Personal Branding Matters; LinkedIn Launches BrandYou Across Europe
LinkedIn today launched a pan-European campaign called BrandYou to raise awareness about the increasing importance of personal brand management on the continent. Many countries across Europe are less wired than others, with a number of professionals not grasping the power of an online personal brand just yet, and BrandYou hopes to help these industry experts and beginners understand how managing a personal brand and reputation can make a huge impact on their career, alongside experience and qualifications.
As job mobility increases across Europe and more Generation Y employees enter the workforce, the concept of the personal, professional brand has never been more relevant in Europe.
“BrandYou is about establishing, building and maintaining your credentials, profile and professional experience throughout all stages of your career. As a complement to your offline reputation, managing your online reputation has never been more important in Europe than it is today,” said Kevin Eyres, Managing Director at LinkedIn Europe.
The BrandYou campaign will include exclusive insights from some of Europe’s leading authorities on the art of brand management; tools; content and personal BrandYou surveys (take the test) shared across Europe; and a new LinkedIn Group set up for discussion and interaction.
BrandYou is meant to also drive LinkedIn’s popularity across Europe, where the company already has 18 million users, statistically, however, less active than their peers from other continents. The campaign’s first “tips” for professionals across Europe have been shared today with the official press release, and although they describe the “how to create a personal brand on LinkedIn” these principles can be applied successfully for other online profiles on social networks and personal sites: always include a professional looking photo so that people can easily recognize you; complete your profile summary, outlining who you are as a professional in your own voice, and make sure that this profile is search engine optimized. Add your education background including any key qualifications relevant to your career; add current and previous positions so people can see your experience so far and request recommendations from people you’ve worked with in the past to give your profile added credibility.
Basically, the rules of building a professional personal brand are pretty similar to those of branding a company and a product, minus the logo. An example of a good personal brand in Europe would be David Airey, whose name is now known internationally and is synonymous with professional design and branding. Other examples can be found in BrandYou’s board of directors: Katie Ledger, Andrzej Moyseowicz, John Woodward, David Midgley. Let’s hope that BrandYou will inspire other European professionals to build powerful personal brands.
Linkedin is handling PR efforts for this internally, as DKC PR, their U.S. PR Agency does not have European capabilities.
