[Applause] hi everyone good evening this is brand marketing for linkedin and i'm very excited to be here as part of a business insider global trends festival to talk about how to use linkedin to build your professional and your personal brand um very exciting uh topic it is something that we do talk about at linkedin and uh very fascinating to share how everyone could use this as we navigate our professional lives um we're calling it a guide to linkedin i do think that you know some of you uh you know might be starting out your careers you know you could be a student or someone who's an early professional who's just starting out and understanding how to use your professional network and how to use linkedin or you could be someone who's somewhere along your career and you understand you know a lot of networking but you would still like to understand what else could i do more uh how do i talk about it so this this content that i'm going to share is a combination of both uh so you could be someone who's you could be a student or it could be someone somewhere along your career and hopefully this is something you find useful and we also have some other resources that um i will share towards the end if it doesn't get covered in what i'm talking about um before i begin uh it's always good to start with the context of uh you know where we are this is what i've been doing um i am at home i'm doing this talking to everyone from home as we're doing our meetings so we all have a version of ourselves that is absolutely standardized for you know sitting in front of the laptop and what you see and of course there is the non-meeting area so we all have to understand and uh you know understand where we come from and our own sort of uh you know things that are hard you know uh times are tough uh you know in how we're balancing our work some of us have begun and things are beginning to get normal or a certain version of normal so uh that's that's the experience we're all facing and there's something to learn from that and also how we network and how we connect is also evolving uh if you are of course uh you know graduating or you're still in college and you're still experiencing it a lot of this is uh you know you are probably online you're taking a lot of your classes online and of course you're also beginning to understand what do i do once i finish this and how do i go about you know taking some of that and how do i take my professional profile to let people know and connect with other people so this is all the reality we have to accept that some of this is you know work in progress some of these things are uh things that we know how to use and there are some things that we're all evolving so that's how we're thinking about this and i hear you i'm also in that space of understanding how we can all work better so that's the context of where we all are in the context of where you are in terms of how you think about uh you know where you are and all of us are online and all of us are online all the time so there is a profession there is a personal life there is life that you lead and you're all active you're on different networks and different platforms and there is a context where you are from your professional life um there is a lot of content and there is a lot of sharing that we do uh we continue to do that we're all uh people that are consuming this information about each other all the time but understanding where we come from which is you know we're all navigating perhaps tough times and there is also things that we're talking about in your personal life and there are things you're talking about your professional life how do we bring that together in the context of how we use platforms like linkedin is important um so how can you use linkedin this is something that i am talking about in terms of your personal brand or your professional brand so the the part of what i'm going to talk about is uh is divided in this way so one is building your brand which is understandably you want to talk about who you are and that's that's the information you share like how do you talk about it that's the brand that you're building and the second is using that to take a step forward where it's not just information that you're putting out there but it is also how you're engaging with your community what information you put out there is how people will see you and how they understand who you are and they want to connect with you uh so this is the two parts that i'm going to get into so first i'm going to talk about building your brand and then i'm going to talk about what is engaging with your community me um they both are not separate that's probably the starting point uh you know what why you're building your professional or personal brand on a network like linkedin is because you want to get noticed and you want your community around you to understand who you are and perhaps that would lead to more connections opportunities um looking for ways and maybe you're trying to build your business or you're trying to find another job it could be different reasons why why you're here and why this isn't in why this information was important to you some of the things that i'm talking about could be simple but i'm also going to give you a couple of data points to help you understand why they are as important as you know as might as they might seem obvious so you will know that you need to fill more information you know you talk about your profile on linkedin why do we keep talking about it and if you've heard that from others that you perhaps you know reached out to people that you seek support from or help from or mentors uh they do talk about you know talk about what you're doing you know build build that profile about yourselves some of the content today is also going to talk about why that's important and why why that's critical to building your personal brand the first one of course um starting with this and i have a list of maybe five or six things that i think are the best place to start um if you are and if you're studying and you're still in college this is obviously the beginning of where you are so you will start with that it is your education it's also a great conversation starter you can share with someone else if i went to the same college as you i would love to understand and if you reach out to me because of that that's a fantastic way to start that conversation um there is some additional data from linkedin that makes it all the more interesting that you have you know get 10x more views on average if you list your school or your college and talk about that so you can add