“Personal Branding & LinkedIn Advice” – My 2nd Experience Speaking at UNI

Last week I was invited to speak at the University of Northern Iowa again, but this time for the Pi Sigma Epsilon (PSE) student organization. As a former member of PSE I had a blast speaking to my former student org members about personal branding, LinkedIn advice, my marketing career thus far, and an insightful Q&A portion at the end.

This was another great experience for me to get outside my comfort zone and help current college students learn more about the real world transition.

LinkedIn Advice

During my LinkedIn part of the presentation I frequently referred to a previous article I wrote titled “Mastering LinkedIn: How to Make Your Profile Stand Out.” As written in the article, my three main focuses with LinkedIn advice are taking the platform seriously, being active, and always thinking about SEO.

Taking LinkedIn Seriously

I mentioned this to the students – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across an incomplete LinkedIn profile, and how unprofessional this looks. When it comes to taking LinkedIn seriously, some of the advice I talked about included:

• Making sure your profile is Complete
• Being Detailed
• Thinking about Perception
• Being Authentic
• Requesting Endorsements & Recommendations
• Professional Headshot > a headshot
• Customizing Career Interests

Being Active on LinkedIn

Being active on LinkedIn is also huge if you want to provide yourself with more opportunities and a larger network. Here is some of the advice I touched on about what it means to be more active with LinkedIn:

• Log on a couple times per week to start
• Engage with your Feed: like, comment, and share posts
• Create Your Own Content: don’t be afraid of posting
• Connect with People: have at least 500 minimum
• Consistently check the LinkedIn Job Board

Always Think About SEO on LinkedIn

When I first mentioned this point I received a lot of confused looks from the audience, which was expected. “What is SEO and how is this relevant to my LinkedIn profile?” is the question I always get when referring to this point.

SEO within LinkedIn is essentially the practice of optimizing your profile to rank higher for certain search results. Think about how important this is for job/internship seekers especially.

Here is what I recommend to help with any LinkedIn profile’s SEO presence:

• Changing your Profile URL to your full name
• Adding Keyword Rich Content throughout your profile
• Paying close attention to Weekly Search Stats: optimizing based on results

Personal Branding

As I talked about during my first presentation at UNI, whenever I discuss personal branding there are always two questions to continually address:

1. How do you want others to perceive your image?
2. How do you market yourself?

I also talked about some of the benefits associated with personal branding that can happen down the road. Benefits that come with a solid personal brand include:

• Job Security
• Industry Thought Leader
• Business Opportunities
• Expanded Network
• Development of New Skills
• Increased Confidence

Some other personal branding advice I talked about included the importance of having a portfolio website, making LinkedIn a priority, creating professional content, cleaning up social media accounts, and the value of networking.

For more specific information on these topics check out my previous article Four Tips on Building a Professional Online Brand.

Q&A Portion

At the end of my presentation there were a ton of great questions asked by the audience. This is always my favorite part about speaking to a group of driven college students who are curious about entering the real world. Some of the questions asked included:

• “What type of professional content would you recommend I start creating and sharing?”
  
• “How do you balance your time between a full time job, Beers to Careers, community involvement, and freelance work?”
• “What’s the best advice you have for current college students looking to set themselves apart in a competitive job market?”
• “If you could redo/relive your college experience again what are some better ways you would spend your free time?”
• “What are the key factors you looked at when it came to deciding on a location for your first job?”

Final Take

Overall I had a blast with this presentation at UNI last week, and hope my content provided value to those college students in the audience.

For those in the audience or any reader of Beers to Careers in general, please reach out to me if you have any content ideas. A huge thanks to those involved in PSE for providing me with this opportunity!