Personal Branding For Careers | The Personal Branding Blog

Media Trends and Your Personal Brand

February 2, 2012 By Maria Elena Duron 4 Comments

Media is changing and it is changing fast. Just when you get the hang of using one tool to use for your marketing strategy and to get you closer to your customers, a new one is introduced. Consumers like media and when something new is introduced they get into it. As a business owner, you are sometimes pressured to try the latest as well, to catch up with consumer trends. If you want to get consumers, you have to be where they are.

Here are some media trends that will hit big this 2012. Take a look at how these media types are going to help your business:

SMS – people like being mobile, we prey on convenience. In the last decade, mobile phones changed the way people communicate and because most consumers have mobile phones, text messaging as a marketing strategy is going to be big this year. By texting, you reach out to your consumers faster. When they hear the beep, they read your message. As per email, it might take a while before they can read your message, especially when they don’t open their emails on a regular basis.

Mobile compatibility – if you have a website, you want to make sure that it is mobile compatible. A lot of people are jumping into using smartphones. They want to be able to access their social media accounts even when they are on the go. They want to be able to read their emails and browse websites without having to pull up their computers. When your website is mobile compatible, this means that you are not giving your customers a hard time accessing your website. Again, convenience. You also increase your chances of making a sale.

Facebook – Facebook is not going anywhere, as a matter of fact it’s still growing. It’s still a great place to connect with your audience and a chance to convert them into customers. Make sure to strategize on how you can make the site work for your business needs.

Pinterest – this is a new site that has great potential for businesses. The concept is to “Pin” images that interests you. Your followers can see what you are pinning and they can like, comment, and “Repin” your image. You can even organize your interests into “Boards”. The “Board” is where you can pin images depending on each board topic. It’s a place where you can post images of your products or services and let your customers see what you are offering.

Gamification – consumers like to participate in games and if you gamify your business, you have more customers getting involved. The concept of gamifying is earning something, like points and prizes. FourSquare is a good example. Companies are integrating FourSquare into their business by rewarding those who checked-in with points and badges. When you reach a certain number of points or a certain badge, you get discounts on products or services.

Using video – videos can help your business in a lot of ways. You can use them to educate and train, and as a means to communicate with your customers. Learn how to make use of videos as web content. Instead of articles, why not make short videos to give out tips? They don’thave to be long; you can do something instructional in less than 3 minutes. Consumers like watching how things are done. This is also their way of seeing you and getting to know you more.

You don’t have to be on everything but you can try to mix these options up and see which combinations give you the most benefits.

What combos are you using?

Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: maria elena duron, media trends, personal branding

Is Your Personal Brand Stepping Out of it’s Comfort Zone?

January 31, 2012 By Paul Copcutt Leave a Comment

While waiting for his owner to return from some local shopping, Bernard here knows where his boundaries are and he is not going to stray at all, he has become too comfortable in his surroundings. Of course perhaps he knows (or has experienced) that if he were to jump out of the back of the truck he might be placing himself in danger.

Unfortunately, at work, this is something we are all a little guilty of. Perhaps on occasion, it’s not going to be life threatening, we need to take a risk or two and leap out of our comfort zone – or maybe just a gentle step will do.

Three simple things to consider as a way to step out of your personal brand comfort zone at work;

1. Bring a little more of your personality to work. Choose something from home that you are passionate about or that means a lot to you and add it to your desk, cubicle or office space. Perhaps a favourite picture, photo or desk ornament.

2. Consider adding a piece of jewellery or favourite coloured accessory and making it a regular part of your wardrobe. It does not all have to be navy and black.

3. Identify a skill or strength that you are well known for, that you have a reputation for delivering on consistently and mention it in your outgoing voicemail message. If you pride yourself on returning calls promptly, say so in your voicemail. BUT if you are not good at getting back to people do not date your voicemail either!

What can you be doing with your personal brand to step out of your comfort zone?