different aspects to your profile you can add your degree you can add what you're majoring in um if you've got some honors you you're part of a club you've run something specifically in your college all of that is very interesting so don't ever think of it as i need that professional experience to start talking or using linkedin you can start using linkedin while you're building your profile in your experience because people want to know where you studied what did you do there um and there are lots of things i think if you're a student now you're probably doing a lot more than i did when i went to college so there is a lot more of your experience that would be extremely relevant and people who are in the industry or the industries that you're interested in would love to hear about that so that's that's something it's a fantastic way to start um the second one which is i think it it feels a lot more obvious because uh you know you would love to talk to another person that you know is is human is another person like you a photo adds that first impression um before you even speak to them or message them or eventually find a way to get an appointment or a meeting because you're interested in something the way you have that photo makes a huge difference um what is a professional photo you don't want some something that you're uh you're with someone you're with your family or you know you're adding something else um for example i've added a photo that's taken at home now because it's by it's me by myself at home because that's the context of my work life i am working from home um earlier i had a photo that was taken perhaps at my workplace but it's still me by myself but it adds the context of you are working from home and that's that's where you are but it's a professional photo um photos are important uh profiles that have a photo get much more views on average as compared to ones profiles that don't because you are if you imagine yourself scrolling through somebody maybe based on you know i'm looking for people with marketing majors for example or just marketing experience i am immediately going to look at the ones that have a photo updated because there is some sort of connection i am making with him or her um be approachable accessible make it uh make it make a connection through that first impression as well and of course i'm sure there's uh there is a lot of uh we all have fantastic phones i'm sure we can all take that photograph at home that helps your minds mine's taken at home since it's taken by family members there's a different way that you can create that first uh first impression um experience of course that's kind of where we start from uh eventually on your uh professional profile if you record you're showing what you've achieved you're talking about what you're working on um you know you could have a list of things you've done uh you could have had a short internship you could have had projects that you've done or you've started somewhere along your career and you've added uh maybe five or six years of experience perhaps more but add all of them if you've been consulting um if you're doing an internship also add a little color to that experience describe what you've accomplished or describe what the goals are understand why uh why that role uh is relevant to your experience in what way like did you accomplish something was there a larger goal of what you were trying to achieve and of course the duration of what you were doing all this adds to the context of your professional profile of course volunteer experience we also have i'm sure a ton of this that happens when you're in college when you're going uh when you're beginning your work a lot of your experience also includes other aspects where you're perhaps making an impact and a lot of that is extremely valuable and not just perhaps the main sort of work experience even if if this was something that you volunteered for that is not a paid experience or paid work that you did but it it adds a personality to what's important for you and where you think you want to spend more time people are looking for that when they make connections they're looking for people that have that additional sort of purpose and it's important to add this as well so very very relevant and if you have more of this that's actually fantastic and uh even as you know um as senior leaders or people in the industry they're looking for people with that additional sort of balance to what they're looking for of course um what have you specialized in are there things that you've done other things that you've studied that um that is a specialization um you perhaps learned a lot of your social media skills because you're also on social media uh do you understand that better do you understand data better um have you done something as a as a college project which also adds as project management skills do you collaborate with people do you work uh do you work in an indian atmosphere where you need to work with a lot of people then you do have a lot of people skills it also helps get more profile views the more skills you're adding uh people are also looking based on skills sometimes so do you know that um do you know specific sort of specialized skills you can add that um there are ways in which you can make sure that you're appearing in these rankings and people know how you can be found according to the skills that you have the other bit related to this is um this is not very specific this is obviously a lot more of a descriptive version of your profile where how can you talk about yourself which is a compelling summary the keywords that you use in terms of these could be aspirations you have these could be future looking or they could be things that you've done in the past and that's just how you want to present yourself you know i would love to say that i have and i incidentally have spent 10 years at linkedin and i could talk about that or i could make it more forward-looking saying that i would love to you know take linkedin forward and build something and expire it could be the next thing that i'm doing versus you know just the experience i've had but that's your choice it depends on what you want to talk about and why people should connect with you or why are you looking to connect to people so this is a very interesting part of how you describe your profile because this is this is this is a lot of text it's your ability to be the story about yourself through the summary which is which is very very interesting for people to read what else can you talk about there is a ton on the profile of course the idea for me is not to