How to improve your professional brand

The Midlands branch was expecting a presentation on “Magic People Skills” but unfortunately the presenter was taken ill on the day of the Event. Stand Up, Tom Mallens! He agreed at four hours notice to give a presentation to us on Improving Your Professional Brand.

Tom is an expert on LinkedIn and how to get the best from it by amplifying your brand, building a network of valuable connections to allow you to plan your next career move. He said that there were reports that workers spent around 1/3 of their time on social media sites, so using LinkedIn for ‘B2B’ interactions is now vital. He gave an excellent presentation moving between PowerPoint and the LinkedIn site, using illustrations taken from real life.

Some of the key points were:

• Photo – will people recognise you? Will people want to link with you based on your photo (are you smiling?) Tom said ‘People do business with people they know, like and trust’.
• Professional Headline – Can people understand what you do. Some internal job titles don’t mean anything outside your company.
• Professional summary – why would people want to talk to you. Is it about you or just your company? Is it readable – think about the structure.

Tom then went on to show tools for searching for contacts, both via the LinkedIN site and using external search applications. Once you’ve made contact, think about why they are using LinkedIn and why posts that might be useful. This is about building a relationship. He explained that there are no shortcuts to achieving the relationship you want. Relationships develop through regular contact and communication. He also, however, advised that if you are expecting ‘results’, then ‘don’t wait for them to call you’!

Tom was an excellent substitute speaker, as evidenced by the number of expansion questions at the end of the talk. He was very engaging and as a result of his talk I have just changed my LinkedIn photo!

The presentation is also available on the APM Slideshare page.

Angela Noble