Paul Copcutt first aligned with personal branding after reading Tom Peters ‘Brand You 50’ in 1997. Now a sought after speaker and media resource he has been featured by Forbes, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and Elle. He works with executives, managers and teams for leading Fortune 500 corporations.

Filed Under: Employee Brand Activation, Expressing Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips Tagged With: career, Career Management, Personal Brand, world of work

Is Your Brand LinkedIn?

January 29, 2012 By Peter Sterlacci 3 Comments

LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with a current membership of over 135 million. Close to 60% of these members are located outside the US. The latest data shows that professionals are signing up to join at a rate that is faster than two members per second! Clearly LinkedIn has become an essential tool for professionals all over the world to network, share business expertise, find jobs, advance professional knowledge, and build personal brands.

5 Quick Tips to Brand Yourself on LinkedIn

Here are 5 tips to effectively use LinkedIn to build and promote your brand.

1) Have a headline that sells an experience

When people visit your profile the first thing they will see is your name and headline at the top of your “profile box”. This is the most visible part of your page and you want people to continue exploring your profile. People often fall into the trap of identifying themselves in their headline by a job title (“Accountant”) or label (“Business Major”). While this is a valid representation of what we do, it actually groups us into the same category as everyone else doing the same type of job or studying the same subject matter.

You have 120 characters to describe who you are. This is the first place to stand out. Consider your target audience and sell an experience not a title or label. Instead of saying you are a “psychiatrist” tell others you are “The Shrink for Entrepreneurs who want freedom, wealth, and sanity.”

2) Get a Professional Headshot

Absolutely do not leave out a photo and make sure that the photo you use is professionally done. Take the time to invest in high quality headshots as you will use them everywhere. Remember, LinkedIn is a professional business network. Your credibility is at stake so avoid photos of you at college parties or with groups of people where it is not clear which person is you!

3) Edit your LinkedIn URL to include your name

For example, www.linkedin.com/in/yourname

Do not overlook this critical branding point. Beyond the power of simply having a profile on LinkedIn is the fact it is highly optimized on Google. Once you adjust the URL to include your full name, your profile will always show up at the top or near the top of the first page of your Google results. This presence on the first page of search results will reinforce your online brand identity so that opportunities do not pass you by.

4) Write your ‘Summary’ in the first person and tell a story

By using ”I am….” or “My name is…” you are speaking directly to those looking for you on LinkedIn. While the summary is not immediately visible unless someone views your full profile, it is probably the most important area on your profile. Treat this summary box as if it were your ‘elevator pitch’. Convince the readers of your LinkedIn profile that you have something unique to offer. Differentiate yourself from everyone else who seemingly offers the same service or who have similar skills, experience, and background. Michael Margolis, founder of Get Storied, tells us that “character trumps credentials”. There is plenty of space to show your credentials in the ‘Experience’ section of your profile. Use the Summary section to tell your story and show your character!

Also, your name is a key word and by using it in your summary you are improving the appearance of your name and profile when other search for you online.

5) Ask for recommendations (and recommend others!)

Build your credibility and validation for your brand and experience by having people who know you well write recommendations on LinkedIn. Once you start adding people to your network, LinkedIn makes it easy for them to write you a recommendation. You also have the power to review the recommendation someone writes and decide whether to add it or ask for edits or a different spin on what they wrote. Even as a student you can request recommendations from professors, classmates, internships or virtually anyone with whom you have shared an academic experience. Make sure to return the favor and write a recommendation for those who have taken the time to write one for you.

Do you have any quick tips to brand yourself on LinkedIn? Please share below.
Peter Sterlacci, Founder of BeYB – Believe. Become. Be Your Brand, combines personal branding strategy with cycling imagery to empower on-the-move careerists in global companies in Japan to shift gears, get out of the saddle, and sprint to career success.

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips Tagged With: Brand Story, Career Management, LinkedIn, online identity

You Are What You Text

January 26, 2012 By Maria Elena Duron Leave a Comment

Everything we say or do represents our brand. We make an impression on others when we communicate with them, whatever way we do that. When you post your contact details on your webpage or people find them on your social media site, they will try to reach you personally. Some customers would prefer to text message you to ask about basic things. Your reply is going to be crucial because it may be the only chance you have with that person. You want to make a strong first impression even when it’s through text messaging.

