There are many benefits to building a strong personal brand, including expanding your network and gaining more exposure to career opportunities. What can treasury professionals do to build their personal brand?

Mike Richards, CEO and Founder of The Treasury Recruitment Company, answers questions that treasury professionals submitted on this topic during the AFP webinar, Achieving Career Success Through Effective Networking and a Strong Personal Brand.

This article is part of a four-part series, How to Achieve Career Success Through Networking and Personal Branding.

How helpful is it to use LinkedIn for networking and your personal brand?

Richards: Exceptionally useful. LinkedIn is a free mouthpiece, a free online business card and free amplification of your message.

Bear in mind that it shouldn’t be your resume. Instead, it should be a highlight reel of some of the things you’ve achieved in your career. It helps you build your brand by explaining who you are, what you do and what you stand for.

It also helps you network. And by sharing content, you can establish yourself as an expert. Once you do this, people start coming to you. I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to speak at conferences around the world because people saw me on LinkedIn.

Additionally, you can engage with other people's posts. Specifically, you can contribute to the discussion. Liking something is great, but what’s even better is commenting and giving some of your insights. This will make people want to connect with you, and you will find more people you want to connect with.

Someone found that a larger treasury LinkedIn profile results in unwanted fraud attention, so they were taking an approach where they were removing a lot from their public profile. Any recommendations on how to handle this issue?

Richards: I think that in that regard, you have to be careful with your privacy settings and limit the visibility. It’s very easy to adjust your settings to make sure you’re not sharing your email address or phone number with people outside of your network.

Be cautious when accepting connection requests. Before you connect with someone, look at their profile. Is it real? Is it spam? Have they commented on things? Do they look legitimate? Educate yourself on common phishing techniques.

One thing you shouldn't do is share confidential information. Avoid sharing specific details about your treasury cash management activities. You can talk about some of the things you've done, but you shouldn’t talk about the transactions you've carried out. Instead, focus on the difference you’ve made within the company. For example, maybe you mentored and grew a treasury team.

There are always going to be bad actors, not just on LinkedIn, so stay vigilant. Yes, you can minimize the information on your LinkedIn profile, but make sure you leave enough detail on there to make people want to connect with you.

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Get more career advice from this series, How to Achieve Career Success Through Networking and Personal Branding.

• Advice from a Treasury Recruiter on Finding a Mentor
• Advice from a Treasury Recruiter on Networking
• Advice from a Treasury Recruiter on Achieving Career Success

Get more advice from Mike Richards on LinkedIn.