How To Use LinkedIn To Get Your Colleagues To See You As A Leader

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Using LinkedIn strategically can showcase your leadership skills and qualities to the people in your professional circle who can help you get ahead. Of course, this approach won’t work for colleagues who shy away from social media. But for the 95 percent who are building their personal brands online, these nine techniques, which spice up both your profile and your LinkedIn activities, will help you demonstrate your leadership prowess to stakeholders.

Your LinkedIn Profile

Ensure your LinkedIn profile accurately reflects your leadership activities, accomplishments, and skills.

1. Creator Mode

When you turn on creator mode, you get to highlight your top 5 hashtags. Choosing hashtags like #leadership, #negotiation or #globalstrategy sends a message to those who view your profile. Of course, make sure you feel strongly about the terms you use. Authenticity is the key to successful personal branding.

2. Your Headshot

Use a professional headshot that conveys you take work seriously. Avoid selfies, group shots, and overly casual looks. Dress professionally. You need not wear a suit and tie or a formal dress if that’s not the norm at your office, but dress to the high end of the scale of what’s acceptable where you work.

3. Recommendations

Rather than having to talk about your leadership skills yourself, request recommendations from those who can validate your leadership—colleagues, team members, former managers and clients. These testimonials add credibility to your profile.

4. Your About

Your LinkedIn About will be the most-read version of your bio. Use your 3,000 characters to highlight leadership capabilities like inspiring others, managing projects, developing strategy, etc. The About spotlights your strengths. You can also list your top skills (a new feature), putting the spotlight on your leadership skills.

5. Endorsements

LinkedIn displays your endorsed skills in chronological order based on the number of endorsements you received, but you don’t have to keep it that way. In edit mode, reorder your skills to put the most important leadership skills first, regardless of endorsements.

6. Volunteering and Extracurriculars

Highlight any leadership roles you’ve held outside of work, such as volunteering, mentoring or organizing events. This shows a commitment to transferring your skills across a variety of important initiatives.

7. Highlight Leadership Achievements

Use your profile’s “Experience” section to showcase specific achievements from your leadership roles. Highlight quantifiable results, successful projects, and any initiatives you’ve led.

Your LinkedIn Activity

Regularly post articles, updates or insights related to leadership, industry trends or professional development. Sharing valuable content proves that you’re interested in building communities of thought leadership. Just make sure that what you say delivers true insight and that you aren’t overdoing it. You don’t want your boss or colleagues to think you are spending all your time on LinkedIn.

8. Send LinkedIn Recommendations

Leaders proactively acknowledge others for their contributions. Don’t wait for someone to ask you to write a recommendation for them. Send unsolicited recommendations to people on your team and others whom you respect. It’s a valuable way to reward great performance and show that you’re a leader.

9. Be A Brand Ambassador

Leaders are willing to connect with the organization beyond their official role. Show that you’re a big thinker (and someone who takes action) by sharing content from your organization’s LinkedIn company page with your followers.

Remember, consistent and authentic engagement on LinkedIn is key to showcasing your leadership qualities. If you’re willing to start taking your digital brand seriously, your network will start taking you seriously too.

William Arruda is a keynote speaker, co-founder of CareerBlast.TV and creator of the 360Reach Personal Brand Survey that helps you get candid, meaningful feedback from people who know you.