When you decide to place your mobile number out there for your customers, you have to be ready to communicate with them effectively. Keep in mind that all those who reach you are potential customers. A mobile phone is different from a computer – it’s harder to write messages on smaller devices, especially without the keyboard. Make sure to use it wisely.

Here are some tips on how you can make an impression through text messaging:

Turn off your auto correct – all phones come with auto correct; it’s a feature that is supposed to help a user text faster because of the predefined words saved on the phone. However, auto correct jokes are becoming a form of entertainment today because of how wrongly the words are placed in the text. Since you are doing business, it’s better to turn your auto correct off so you don’t risk saying the wrong things to your recipient. But be sure to still spell your words correctly, no shortcuts because this can be really annoying to someone who is isn’t especially experienced in using “text language”.

Keep it short and simple – typing is hard, and since your auto correct is turned off, keep your message short and simple. It will save you and your recipient time and energy. Give them what they need, or you can ask them if you can call to further explain your answer. Make sure to review your message before you hit send. You don’t want your customer to be misled in any way.

Check the recipient – after checking your message and you’re ready to send it, check the recipient. Sometimes we’re busy thinking about other things that we send messages to wrong recipients. It’s an easy away to keep a good impression with everyone you’re connected with especially when you have numbers of your customer saved on your phone. You don’t want them getting the wrong message. If you are the one who receives a wrong message, respond to that message to inform him/her that they sent a message to the wrong person.

Be courteous – at all times. Take note of your tone when you are composing a text message, make sure that your recipient doesn’t get a chance to misinterpret it. When you know that they don’t have your number, do introduce yourself before proceeding with your message. Also, when you’re in a face-to-face conversation with someone, text messaging is as rude as taking a voice call. Choose a proper time to respond.

Time of response – Watch the time you respond to a text message. Waking someone up or texting late comes with a lasting impression on who you are as a person.

Don’t depend on text messages – text messaging is informal. And, don’t deliver bad news using text. Or, anything that could be misinterpreted – the smartphone can still be used as a phone.

Be patient – when you send text messages, don’t expect your recipient to receive your message right away. Just like you, your recipient might be busy with their daily tasks. There are a lot of factors that can prevent them from responding to you quickly. It’s either they haven’t received the message because of their carrier, or they are out of coverage, or it’s your network that’s not pushing the message to your phone. If it’s an urgent matter, try other means.

Texting and forms of it will be here for a while. Master it so that your brand expression matches your brand.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: maria elena duron, personal branding, texting

Substitute

January 20, 2012 By Walter Akana Leave a Comment

But I’m a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I’m just back-dated, yeah

~ The Who

Back in the day, when I first became a certified Personal Branding Strategist, I learned that personal branding was about having permission to be yourself. And personal brand was synonymous with your reputation.

Actually, it still is.

To be even more specific, there are still many people who use the term personal brand to refer to an authentic expression of who you uniquely are in terms of the attributes, vision, purpose, values, and passions that you bring to what you do. It is the you-ness you add to your professional competencies that makes you more valuable to your clients, and your broader professional community.

In many ways, then, your personal brand is the experience you provide while you are doing what people hire you to do. So, the skills that you bring to your work may be the same skills that others in your profession use, but your approach is unique to you. For example, I have a friend who injects her fun, vibrant personality into meetings where she is delivering accounting and tax advice. She brings who she is to what she does. She didn’t cultivate a personal brand. She is just being herself, and her clients love her!

Today, however, there seems to be a lot of personal branding advice that tends to overlook the you-ness element and treat “your personal brand” as a distinct entity that you have to care for and manage. Kind of like a bonsai tree. So, we get articles and blog posts that provide advice on building, revamping, or reinventing your personal brand!!

While much of the advice these authors provide is actually useful, it has little to do with who you are. It is much more focused on tactics for gaining visibility and attracting clients. In fact, there is much great business information for promoting yourself right on this blog.

