Social sharing and social conversations on LinkedIn will get you noticed. A variety of social shares will get you remembered.

While everyone you know in business is on LinkedIn, for many LinkedIn is a place to connect and share a digital resume. 

The secret of keeping your personal brand alive on LinkedIn is with social sharing and social conversations that consistently confirm and remind others of your career focus and invite further review of your profile and call to action.

In a previous blog post I presented 9 Ways to Social Refresh Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn. Here I present even more [less obvious] ways to build your personal brand.

12 More Ways to Refresh Your Social Activity on LinkedIn.

1. Career confirmation idea sharing.

LinkedIn is a great place to social share your original thoughts and ideas as an original share, a reaction to something in the news (or trending topics), or in response to the social shares of others (preferably as a re-share rather than a comment).

Invariably, this kind of social share makes a great social media networking conversation starter, especially in a career-related LinkedIn Group.

However, be cautious in sharing ideas that may be viewed as associating your personal brand with negativity, controversial topics (such as religion or politics), or unrelated to your career focus.

Also, you should include a question as a conversation starter to encourage others to respond with their own related ideas or feedback.

Advanced tip: share your sincere ideas without a web link, so that others won’t dismiss your social share as an effort to self-promote your blog post or to sell a product as a solution.

2. Crowdsourcing for ideas and feedback.

Conversely to sharing an idea or personal experience, you could directly ask for help or feedback in the form of a question.  I call this social crowdsourcing ideation.

For example: “Can someone recommend a good _____?” Or, “I am thinking of using _____.  Does anyone have any feedback or other recommendations?” Or, “____ or ____, which is best for ____ and why?”

Direct your questions to your connections or to the appropriate LinkedIn Group members.  And, never use this to lead into a sales pitch or self-promotion.

Advanced tip: if you blog, then crowdsourcing is a great way to get feedback in the form of a pretest of alternate potential blog titles.  Or, you could more generally ask what topics your LinkedIn network would most like you to write about.

3. Career confirmation through employee advocacy.

If your company is advancing or succeeding, then by association, so are you and your career.

Thus, it is important to show your company pride and employee advocacy by social sharing major announcements, news, community involvements, and accomplishments about your employer, management, or co-workers.

Advanced tip:  always use a @companyname/tag and @employeename/tag and include a link to a press mention, a press release, LinkedIn company page, or company web page for more details of the accomplishment.

4. Career confirmation humblebrags.

As with employee advocacy announcements, individual accomplishments should not dominate your social shares on LinkedIn.

However, your LinkedIn network should be in the know about your major career advances, awards, certifications, recognitions, quotes in the media, career milestones, new projects, or publications.

Again, these social shares should be used in moderation and should leave the details in an appropriate section of your LinkedIn profile or a web link to a press mention.

Advanced tip: such  shares also provides an opportunity to humbly thank and @name/tag those that gave or shared the recognition or assisted in its receipt (the organization that gave you an award; the co-workers that assisted or should share in the recognition, mentors or those who inspired your accomplishment, etc.)

5. Positive personal/professional experiences and reviews.

This kind of social share gives you an opportunity to share what you have learned from your own career related personal or professional experiences.  You could social share career related advice, recommendations, reviews, or positive consumer experiences (tried new product, read new book, discovered new blog, love new app, etc.).

However, only social share your positive experiences.  Save your negative experiences and reviews for customer service and your more private relationships rather than as a public share on LinkedIn.

Advanced tip: Always, give @name/tag recognition to those involved (a mentor you learned from, the book or blog author, the company that made the product, etc.).

6. Career-related or inspiring quotes as snackable content.

Everyone loves quotes, especially those that provide humor, inspiration, or motivation.

A social shared quote may be for more general inspiration or motivation from a source such as Brainy Quote. Or, may include more career specific content quotes taken from a career-focused blog post you have read.  This is often called snackable content.

Regardless of the source, always specifically give credit to the author of the quote and provide the source link.  If sharing a quote from a LinkedIn blog, you can highlight the quote and click on the arrow to the right.  This will pull the quote and source link into your LinkedIn “share an update” box. Alternatively, when using Buffer in Google Chrome to social share, you can highlight the quote, and then click the Buffer icon to schedule the LinkedIn update.

Advanced tip: make a quote graphic using Adobe’s Spark Post or Buffer’s Pablo, and post as a native attachment that others will more likely want to re-share.  If it is your quote from your original blog post, you should also add a personal name or blog name signature in the bottom corner of the quote graphic to subtly lead others to your blog (as an example, see my signature in the blog title graphic for this post).

7. Kudos as private mentions.

LinkedIn makes this easy.

Just monitor the “ways to keep in touch” in the top right section of your home page (or as a “My Network” pop-up in your LinkedIn app) and add personalized comment and specific congratulations to the connections that you personally know or work with.

This is truly a way to easily and sincerely renew a connection, be remembered, start a conversation, and build relationships.

Advanced tip: it is somewhat fake, robotic, and insincere to simply like or use the default comment provided by LinkedIn, especially if it is a connection that you don’t know personally.  Instead, always add a personalized comment as a social media networking conversation starter.