break your profile or your linkedin profile into parts but i'm highlighting the ones that are extremely critical to how you think about who you are and how do you present yourself you wanted to add location i think another another reason why you also want to add location is you're also getting connected to people based on who who's around you um are there other professionals perhaps in mumbai i'm based in mumbai am i looking for other professionals or people that are doing interesting things around me and linkedin can help me find that if i add location i mentioned education you can add additional education not just something that you're studying are you adding additional courses to what you're learning et cetera languages organizations certifications courses that you support uh when i say volunteer experience you can also add courses for example i'm very interested in education is there something that i'm uh doing for supporting organizations that are working towards it how how can i add that to my profiles if someone who's working in that industry will know that i can reach out to sri and she might she might be doing something interesting that we could collaborate on certifications if you've published something that would be fantastic so those are some examples um of how we talk about your professional brand and that's your profile that's just the information you put out there like i said at the beginning um now with that information and where we started what do you do with that what do you eventually want to do you want to engage with your community you want to connect with people you want to connect with your network um you perhaps want to explore careers you want to stay in touch with other people and perhaps opportunities that you might discover eventually because you know you're able to connect with people and this is something that is ongoing um the other thing that you must understand that the the network or the community grows as much as you invest in it so it's not something that you do one time and you say that hey i did this today and i did this for this week and how do i what do i see next week the idea is to build this over time so it becomes something that you do more naturally to something that you do over over a period of time and the people that you work with remember and stay connected with you and that is something you continue over a longish period of time and this varies according to people you know um some people love connecting with more people and they find that value you could also do that in terms of how else could you reach out to your community and what what is the benefit that you're bringing out there and this section will talk a little bit about that um which is not just your profile but what what action could you do on linkedin i will talk about a few of them um this is not everything that you could do of course um there is a ton that you could do and uh i must call out that what i i'm doing is mostly from an individual perspective there is also my entire context of what companies could do on linkedin as well which is not being covered today but that is also something that you can explore if you're interested with that getting into how how engaging with your community is relevant um following companies incidentally i was talking about companies and how they have their own profiles as an individual as a student or as someone who's interested in building their professional brand on linkedin there are a ton of companies this is linkedin's own company page but you have a ton of these companies that are talking about what jobs are there what is the life like if you're working at these companies who's working who are these connections perhaps you have people that are working in these companies who are they and their own updates their company photos um a lot of companies right now are posting about how they're navigating through the crisis and how 2020 has been and what they are doing in terms of um how they're engaging with customers how they're engaging with uh you know other members on platform and what they're doing to help the community so there is a lot of content that you'll find there you'll learn about it and if you're interested in those companies you could follow them and you get those updates in your feed that's the absolute starting point you can also find if you're looking at who's the ceo of the company who are other people that are senior leaders you can follow them that's another way to also get you know not just talking about jobs but you could also be interested about what what are what what are the interesting things that are happening and by industry so you could always follow that so that's that is something you should definitely do this is this is also how you engage with a company or different companies as a whole and also with when i say community you're also engaging with people in those companies influencers um we do have and i'm sure some of you would be aware that linkedin also has certain members that we have designated as influencers on the platform they're obviously you know like their name suggests they are clear experts and um they're leading in terms of their ideas and posts on linkedin and that's another way to definitely follow and find out what activity they're up to and they write a lot of long-form content they're also writing and publishing and sharing very very regularly so this is another piece that i think would be as the name suggests something that everyone perhaps already does but this is something that definitely adds to your engagement and your understanding of what's happening in your industry um before i move further there's there's two parts to this i think there is as you as a as a member on linkedin um once you've created your own profile uh you know you could be someone who's consuming a lot of information so a lot of what i was sharing earlier are the two sort of large ways in which your feed gets populated because you're you see what your connections are hosting you see if you're following companies you see what what the companies you follow what are they posting and you're seeing uh perhaps what influences if you're following them what are they posting uh but there is also an aspect to your brand or your personal and professional brand is what you shared what you are posting because if i'm looking at your profile i'm also interested in seeing what is the view that you have so the two parts to this you could be sharing updates which is a more shorter uh quicker version of how you can engage in the professional context and of course publishing is deeper where you're showing