Yet, in my opinion, you need to make a very clear distinction that changing how you express and exude who you are is not the same as revamping or reinventing “your brand” – but just the way you communicate it. Indeed, it is only the first stage of the Reach 1-2-3 Success process that gets to your brand…to your you-ness. So, to engage in any exercise that is construed as “working on your brand,” but leaves out YOU, is akin to caring for some abstract entity. It’s like creating a proxy. A substitute.

I think it’s really important to be clear on this – and even more so, today!!

Seeing the notion of personal brand become more mainstream is a good thing. It signals the end of mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Even more it supports the growing recognition that we all have the capacity to serve specific tribes. It helps us see that our true value comes not merely from the commoditized functions our skills are based in, but from the very weirdness that makes us appeal to our niche.

Of course, personal brand has also become subject to criticism. And frankly, based on the approach of many “personal branders,” it’s criticism that is well deserved. If you have any doubt about this, you should read Olivier Blanchard’s very well-argued critique of personal branding. Blanchard notes, “People are people. They aren’t brands.” And ironically, one of the tips he offers is, “Just be you.” I think this is great advice! It’s a great post, actually; and if you haven’t read it, you should!

As you might surmise, I reject the idea of personal “reinvention.” This does not mean, of course, that I believe who we are and the reputations we develop don’t evolve. They do. Yet, they change because we have gained new insights into who we are, what we want to do, who we want to serve, and the difference we want to make for others – and impact that has on how we do what we do. This is very different from throwing out a new value proposition to see if it sticks.

So, insofar as our “brand” is concerned, the real task is the application of introspective insights to our work. And often, it is a process that is best done with a well-qualified coach who can help identify the themes that matter to you and to your audiences. Investing this kind of effort fosters a personal clarity that can help align what we know about ourselves with a communications strategy that will bring meaningful visibility and credibility.

Frankly, as I see it, bringing anything less than who you are to what you do means you may as well have been born with a plastic spoon in your mouth.

Walter Akana is a Reach Certified Personal Branding and Online Identity Strategist. Founder Threshold Consulting, he works with mid-career professionals and executives. His career advice has been featured online at marketwatch, cnnmoney, and online.wsj. He is a long-time blogger, and avid user of social media.

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Exuding Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers

Is your career facing a Kodak moment?

January 20, 2012 By Paul Copcutt 1 Comment

No doubt the business school case studies in years to come about the sad demise of Kodak and it’s brand will raise many questions about the effectiveness of it’s leaders. The filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy by Kodak this week has many lessons for all businesses, but what can you learn from this and be sure that you are not facing the same in your career?

1. Don’t underestimate the impact your ideas have.
It was the mid-70′s when Kodak actually developed for the first digital camera. Can you imagine how far ahead they may have been in the market place and for how long had they moved on this revolutionary idea.

Personal Brand Lesson - just because your industry or vocation has done it the same way for a long time and everyone is comfortable with that way does not mean an idea out of left field is not a better one. Be willing to challenge the status quo.

2. Don’t be complacent or greedy.
Kodak leaders decided to shelve the digital camera because they felt it was going to do too much damage to their highly lucrative and profitable film business.

Personal Brand Lesson – it makes sense to maximise your value with the core strengths you have. But know that you need to continually develop yourself and add new skills. Demands and markets change, so your brand has to evolve over time. Anticipate demands and start adding to your skill set now.

3. Be Prepared to Re-brand
The plan for Kodak is to sell it’s $2 billion worth of patents and emerge as a more agile company in the printer business. They see revenue and profit in ink (HP generates $9 billion a year in ink cartridges). But does the tagline of the “Kodak Moment” still apply? Likely not, as they become less and less synonymous with photos a re-brand of the company would almost seem inevitable.

Personal Brand Lesson - the experts tell us that the workforce of the future might well be in many different vocation, not just jobs, in their lifetime. The foundation and core of your brand might remain the same, but sometimes the message and your target audience will change and a re-branding is necessary.

