A Cup of Coffee to Leverage

In the past few weeks, we’ve discussed defining and solidifying your personal brand by building your network, increasing peer recommendations, and publishing relevant articles online. If you have completed some or all of the Sunday exercises over your cup of coffee, then you currently have some valuable personal branding collateral.

Magnify your personal brand

Don’t stop there – it will be critical to the success of your personal brand to persist with your efforts.  However, as you move forward, you can magnify your personal brand by leveraging what you already have.

Leverage: The ability to influence a system or environment in a way that multiplies the outcome of one’s efforts without a corresponding increase in consumption of resources. Basically, it’s doing a lot with a little.

So, let’s take what you’ve done so far and multiply its effects.

Leverage Your LinkedIn Profile:

1. Add the LinkedIn logo (and hyperlink the image to your LinkedIn profile) to your email signature.  Don’t forget to also update the signature on your mobile devices, such as your iPhone and Blackberry.
2. If you have a Twitter account, add your LinkedIn profile url to your bio section.  If you have a Twitter skin, incorporate your full profile url on the page.
3. Updating your LinkedIn status bar twice per week is a small expenditure of energy for a greater reward.  Incorporating key words and phrases in your updates will increase your chance of being found when people are searching.

Leverage your LinkedIn recommendations:

1. If you have an online bio, an “about me” page on a blog or a page on your company website, then you have a great place to add the following line:  “Click here to see recommendations of my work.” Link that line to your recommendations section.
2. Pull out the best, and most relevant, quotes from your LinkedIn recommendations and use them in your other personal branding collateral.  Great one-sentence endorsements about you are perfect for sidebar content, bios, website pages or Twitter skins.  Company brochures and other print material are also great places to highlight a good one-liner.
3. Add the best, and most relevant, recommendations to your resume.
4. If you have a lot of recommendations, join a LinkedIn group, such as Top Recommended People or LinkedPros—great recommendations help recruiters find great people.

Leverage your published article:

1. Add ”Latest Article” (or the article headline) to your email signature with a live link to your online article.
2. Post your article link on any social media you use—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn status update or blog.
3. Shop your article around to relevant blogs and ask if they would be interested in using it as a guest blog post.  If you want to spend some extra time, submit your article to relevant trade publications for possible print publication.
4. Include the link to your article on LinkedIn Q&A and wherever you join in an online conversation.

Make it a habit to update the above information each time to add to your portfolio of personal brand collateral and you will leverage each piece to its fullest.