base it on that.

If you’ve got a name that someone is googling then your LinkedIn is far more likely to pop up at the top than any other website.

When you’re on the platform, engage. Even if you don’t make a single piece of content, engage.

Survival of the friendliest.

If someone puts out content that resonates with you, engage with it. If other people in the comments start engaging heavily on it, start engaging not just on the original content but in the comments as well. It’s like if you’re at a networking event, you’re just attending someone else’s event whereas when you’re ready to start creating content, that’s when people start coming to your events.

Every platform prefers video at the moment.

We’re really visual, we’re really lazy and we’re really time poor. So the easier you can make it for someone, the longer they may actually stay on your post because our attention span is really ridiculous. I think we’re down to the same as a fish? 6 or 7 seconds? So you’ve got to really grab them.

LinkedIn doesn’t give priority to articles any more. It won’t get much reach but it will have an amazing shelf life, especially if it has great key words in it.

If you’ve written a blog for your website, repurpose it. Put it on there. You’ve written it already anyway.

You need to have a business page because it finishes your profile and link it up to your personal page.

Your website is still key. I love LinkedIn, but it's still rented space.  

When you’re putting out content, your biz page will never get the traction your personal page will.

My personal page will stay with me forever, no matter what biz I have or what biz I work for.

Comment or like, shares have no value whatsoever. You want engagement.

Don’t worry about likes and comments to start out with, people on LinkedIn are very passive. If you’re putting out quality content, you will get the cut through.

Do I want to see what you had for breakfast? No. Do I want to see your Ferrari? No. There’s an unfollow button for a reason. Don’t connect with the wrong people. You are what you consume. I love going on LinkedIn, I always learn something.

Just because you connect with people, doesn’t mean you have to keep them there or if they slip straight into the DMs going 'Hey! I’ve got This. Wanna buy? Wanna Buy? Wanna buy?' You wouldn’t do that in real life, so don’t do that online.

Never be afraid to give away everything because someone just wants to know that you can do it and they want to understand that you can do it. So give them enough to be able to comprehend that.

Write and speak for an 11 year old because things that we think are really easy do not mean that they’re easy for someone else…and the reason they’re coming to you is because you’ve identified a problem and you’ve explained it to them and you’ve helped them understand that it’s solvable and that you’re the best person to solve it.

Dumb it down…not because your audience is stupid but because we’re lazy, we’re time poor and we just want to get straight to the point. So take away all the barriers and never be afraid to just share everything because it’s already out there somewhere. So if someone wants to find it, they will. So get it all out there, tell them what you know and then people will pay you to help them with that.

Start looking at the hashtags you can use, start geotagging.

Your network is your net worth so make sure your network knows what you do.

Make sure your profile picture is really schmick. I want your face in there. I don’t want any props, I don’t want any other people, I want at least 40% of that circle to be your face I want to see your eyes. I want you looking directly at me and I want a smile. I want you to look really friendly. It’s survival of the friendliest and this might be the first time someone comes across you and the only thing we see is your profile picture….we live in a digital world and the way we do things is completly different. So make sure you have a profile picture, make sure its amazing and make sure that it is on public because you’re there to make connections so don’t lock yourself down. There shouldn’t be anything on there you don’t want the world to see.

Outsource everything you’re not good at.

https://relevantbusiness.com.au/

https://www.instagram.com/relevantmegan/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmacneill/

https://relevantbusiness.com.au/linkedin-online-course/

www.marlanasemenza.com