Achieving the level of CEO does not mean that you can rest on your LinkedIn laurels. As the leader of a company, your profile represents your personal brand and is the face of the company. Here are five ways to up your game and make your profile work for you as a CEO.
1. Make Sure Your Experience is Truly Integrated
When was the last time you looked over the Experience section of your Profile? CEOs make the mistake of treating this space as a dry recitation of their prior employment. Don’t forget, your different experiences represent an opportunity for you to show how you achieved your current position as CEO. Your Experience is more than a list of jobs. Take the time to show your path and control the narrative of your career. Each step shows how your role has expanded over time, leading you to where you are today.
By connecting the dots, your accumulated experience becomes relevant to your current leadership role and provides context for your personal brand. Especially if you have a few career pivots, that story should be a part of your professional context – a change to improve on another quality that you bring to bear in your current role. As you continue to grow into your position or move to a new position, you should go back to the Experience section of your profile to make sure it is telling the right story.
2. Sync Your Personal Brand and Company Brand
While your marketing team may be in charge of the company profile and brand, they – and you – should not overlook your personal profile as another, critical face of the company. Align the company brand and narrative with your personal brand by writing about your role as the CEO. Reflect the vision of the company and what the company does in a way that the sum is greater than its parts. Your profile can set out your vision for the company and your role in fulfilling that vision. Link this vision to your personal vision to show how they are aligned.
It bears repeating that your personal profile should be linked to the company profile. Then, help guide your audience on what to do next by including a company video, press release or the latest news as media on your profile. If there are changes in the company – exciting announcements, your profile can address these changes and express your perspective and plan. This could be a great way to leverage the blogging/article writing feature of LinkedIn.
3. Share Your Company Content
CEOs should leverage their marketing team to provide relevant, interesting content via the company page. Are you sharing that content? Are you adding value to the content with comments about what is on your company page? Is the CEO’s commentary part of the overall marketing strategy? Placing the CEO’s personal stamp on the content enhances the image of an involved executive. Be careful to do this thoughtfully. There are many opportunities for the CEO to add a personal note. Community involvement, charity work, and new hires are events that should receive attention. Issues of particular interest to the CEO like recognizing partners and leaders in the community can also present great opportunities for content to be shared on the company page and by the CEO.
4. Write for Your Audience
As a busy CEO, if you don’t have time, engage the expertise of your marketing department to create content for your personal page. This is a great opportunity to build the company brand and reinforce your personal brand. Your writing should align with the company content so that you are discussing the same topics from a different perspective. For example, if your company profile puts up content about collaboration, you can write about how your leadership team collaborates for success and why it matters to your customers. LinkedIn is a tool for promoting the company and your personal brand, but if you fail to post regularly, you’ll miss out on this opportunity.
5. Have a Profile that Attracts Talent.
Candidates for positions at a company will go to the personal profile of the CEO when researching a job opportunity. Why? Because they care about leadership. To attract talent, a profile should have a good, contemporary headshot and a clear value proposition about the company. Think about who the company is trying to attract, and write to that person. A great post might be an interview of the CEO by the company’s newest hire. This could be an engaging video or a written Q&A. This shows that you are approachable as the CEO, and you care about new hires. Your answers to the interview questions present another opportunity to advance the company brand.
“the percentage of millennials who said they would increase their loyalty to their employer if they knew their CEOs’ views far outstripped that of other generations: 44 percent of millennials said it would, compared with just 16 percent of Gen Xers and 18 percent of baby boomers.” – Weber Shandwick Report, in partnership with KRC Research. CEO Activism in 2017: High Noon in the C-Suite
LinkedIn presents multiple ways that CEOs can increase their own profile and raise the profile of their company. It’s important to take advantage of these opportunities because people are looking. When they look at the CEO’s profile, they should see a clear narrative, linked to the company profile and promoting both CEO and company that helps promote why prospects, customers, and employees should want to work there.
Jen Dalton, CEO of BrandMirror, has over 15 years of experience in strategy, marketing, and coaching. In 2012, she made a gutsy move into the entrepreneurship space, launching her branding business and became a certified master personal branding strategist. She specializes in building your digital thought leadership on LinkedIn and other social media. You can find her bestselling book, The Intentional Entrepreneur, on Amazon, which highlights how business owners can leverage their personal brand to grow their business faster.