a little bit more of your expertise and your you're sharing perhaps what you've learned and this could be something that you could do across i mean it doesn't have to be something that you have to do only if you have x many years of experience you could have a ton of experience that you would like to share if you're graduating it would be fantastic to hear how are you navigating uh what did you do trying to learn your courses online um what do you do during the shutdown did you learn something did you learn courses there could be a bunch of things that you have done and that would be fantastic to hear you could also share links and articles of course um and your network will benefit from it and there is also a certain value that you're bringing to your network and that's also your brand so it's not just what you're posting on your profile but if i'm beginning to see content from you that i find really interesting then i want to know every time you publish so there are different ways in which you can continue so there's a short term regular posting that you do which is more sharing updates and you could also start publishing content which becomes a little bit more uh nuanced and more expertise that you're beginning to share so that's what this this section covers where it is your point of view so what you're trying to share is uh what what do you have a view on do you have a view on companies declaring work from home on a temporary basis or a permanent basis do you have a view on that uh do you think that's benefiting everybody do you think that is an element of flexibility that it brings this would be something that would be fantastic to hear if you're still in college it will be great to understand you know how how our teacher is coping or however your professor is coping do you have a view on it do you feel like they've they've done a fantastic job do you feel like that is something that you want to share you want to talk about if you're someone who's spent a lot of time in your industry or field it would be fantastic to hear if you have a take on a particular topic that that your network might enjoy as well so this having i think the more important part before this like i would love to say is having a point of view i think sometimes we also need to understand where and how we're consuming a lot of that information and you might get a sense of what your network is continuing to share and it will be good to understand if you have a point of view and then you start sharing and talking about it um and add more links and images i think it always adds to uh what you're trying to share it could be an experience it could be it it could be as simple as an article if you're sharing an article and a link that automatically sort of serves that purpose but if you start sharing a little bit more about what you're facing or you know something that you've experienced people would love to hear that and that adds to uh how your content is received as well uh the the important part of publishing or beginning to publish is that when you talk about building your brand it is something that's an extension of your profile so it's not something that is separate from who you are and like at the at the earlier part of this i was talking about the summary that you want to write so it's this is where i am and this is where i want to go so the where i want to go is the part that you can actually cover with how your community is and how it becomes a part of your life and sort of your profile right this is something i do on this is my work life so what you're sharing and publishing is an extension of that work life um it is also something that when you want to build that brand it gets shared with your network so your network begins to have an opinion or review of you know what's your expertise or what's what's something that you're passionate about and it also begins to reach a larger group of professionals because it goes to my second or third degree connections eventually because there are other people that are engaging with the content that you're publishing so this is a very important part of how you're engaging with your community and that's critical to how your how your professional profile of record is considered this is right there something that you can start on your homepage uh you have a similar experience what i have here is a desktop view you can also have this on your mobile so you can start sharing you can start thinking about it it also helps if you start sharing perhaps a lot of news content as well things that you're seeing that are interesting i would start there and then if you begin to start having more of a voice and an opinion of your own then it's helpful to get there where you start thinking about what is my take on this if you don't have that view yet it's also good to share something that perhaps you would love to have a discussion on we also have linkedin news on the site so if you are engaging with content related to news and how you're consuming that content that could be an interesting way to have a perspective or a point of view as well um this is your publishing view so if you eventually want to start publishing long form content you can actually click on that and takes you to a longer form publishing uh post and eventually you can write about a topic that you're really really passionate about but if you're someone who hasn't started posting yet i would actually start by sharing updates that are more shorter and eventually get to more long-form content because this is something that once you start your network also begins to expect that from you and you have to have a certain level of expertise to be able to sustain that so building this over a period of time would be something that's uh that is remarkable or i would say that there is a progression there in terms of how you're engaging with your community and uh you you eventually get there and that's a lovely place to be in terms of what value you're bringing to your network and what you're also deriving out of linkedin um this is just examples of how the posts start appearing so you can see that's jill's profile and she's posted she's supposed to too long from content and that's that's how the content actually appears um of course this is this is important as it is anywhere if you're publishing on platform [Music] you know create that catchy headline add images that stand out remember who your audience is you know who are you actually talking to it's it's not just a network but for example are there if you're working somewhere you know you know that your own company is going to look at it