How do you see business the lessons from the likes of RIM and Kodak apply to your career and personal brand?

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Everything is a Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Recession-Proof Your Career Tagged With: branding, Business, career, Career Management, Personal Brand

Do You Make These 5 Social Media Mistakes?

January 19, 2012 By Maria Elena Duron Leave a Comment

Personal Brands are taking their brands online as a marketing strategy. It’s easy to set up and is designed to be user friendly. The space is really enticing but there are hazards when taking your brand on social media sites. If you have social media sites, check out this five common social media mistakes that businesses are committing when taking their business online.

Flooding/Spamming – it’s great that you are sending out helpful messages but don’t overdo it. Customers hate it when you flood their emails about promos, or flood your Twitter or Facebook account about everything and anything. We don’t need another quotable quote.

Often, the mistake is not purposeful spamming, rather it’s that we get so busy and then remember our social networks and flood them with a series of posts that occur all in the same day, or worse yet, within the same hour! Avoid posting them all in a day and then being idle for days at a time. Create a calendar to schedule your posts if you have to. This will make your social media site active at all times and your connections will see you as consistent and engaging.

Posting inappropriate content – this is common sense. You wouldn’t want your customers, clients, supervisors or colleagues to see things that can destroy your brand reputation. However, there are things that may arise like a colleague posting a video about the crazy things they do at work or post comments on Twitter that other connections might not get (like inside jokes with other employees). Keep a forever vigilant “brand listening station” set up so that you’ll be aware of any posts that show up with your name associated with it.

No social media presence – it’s great that you now have social media accounts and you did well in gaining followers – now what? A common mistake is to get into the social media platform just because others are doing it. Posting on Twitter or Facebook every once in a while is alright depending on the purpose and strategy that you have in utilizing the social network, but being idle and posting once a month is not. Before getting a social media account, plan how you’re going to use it and what you would like to gain from additional brand awareness.

Deleting comments – social media sites are a good place to get feedback and ideas on how you can improve your brand. If someone voices a sincere dislike or concern about something you are doing or you are associated with, as long as it doesn’t infringe upon privacy, do not delete their comments.

Mismanagement of site – remember that your social media site is a platform for your brand. Whatever is posted or talked about there reflects your brand. If you are going to let someone handle your Twitter or Facebook account, make sure that you train them well. Teach them how to use the sites and let them read about good customer service practices (even if you’re not online to gain customers – customer service principals deliver vital communication and listening skills that will be an asset). Educate them that it’s not just about posting anything to make your site active. They must know how to address connections when interacting with them.

Your online first impression is even more lasting than your offline first impression. What do you do to ensure that you manage it well?

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: maria elena duron, personal branding, social media mistakes

How to End Brand Confusion

January 12, 2012 By Maria Elena Duron 4 Comments

Building your brand is not easy. If your business or profession has a lot of competition, it is up to you to communicate effectively what is unique to your brand that will make it stand out from the rest. Recently speaking at a conference for realtors, I asked a realtor what made her different from the others in the room. Her answer, “We can all pretty much do the same thing.”

Customers will slip away just because they think you are the same as the others around or in your profession. In order to find that unique identity, your niche, you have to know who your target market is. Knowing who your customers are will give you an idea of what works best for them. It will help you fine tune your message so you can even visualize that you are speaking directly to one specific person. This will allow you to concentrate on one thing – that one thing that will give your brand an edge.

Define your brand

For your business to stand out, you have to create and define your brand. If you already have one and you think it’s time for some change, add something new to your menu or to your services. You want your customers to experience something new to them. So even if you’re just another business around town, you’ll be the first choice when they think about something that your business offers.

Here are a few things that you can do to avoid brand confusion:

Make your customers feel welcome – when a customer comes into your establishment, make them feel that they are welcome. This applies also to when they visit your online establishment or online social media pages. This is your chance to make a lasting impression about your brand. When a customer feels that they are welcome from the time they enter your establishment up until they step out, they will definitely think of you again. Find ways you can uniquely make your customers feel welcome, something that is appropriate in your business. Take a risk and try new things!

