When is the right time to make LinkedIn part of your personal branding and marketing strategy? Yesterday. But the next best time is today or this week.

And it’s never too late or early to start.

You’re in control of what people see about you online (and people search for you every week). They often skip your bio and go right to LinkedIn from Google.

If they don’t like what they see when they look at your profile, they may disqualify you before even working with you. You want LinkedIn to work in the background FOR you, not against you.

Here’s where you can start:

• Update your cover image, your LinkedIn bio (summary) and your headline

• Commit to building your network by 10 connections per week

• Then start liking others posts and commenting on them

• Get to the point where you are ready to post your own updates, which should not be overly self-promotional.

There’s your LinkedIn strategy!

Let me break it down further.

The first step is completing your LinkedIn profile. Profiles that achieve all-star status get preferential treatment by LinkedIn and are shown to more people.

The reason you don’t have all-star status is probably because you haven’t filled out all the profile sections, likely the summary/bio section.

But don’t cut and paste your bio from your website, this one needs to be more casual and in the first person.

You should also be cultivating your network every week – maybe even every day.

That means not sitting back and just waiting for people to connect with you, it means strategically sending connection requests as well as actively building your network.

The more people in your network the more people who will see your posts.

The content you should post on LinkedIn should be audience-focused – meaning it should provide value to them and be about them, not you. Posts where you congratulate yourself are essentially a waste of a touchpoint.

Aim to provide useful information that helps your audience and by extension, you are building your own brand and business. Think of show versus telling with all of your posts. That’s how to achieve true LinkedIn success.

Marketing yourself is so important when your business is good but especially when it’s not or it slows down. If we go into a recession you should already have a strong LinkedIn presence. Now is the time to market yourself.

So keep showing up. Even when it feels like no one is liking or noticing your content. It’s worth it. It WILL pay off.

Building your brand on LinkedIn takes time. Trust me, I was there too, and if I can do it so can you.

Are you ready to use LinkedIn more effectively?