Personal Branding Mistake #24: WATCH YOUR BACK!

Although a great profile picture is key to your personal brand, don’t forget about the imagery directly behind it. Incorporating some background art is an easy way to harmonize the look and feel of your brand and support your promise. 

Visuals are the most engaging type of content on social media. For instance, adding a photo URL to a tweet can boost your engagement by more than 25%. Video works even better as an engagement device. Approximately 40% of online users have a better and more favorable response to outreach when visuals are used over text. Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than text. LinkedIn, for instance, offers great opportunities to customize your personal brand with background, portrait and downloadable visuals throughout your profile. It’s said that people are not reading these days. Make it easy on your visitor and boost your profile with visuals. 

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Personal Branding Mistake #27: YOU'RE TIME-TRAVELING

Make sure your picture is relatively up to date. You looked great in your high school yearbook photo, but employers want to hire you, not your seventeen year-old self.

Think about it this way, would you put a baby picture in your LinkedIn profile? Keep it current and keep it real. Don’t surprise people when you finally meet them in person by not having them recognize you. Misrepresenting your portrait is bad for your brand and bad for business. 43% of all professionals found new business connections via LinkedIn. Keep their trust and don’t time travel.

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Personal Branding Mistake #33: YOU'RE NOT SUPPORTED

What you write on your profile needs support. Attach relevant documents, links and images throughout your page. Keep it fresh and interesting.

94% of people regularly share content online that add value to the professional lives of people in their network. Before sharing, consider sharing only informative and useful content. The average person reads only 20% of text so it’s wise to include visuals (particularly video) to optimize your brand presence. Your social media posts and shares work best when supporting your brand promise and story. 

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Personal Branding Mistake #44: YOUR HEADLINE FALLS SHORT

Your headline is the single most important written component of your profile. Don’t just list your title and company – heighten the appeal! Bring in new business by adding important keywords.

After your picture, your headline is the most viewed item on your profile page. It’s like the headline on an ad. If people are intrigued, they will go further.  The optimal length of a headline is 6 words. We live in a world where people have short attention spans, so less is more. However, make sure your headline reflects your brand promise. Google displays up to 66 characters of a title tag.  Keep that in mind when crafting your headline.

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