Why Having a Personal Presence On LinkedIn Is Important As An Executive
For the past month or so, I’ve been on a personal brand or ‘presence’ kick. Why? Because I fully believe that building your personal brand and being real on LinkedIn, is no longer something you can skip over.
By the way, I’m sharing more ways of how to navigate this as an executive in my newsletter in a few weeks. If you’re not already on the list, sign up HERE.
As an executive, having a personal brand helps you in critical areas or the business you may not realize. I refer to them as The Four Pillars: recruitment, retention, brand awareness (personal or company) and sales.
Most individual contributors, job seekers, and employees understand why building their personal brand on LinkedIn is important and know that the personal presence they create on LinkedIn can directly impact how they grow in their job or career.
But those who tend to look at me funny when I talk about personal brand or presence are CEO’s and other executives.
Having experience in the corporate world and working with people in these roles directly, I understand why a C-level executive might not see the value or not know where to start when it comes to their personal brand on LinkedIn.
After all, they’re already in a high position and aren’t always seeking new roles or positions like non-executive employees might be. But that’s where I want to help you see a new perspective.
If you’re a C-level executive leading a team, recruiting new people to your company or keeping the organization on mission as a whole, that’s the very reason that having a personal brand and presence is important!
I’ll get to more of that in just a minute, but first I want to share some stats with you that I recently collected from a group of C-level women.
Recently, I had the honor of giving a workshop about the power of using LinkedIn and before the workshop, I sent a survey and asked:
“What is the biggest goal you face when it comes to growing your brand and audience on LinkedIn?”
A. I'm looking to achieve recruitment or revenue goals this year and think LinkedIn can help.
B. I'd like to be seen in my industry and by my peers as a thought leader.
C. I'm thinking about what's next for my career (i.e. board position, writing a book, speaking, promotion, etc.) - and think LinkedIn can help.
D. I'd like to build community and mentor others. I have a lot to share, I just need to find the right people.
E. All of the above!
Over 50% said 'E'... all of the above. It was eye opening and re-affirming what I already believed to be true based on the last 10 years of my experience in this space.
This alone confirmed to me that many C-level executives are most interested in:
- How to be more creative in their recruitment, retention efforts and ways to increase revenue
- Being seen as a thought leader in their industry
- Continuing to find new opportunities for themselves while creating real impact.
When reviewing these findings, I felt so excited to speak to this group and let them know that ALL of these things can be achieved by doing ONE thing.
Can you guess what it is?
Building your personal brand and showing up with intention on LinkedIn.
To help you really see how personal brand and presence directly impacts each of these areas, let’s break it down. ⬇️
(Warning: this will be another 3 part blog series because there’s just so much to say!)
We’ll start with the first topic: recruiting.
How Personal Presence Can Help You With Recruiting
According to this recent article, there are over 58.4 million companies listed on LinkedIn, with more than 15 million open job listings.
And according to LinkedIn, over 49 million people use the platform to search for jobs every week, and in every minute, 6 people get hired from the platform directly..
These numbers beg the question: what would make someone choose YOU and your company over the 15 million other options?
Of course, things like location, job duties, salary, benefits, experience and requirements will play a massive part in ruling out a majority, but when it comes down to a candidate choosing between you and your competitor, how can you make sure that you are their FIRST choice?
In the last few years, the way people work has drastically shifted, which means that it now takes more than just the highest paying option for someone to choose you.
People want to know who exactly they’ll be working for, how you treat your staff, what they can expect the culture to be like and ultimately if they’ll be truly valued in their role.
And the best way that you can show that is by having a personal presence on platforms like LinkedIn.
My favorite example of this is Heidi Golledge, Founder and CEO of Jobot!
Heidi has one of the most impressive personal brands that I’ve personally found and I would say that the way she shows up on LinkedIn with purpose and intentionally shows the behind the scenes of her company is one of the things that plays a huge part in people wanting to work there.
If you scroll her profile, you’ll notice that the majority of her posts show her audience what she’s up to personally and how it relates to Jobot specifically.
For example, the company has what they call “Free Fridays” and in this post she shares how she’s spending hers and calls on her Jobot family to do the same.
Heidi is doing the work to stand out in her industry as a leader that is:
- upfront about her personal and company values
- clear about the mission of the company and
- excited to share what type of culture someone would be stepping into
Could she have decided that her personal presence as a founder and CEO didn’t matter that much and not use LinkedIn in this way? Sure!
But she likely would have missed out on recruiting and gaining some of the top talent (over 700 people!) that now work at Jobot that she mentions in this post.
This is just one example of how building a personal brand and maintaining your presence on LinkedIn as an executive is so important.
It truly can make or break who you attract to your company, how you grow your team and how you can gain the best of the best in your industry!
Your personal presence can also directly impact how you become a thought leader AND how you continue to climb the ladder.
I’ll be covering those next week, so stay tuned for more talk about the importance of personal brand for executives.
And if you want a reminder for when it goes live, CLICK HERE to join The Weekly Huddle Newsletter - you’ll get a message from me in your inbox every Wednesday morning with ways you can show up on LinkedIn more confidently and efficiently and ultimately be a champion in your life and work!
P.S. Are you interested in your team being more active on LinkedIn, but don’t have the time to train them yourself? Let’s connect to see if an in-person or online workshop would be a good fit!