Excellent customer service – no less. Without customers, our businesses are nothing. Always provide excellent customer service because this aspect is what makes the sale. If your customer feels that you are doing everything that is expected from you and more, they will feel that they are taken care of. Even if you charge a bit higher than the rest, you’ll be surprised at how much customers are willing to pay to experience excellent customer service. Take more initiative and ask them what they need before they approach and ask you.

Consistency – once you find your niche, you want to do it consistently. (For definition: Niche is what you do so well and is uniquely you; Target Market is who you do it to or for). Now that you’ve made a good impression, stay engaged with your connections. With every interaction, you are either building up your relationship or tearing it down.

Extras – because the little things add up. There are a lot of ways to give your customers an excellent experience. You can ask for and use their names when you’re serving them, adding a personal touch to the experience. You can also create a customer database and gather your customers’ contact details. With a database, you can send emails or cards to your customers for birthdays or holidays. You can send them information about new promos or the latest on your menu. Doing the little extras to make your customers feel that you appreciate them will not only set you apart from the others, but will give you a chance to gain loyal customers.

Now thrive!

Ending brand confusion is important if we want our business or profession to survive and succeed. If we give our customers something great to differentiate our business from the rest and consistently provide that, we are positioning our brand at the top of their list. That’s why it’s important to keep innovating, to keep working on how our customers can add value and attach meaning to our personal brand and our business products and services.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: brand confusion, maria elena duron, personal branding

Persistent and Consistent Action

January 5, 2012 By Maria Elena Duron Leave a Comment

Let’s not forget “auld acquaintances” as we start 2012. Let’s vow to stay connected and more deeply engaged. After all, it’s with the people that are already connected and sold on who we are that we will find better conversations and better referrals.

The challenge is how to do this on a consistent basis. Relationships are built on interaction and developing trust, and part of having that is being involved in some type of action that’s persistent so you are not forgotten (nor they)!

Rekindle old connections – Facebook is a great place to find old friends. Sometimes, our tendency is to just add them, but we never find the time to get in touch with them, even via the chat feature. Get in touch with someone you haven’t spoken to in years. Ask them how they are and what they’re doing these days. It’s about making connections because there is always someone out there who is willing to help your business. Why not an old friend?

Cull your database – Even though I don’t use the database customer relationship management tool, Goldmine, I appreciate the name because in one word it speaks the truth – there’s a Goldmine in your database if you will spend time in there.

Did you know that 67% of the people in your database neither live in the same place they used to, work at the same place, have the same phone number or email address, or are “dead” (yes, they are deceased)? It’s time to cull through your database and see who you really know. What may seem like “I just spoke to him yesterday,” may in actuality show that you haven’t spoken to him in two years. Over time, when a relationship ceases to be mutually beneficial to both people involved, somebody leaves. It’s just a fact of life – for businesses, marriages and friendships.

Sadly, this is where most people become lost in the task rather thea in the doing. When you encounter that you don’t have the correct or updated information on someone, then we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to update and find that information that we lose the passion behind the prompting to connect or reach out to them.

Identify what you need to find out and update, and then plan 15 minutes every day to gather that information. Even if it’s a quick phone call, email or contact another person who might know the updated information (or perhaps it’s just you checking the emails where people sent you updates and plugging it into your database), find and take the time to do it. It will make a remarkable difference to your year!

Send a personal note – a part of great interaction, relationships development or customer service is making your contacts and customers feel that they are special, and what better way to do this but by sending them handwritten thank you notes. It is personalized and it’s random. And, sadly, it rarely happens so you will stand out uniquely over anyone else they interact with.

These are simple tips but they will make a difference in the way you do business. It will add a unique taste to how you approach your connections and customers and this adds more value to you, your company, your products and services.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: maria elena duron, personal branding, relationships

Are You Really Linking On LinkedIn?