8. Kudos as public mentions.

Some accomplishments by your connections are shared publicly as an Update (see humblebrags above).

As with private mentions, when the news is about a connection that you know personally or about your employer, client, or school, you should do more than just press the “like” button.

Exercise your digits and add a relevant comment or congratulations.

Advanced tip: when you see this type of news from outside your LinkedIn Updates stream (another public media source such as a newspaper or another social media), then social share the link to this news along with appropriate comment and @names/tags so they will receive a notification of your social share.

9. Relationship check-in as a LinkedIn Poke.

Another private social activity is to direct or private message a connection that you know personally though you have not recently communicated with.  I call this a LinkedIn Poke.

You could reactively let the social shares in your LinkedIn home stream trigger this relationship check-in.

Or, you could proactively drop into your list of LinkedIn My Network>Connections to find a random someone to renew contact.

Just click the private Message button and ask: “John, how is the new job going?” Or, “Jill, are you going to the ____ conference in LA?” Or, “Bob, can you recommend a _____?” Or, “Jennifer, how’s the career going?”

And, never turn it into a self-promotion or sales pitch.  Never.  Ever.

Advanced tip:  this works very well to renew or maintain relationships. It is a good habit to do two or three LinkedIn Pokes a week.

10. Private thanks and reciprocation for endorsements or recommendations.

It may seem obvious to thank an important career stakeholder for a LinkedIn recommendation (if not, then shame on you).

However, when someone that truly knows you and your abilities and gives a legitimate endorsement of a skill, you should undoubtedly thank them for that, too.

Why?

One, such an endorsement(s) may open the door to request a guided recommendation (and a LinkedIn recommendation may lead to a reference letter).

Two, an endorsement also opens the door for you to respond with a conversation starter and the potential to renew or strengthen your relationship with a connection and potential career stakeholder.

Advanced tip: if appropriate, review your connection’s list of skills to see if you can sincerely return a skills endorsement (reciprocate).

11. Write, repurpose, or republish your original content with LinkedIn Publisher.

Whenever you write an original blog post in LinkedIn Publisher (Home>write an article), your connections and followers will receive a Notification of your publication (or as a social share in their Updates stream).

If your published blog post is relevant, informative, and helpful to your connections (not a sales pitch, announcement, or self-promotion), and many respond by liking, commenting, or sharing within a few hours of posting, then the LinkedIn robots may take notice and flag the post for review by human editors.

While not always easy to accomplish, the editors may tag or promote your blog post in one or more of the LinkedIn Pulse sections.  Then your social sharing goes out to a much larger audience with the potential for new followers or connections and engagement.

Advanced tip – you don’t have to write a blog post exclusively for LinkedIn.  Many repurpose blog posts from their WordPress blog (change the title and some of the content), and others simply republish blog posts with a link back to the source of their original post.

12. Career confirmation in LinkedIn Groups.

Many of my previous 9 + 11 ways to social share on LinkedIn can be shared in a targeted career focused LinkedIn Group.

Just as you want to build your personal brand with your connections and those reviewing your public LinkedIn profile, so it goes with LinkedIn Groups.

LinkedIn groups provide an opportunity to learn from, converse and showcase your personal brand to professionals in your career field.  This social sharing and social conversations effort can lead to new connections and job and career opportunities.

Moreover, what you share in a LinkedIn group is also shared to your connections (make sure this is turned on in Privacy & Settings).  This reinforces your personal brand identity with the career focused social share and association with a career focused professional group.

However, you should be aware that much of the activities in the poorly moderated LinkedIn groups are often overwhelmed with self-promotions and spam.  Thus, it takes some effort and research to find those career valuable groups that truly invite, encourage, and add value through social conversations.

Advanced tip: when you do find these best-in-class professional moderated groups, join the conversation, don’t sell or self-promote, and show social gratitude for what you learn.  Some of my best social learning and engagement in groups has come from a social share that asks for sincere feedback and does not provide a link that could be misread as just another self-promotion.

The Take-Away.

Social sharing activity on LinkedIn can build a personal brand, confirm a career-focus, and jumpstart conversations that lead to online and offline relationships.

Sporadic or impulse social sharing is inadequate to keep your name and image in the Updates stream of your connections and profile visitors. Regular social sharing is needed.

Boring or repetitive social sharing is inadequate to maintain interest and continued engagement with your connections.  Variety of social sharing is needed.

So, mix it up.

With regularity.

These are my thoughts, now they are yours.

Image credit: Denny McCorkle

What have I left out?  What other types of social shares have you found successful for building your personal brand on LinkedIn?

Continue reading my series on All-In LinkedIn (#ALLinLinkedIn):

Is LinkedIn a Place Where Your Resume Goes to Die?

LinkedIn Sucks When You Do

9 Ways to Social Refresh Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

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Denny McCorkle @DennyMcCorkle

Professor of Marketing, Monfort College of Business at University of Northern Colorado

As a nationally recognized and award winning Marketing Professor in the Monfort College of Business at the University of Northern Colorado, I help students, professors, and professionals to gain a Digital Self Marketing Advantage through the use of social media marketing for personal branding, job search, skills development, career advancement, and life-long learning.

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