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The Top 5 FAQs From The Forbes Personal Branding Webinar

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Hundreds of questions came in during the Forbes webinar I recently delivered with Forbes’ social media expert Kimberly Horner. If you missed it, here’s where you can access the replay.

Kim and I answered a few of the questions that came in, but there were many, many more. The most prominent theme among all the questions that were submitted was digital branding – and that’s good because the future of personal branding has moved online.

In this post, I share my responses to some of the most common questions from the webinar’s participants:

1. Should I write my LinkedIn Summary in the first- or third-person?

This is a common question because we are so used to bios written in the third-person, but first-person bios have started making their appearance on LinkedIn. My recommendation is first- person for two reasons.

First, everyone knows you wrote your LinkedIn profile summary so it is a little disingenuous to write it in the third person – pretending it’s your publicist who penned it. It’s more authentic and transparent to write it using “I” instead of “he” or “she.”

Second, when you write in the first-person, you set up a conversation between you and the reader – it’s much more personal than talking about a third party. This allows you to build an emotional connection with those who are checking you out.

2. When I do a Google search, I rarely show up in the first few pages. What do I do if I have a common name?

OK, so maybe your parents named you Jill Smith. And maybe there at 10,000 other Jill Smiths in the world – and sadly, your Google results show up mixed in with theirs – or worse, your results are nowhere to be found on the first few pages of results. There’s no need to worry! Here’s the good news: People have become really sophisticated searchers. They realize when they see mixed-up results like this that they need to do something to filter out all the other Jill Smiths so they can find you. What they’ll do is add to your name some keywords to filter out the non-you results. The question for you is: What are those keywords? You need to know the words people would use to try to find you, and you must include those words in everything you post online.

3. Should I blog on LinkedIn?

The short answer is Yes. That is of course if you have an area of expertise, along with your own point of view. LinkedIn provides access to over 500 million pair of eyeballs – making it easier to get your content seen than if you tried to maintain your own blog. If you are going to share your thought-leadership on LinkedIn … pay attention to these imperatives:

  1. Write for your target audience. Make sure you know who you’re seeking to influence, and then position your content for relevance to that community. Personal branding is about being selectively famous – ever visible to those who are making decisions about you.
  2. Only publish a blog if the answer to this question is yes, absolutely: Will this be value to the people I seek to influence? Personal branding is about giving value to others. It’s about generosity and acknowledgement.
  3. Write consistently. Publishing one blog post a year is much less valuable than having a regular series of posts that your community comes to expect. One of the three Cs of personal branding is constancy – it means consistently appearing in your target audience’s line of sight. “Regular” does not mean daily or even weekly. You can write one blog every month and still have a lot of impact.

4. There are so many LinkedIn profiles for people with my title, how can I differentiate mine? 

Visual elements are just as important as the words in your message. Here are the keys for using both to stand out from the herd:

  • Create a custom background that expresses your brand or a color that exudes your brand attributes.
  • Add multimedia – images, videos, presentation PDFs and/or infographics – to the Summary and Experience sections of your profile
  • Update your headline to include not only your job title and company but also your promise – the results you deliver when you do what you do
  • Write a summary that’s one of a kind – including your passions and values. Give people who are checking you out an opportunity to get to know you beyond the accomplishments and credentials.

5. How can I use video to express my brand?

There are so many ways video can help you exude your brand. First, let’s talk about the power of video. Video allows you to deliver a complete communication. Words – and that’s all you have in a blog – account for just 7% of whether a communicator is likable, according to research by Albert Mehrabian. Videos posted to YouTube are also very helpful for getting you noticed. A video is more likely to show up on page one of a Google search than the same content in text form – thanks to Universal search. To get the most personal branding bang from video, do this:

  • Make your video deliver value in 3 minutes or fewer.
  • Publish your video to YouTube using all the right keywords.
  • Publish your video using the update feature in LinkedIn.
  • Add relevant videos to the Summary or Experience sections of your LinkedIn profile.
  • Publicize your video by sharing it with your connections and via all relevant groups.

Delivering this webinar with Kim was a lot of fun – and the especially fun part was seeing how many career-minded professionals are investing time in their growth.

William Arruda is the cofounder of CareerBlast and creator of the complete LinkedIn quiz that helps you evaluate your LinkedIn profile and networking strategy.