It’s time!

It’s time to brush off your leadership brand and start standing out for all the right reasons again.⠀

• Say no – to throwing yourself in at the office boots and all to make up all that lost ground over the holidays. ⠀

• Say no – to having a default head down backside up attitude without lifting your head to see what’s on the horizon.⠀

• Say no – to being the flustered, worn out executive up the back of the office – because no-one promotes or appoints that person anyway!!⠀

• Instead, say yes to the gold standard of executive branded – proactive, future focused, plus deliberately and strategically visible.

Moving forwards
Moving forwards it would be great to see regular content sharing from you this year – either on LinkedIn, via your email newsletter, your internal intranet site or other profile building platform of choice. If I’ve learnt anything in observing leaders and experts, it’s that the people who frequently and consistently stay visible, gain far more traction.

Here are my five tips to up the ante on standing out for all the right reasons in 2018!

1. Pick a curation tool and get started
– Register one or two Google alerts that will feed you news in your industry that you can share or comment on.  Be specific with your search words so you don’t get overwhelmed.
– Alternatively, follow a bunch of media outlets on Facebook.  I get the AFR via Facebook and it’s an awesome feed. I also use Drumup.io and Flipboard as curation tools.
Pick one, then get started. You’ll be surprised how easy this is, and how easy it makes your branding journey.

2. Plan the events you will attend, host, chair or speak at where you can get most ROI
Events not only give you great content (images, ideas and inspiration) but you never know who you might bump into. Do ensure that the event is right for your goals. Confidence building is one thing but staying strategically visible by decision makers in your preferred industry category is probably better.  Take a wing woman if you need additional support. Not to chat to each other – but to instead bolster each other, facilitate introductions and to halve the effort yet double your impact.

3. Write a bunch of 50-75 word mini blogs in advance
Ideas to get you started
– what do you believe about your area of expertise?
– what do you believe about leadership/management?
– what do you believe about the future of your industry?
– what do you believe about women in leadership?
– and why are these things important?
Think future focused and proactive. These paragraphs then stand you in good stead in meetings, are great starters for networking events or longer form articles/papers, or you can schedule them to go out weekly on LinkedIn. 6 to10 pieces is a great start and puts you well ahead of the rest. Why not dump in a few appropriate hashtags while you’re at it?

#dontdelaystarttoday #thoughtleadership #LookOutCSuiteHereSheComes

4. Start strong, avoid passive or safe. Lead with what you stand for. 
When you’re creating content for LinkedIn in response to other content or events, avoid the following;
– simply regurgitating the article
– starting with “this is a great article I found on xxx”.
– and by now you know my thoughts on starting a share with “delighted to attend/win/speak/catch up with  …..”. 

Do – start with what you stand for and why that’s important, then segue to how it adds impact in the context of the group you write for. Add something to it – opinion, analysis, top tips, more information on related topics, advice etc. If graciousness is important, finish with the graciousness piece but certainly don’t lead with it.

 5. Make the time & consider timing. 
I’m finding lunchtime Monday to Wednesday for LinkedIn great during the summer. Thursdays are okay too.  Not too late though, as everyone is back in meetings by 2pm. Another of my clients is having success with Saturdays. Her clients are business leaders and they find time on the weekend.
– Note: Realtime live shares are best. LinkedIn algorithms are now “downgrading” sharing from automated softwares including Buffer or Hootsuite.

I hope to see more quality sharing on LinkedIn or your newsletter in the coming weeks! Do pop me a text, email or LinkedIn message with the link to your post when it goes up, so that I can thumbs up and/or comment myself.

• On that note – here’s my latest on sexist comments Get in there and comment if you haven’t already.

The Visibility Game
I call much of this a game. In fact, the ever changing algorithms on social media platforms make it so. Did you know that when someone likes, comments or shares your content on LinkedIn, you get points on that item?  And when you’re in the business of staying visible so you can make a bigger difference – this matters – to you, to your organization, to your mission.

And remember, the goal is to spend quality, strategic and focused time on this now, so you get more bang for your buck when the going gets tough – and have more time to spend on the things that truly make a difference.

Let’s get vi-si-ble …. vi-si-ble (she sang)

Amanda