your co-workers are looking at it as well um if you're look if you're talking about if you're in college and you're talking you're obviously the connections that you have you can also share that of linkedin it's a link that you have it's your blog so you can also share that outside um be authentic be who you are um write uh you don't have to solve for how long it is sometimes the sort of not very short but uh you know the right amount that you can make a point and make sure that you still stand out is important so remember who you're talking to and that's that's true irrespective of whether you're writing something long form or short so it's important to understand where you stand and who is the professional audience that you're talking about and talking to so that's extremely important this was very interesting i thought uh it would be fantastic to share here this is one of the more latest sort of news out of linkedin um and if anyone and if you did capture it uh linkedin just launched stories in india and as well as many other countries um as of just a few weeks ago this is available through the linkedin mobile app only this is another way to share content and also you will discover a lot of content that other members are already publishing it it appears in the top uh when you open the linkedin mobile app you can see it on the top next to your own profile blurb um it is obviously visual storytelling and visual storytelling is always a winner in terms of adding video or images um and it's available for 24 hours after you post there have been some very interesting ways to connect and i think this is another way to actually engage with people as well because you can actually message them based on the stories or the ideas and image content that you're seeing um those are some examples that i posted and there is obviously more reason for people to connect because where some of us or most of us there's a very small number of people that are beginning to go back to work uh but there are people that are still working from home or there are limited interactions so the more you're sharing about that environment or perhaps something that you're going through in terms of what's working for me what's not or you know do you have a morning routine so i think there is a version of your personal brand that's coming into this uh but that's a very very interesting uh sort of development at linkedin as well because linkedin as a platform is beginning to uh be that much more core to how professionals look at it so you're you're trying to say that this is also professional content if i'm able to tell the right story and help people understand what what makes me who i am as a professional which is very very interesting for people to see and that adds to to your content as as a professional who's trying to connect with his or her community um this is important i i think i went through the sort of two parts of you know what's your professional brand which is your profile and how do you use that is through your community and your community wants to know who you are and that's how you engage uh this is additional resources that i thought would be extremely relevant uh for people who are you know interested in understanding more and also how you can learn something that are using linkedin as a platform um opportunity on linkedin.com is another site that linkedin has which lists a bunch of things if you're looking specifically for upskilling or learning sort of skills related to in demand jobs and you're also looking to search and apply for jobs in your in your country or in the locations where you are and also best practices if you want to prepare for interviews so um this three-step process that i've actually taken from the site it's extremely helpful if you're um also interested i i know that i did not talk about linkedin learning specifically because it's a it's that's separately something that you can explore and you can actually go through opportunity.linkedin.com to understand learning parts and this is uh from linkedin learning and microsoft that can help you understand specifically what are some of the in demand jobs and what are some of the skills that you can learn and that's available to you so this is a fantastic resource uh if you are looking at something not just on bington.com and your uh just your pro professional or personal brand but you want to up skill and you want to take this one step further and understand that i want to learn more skills and use the opportunity this is a fantastic destination to do that um other questions um i'm almost towards the end of this that if i'm not if i haven't covered this um check out linkedin's help center but there's a lot more information in terms of how you can manage your public profile um what are your privacy settings it's extremely important to understand what have you put if you're making updates to your profile have you turned on a notification that everyone would get saying that you know this person has added a new profile a photo that has added your new experience or if you want to turn that off when you're making those changes those are some very very interesting pieces that will be available at the help center you should definitely go through that um if you're looking for more information about premium subscription um in a jobseeker even subscription or others that's also available at our health center so there there is a lot of resource and information out there that i'm not fully walking through but very very helpful to go through um i'm very uh if i were to close this i would say that you know our it's extremely it's extremely valuable and important to go back to what linkedin's vision is i think the idea is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce and it's absolutely through engagements like this and continuing to share a lot more of what you could do on linkedin this is what we're trying to achieve um and they're also hoping that you know this enables you to connect with other professionals like yourselves and also make those opportunities possible and hopefully this helps and this is one step in that direction so that you understand how can you be successful and also help your community to become more successful and yeah i think that's all i had for today this is uh fantastic that i had the opportunity to do this um i did share i'm available on linkedin if you want to follow or connect and i'm also available on twitter if you want to see what i'm up to and thank you again and thanks to business insider for the opportunity and hopefully this session was helpful to everyone thank you so much you