December 29, 2011 By Maria Elena Duron 3 Comments

Setting up a LinkedIn group offers great advantages to any business person, if done right. Some of the advantages of starting a group include building thought leadership, connecting to a community, driving traffic to own website, the ability to send personalized messages to the group and subgroup, and helping others. If groups are managed right, member count can grow up to hundreds of thousands. Having this many members in a group already gives you a place where you can market a product or service, depending on your goals.

Once you have created a group and you are gaining members, you want to have continuous interaction happening inside the community you just built. A lot of groups on LinkedIn start off strong then slowly die because of inactivity. You do not want this to happen to your group. Every leader should find ways to keep a group active.

Here are some ways to stimulate interaction in your LinkedIn group:

Interesting articles – create and post interesting articles that you think your members will find helpful, engaging, and entertaining. Think of at least 30 topics, and let your content send a message that tells something about your group. You can write the articles or ask someone to write them for you. You can also link articles from other blogs that you think will be of interest to your members. Posting articles in your group will create interaction when your members start commenting on your posts.

Post questions in the Discussions – make use of this space as a chance to interact with your members. In addition to your articles, create questions that will engage your members to participate in your group. Be creative and add interesting news for your members and encourage them to comment on it.

Encourage members to also post questions in the Discussions. When they do, make sure to take the time to personally answer these questions. This ensures your members that you are always there to provide them with what they need. You can also ask experts to answer questions posted on the Discussions board or write the name of an expert that is a member of your group if they can answer a question. This will serve as public praise, a way to make members feel that they are important.

Seek expert advice – in your group, find and ask experts to guest post in your group or look for an external guest speaker for an event set for your group. Be resourceful. You can try connecting with a foreigner and invite them to talk at your event.

Write about group events – If you organized a coming event for you group, write about it and entice your members to participate. After an event, write a review and ask members to comment on the review. This will give you feedback and let other members know what is happening in your community.

Send messages to members – this is a fast way to encourage members to participate in discussions. Make sure to do this when you have a really interesting discussion going on under a topic.

Manage Discussions – there may be times that members will post “inappropriate” messages in your Discussions. You can manage them by explaining that Discussions is not the place for such messages. Managing undesirable messages will make your group a more productive one and will make your members happy.

Help build connections – help members connect with other members. If you meet someone, offline or online, introduce them to a member that you think will be interested in using Magic Mail. This will leave your group with happy members that keep renewing their membership.
You can also introduce your members to other groups by suggesting them as experts in LinkedIn’s “Answers” tab.

Periodic announcement – as the leader of your group, you are allowed to send an email to the group once a week. Doing this might serve as encouragement to those members who no longer frequent the group. But be cautious about the content because you might be marked as a spammer if your content already appears in your weekly digest.

Take advantage of News Feeds – make use of the RSS functionality of blogs and websites that fit your group. Setting up the feeds will allow a stream of content from these sites to appear to your group. You can set this up by going to the “Manage” tab.

Feature interesting topics from your Discussion – as a group leader, you can select discussion topics and feature them as Manager’s Choice. Your chosen topic will appear on the group home page. It is one way of attracting your members to join discussions.

Organize events – if you have the time and resources, organize events where members can get a chance to meet each other. This will strengthen the bond of your group, and at the same time will increase your network’s value.

Market your LinkedIn group – spread the word that you are managing a LinkedIn group. You can do this by integrating the group to your website or include the group link on your other social media sites. Doing this will show group discussions on your sites and will attract interested individuals to join the discussion.

Ask members to help out with the group – you can give official roles to willing members. Ask them if they want to help out in maintaining continuous interaction within the community. Members who feel more involved have higher chances of contributing to the group.

These are just a few ways to keep your group alive. If there is continuous interaction in your group, the more ideas you will gather from your members. This could lead to the possibility of membership growth. Useful information will keep flowing, helping you and your members learn something new each day. Take advantage of LinkedIn’s features to connect with possible customers. Create a group, build, and take care of it because your network will play a big part in achieving your business goals.

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs Tagged With: LinkedIn, maria elena duron, personal branding