Personal Branding Activity, Part 2

Elevate the LinkedIn profile created in Week 3 by applying the “pre-suasion” idea

Weight & Due

COMPANION TO THE WEEK 5 COMPREHENSIVE STUDY GUIDE | PREPARED AS A SELF-CONTAINED WRITING

Resource

The Week 5 journal, “Personal Branding Activity Part 2,” is the second and concluding part of a two-part personal-branding project. It is tagged to Weekly Learning Outcome 2 and Course Learning Outcome 1, is worth 3 points, is due on Day 7 (Monday), and is submitted through Waypoint. In Week 3 you completed Part 1, where you created or edited a LinkedIn profile. Part 2 asks you to elevate that profile — to make it more professional and, above all, more findable — and then to write a short reflection describing what you changed and why. A journal is a lighter and more reflective deliverable than a formal paper. There is no required page length, no APA title page demanded by the prompt, and no minimum source count. What it asks for is genuine reflection grounded in two ideas the week teaches: pre-suasion and search engine optimization (SEO) keywords. This guide decodes those two ideas, restates the deliverables as a checklist, explains the three-criterion rubric, walks through the profile upgrade step by step, and supplies a working outline and a model section skeleton for the written reflection. The Prompt, Restated The journal asks for three things. Read them as a checklist — the rubric scores them as three separate criteria.

• Deliverable 1 — Enhance the profile. Enhance your LinkedIn profile page by incorporating the “pre-suasion” idea and SEO keywords, and incorporate the feedback you received from your instructor and what you have learned over the past few weeks in the course.
• Deliverable 2 — Describe the changes. Describe the changes you made to your LinkedIn profile to upgrade it and how the use of keywords may help maximize quality views.
• Deliverable 3 — Post the URL. Post your LinkedIn URL link to your response. T WO THINGS THIS JOURNAL IS NOT First, it is not a fresh start: it builds on the Week 3 profile, so the instructor feedback you received on Part 1 is raw material you are explicitly told to use. Second, it is not only a profile edit — the graded artifact you submit to Waypoint is the written reflection that describes the edits. You must both do the work on LinkedIn and write about it. Skipping the reflection, or skipping the URL, leaves easy points on the table.

The Personal Branding activity spans two weeks. In Week 3 (Part 1), you created or edited a LinkedIn profile and designed a personal-branding business card. In Week 5 (Part 2), you return to the same profile and raise it to a higher standard, this time applying what Week 5 teaches about digital marketing and search. The logic of the sequence is deliberate. Part 1 was about existence — having a credible professional profile. Part 2 is about discoverability — making sure the right people actually find that profile. The journal’s own framing states the goal plainly: the activity is meant to help your LinkedIn profile seem more professional and become “effectively searchable.” That word, searchable, is the heart of Part 2. This also closes a thread in the course. Week 5 is the last full content week before the Week 6 final paper, and the Personal Branding journal is one of two threads that conclude this week (the other being the marketing mix itself). Finishing Part 2 well means the personal-branding project is complete and you enter Week 6 with only the Global Marketing Plan to finish.

The first key idea the journal asks you to apply is pre-suasion. The term comes from Robert Cialdini, the persuasion researcher who is the subject of one of the week’s assigned readings (Stettner, 2024). Pre-suasion is the practice of arranging for an audience to be receptive to a message before they encounter it — shaping the moment of attention so that what comes next lands well. Where persuasion is about the message itself, pre-suasion is about preparing the ground the message falls on. Applied to a LinkedIn profile, pre-suasion means treating the first things a viewer sees — the headline, the photo, the top of the “About” section — as the ground-preparation. These are the elements that decide whether a recruiter or contact keeps reading. A profile that opens with a sharp, specific headline and a confident value statement pre-suades the viewer to read the rest favorably; a profile that opens with a vague job title gives the viewer no reason to continue.

A professional, current photo and a relevant banner set a credible first Profile photo & banner impression before a word is read. Open with the strongest, most specific statement of who you are and what you “About” opening lines offer; the first two lines are what the viewer sees before clicking “see more.” Place your best evidence — a project, a credential, the business card from Part 1 Featured section — where the viewer’s attention is already directed. Verify the specifics of the Cialdini reading: the Stettner (2024) article is held behind the UAGC Library’s EBSCOHost database and requires a login. Read it in the library and confirm how it frames pre-suasion before you cite or paraphrase it.

The second key idea is search engine optimization (SEO) keywords. SEO, a Chapter 15 concept, is the practice of structuring content so that it surfaces for the searches that matter. On LinkedIn, the “search engine” is twofold: LinkedIn’s own recruiter and member search, and the public web search that indexes public profiles. Both work by matching the words a searcher types against the words in a profile. If a recruiter searches for a skill or role and your profile does not contain those words, your profile does not appear — however qualified you are. Keyword optimization on LinkedIn therefore means identifying the terms that the people you want to reach — recruiters, hiring managers, peers in global marketing — would actually search for, and then placing those terms naturally in the high-value parts of the profile.

• Choose the right keywords. Think about the roles and skills you are targeting. Job titles, core skills (for example, global marketing, market research, brand strategy, digital marketing), tools, and industry terms are all candidate keywords. Job postings on sites such as LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, or CareerBuilder are a good source of the exact language employers use.
• Place them where search weighs them. The headline, the “About” section, the job titles and descriptions in “Experience,” and the “Skills” section are the parts of the profile that search engines weigh most heavily. Distribute your keywords across these.
• Keep it natural. Keywords must read as fluent professional prose, not a stuffed list. A profile crammed with disconnected terms reads poorly to a human even if it ranks for a machine — and LinkedIn’s and the web’s search systems both penalize obvious keyword stuffing.

Why Keywords Maximize “Quality” Views The prompt asks specifically how keywords help maximize quality views — not just more views, but the right ones. The connection is precise: well-chosen keywords make the profile appear for searches that are relevant to your actual goals, so the viewers it attracts are the recruiters and contacts who are looking for exactly what you offer. Generic or absent keywords either bury the profile or surface it for irrelevant searches. Targeted keywords are how you trade volume for fit. Your reflection should state this link explicitly — it is the prompt’s exact question. The Puntoni et al. (2024) reading on LLM-powered search is the week’s second supporting article; it discusses how AIgenerated search results change how content is found. It is behind the UAGC Library’s Business Source Elite database — read and verify it before citing.

The journal is graded through a Waypoint rubric worth 3.00 points across three criteria of 1.00 each. The structure is unusually clean — the three criteria correspond exactly to the three deliverables, so the prompt is the rubric.

Describes the Changes Made to the LinkedIn Profile To Upgrade Deliverable 2 1.00 it and How the Use of Keywords May Help Maximize Quality Views Posts the LinkedIn URL link Deliverable 3 1.00 Two observations shape how you should spend effort. First, the rubric’s top descriptors use the word thoroughly: a Distinguished score on criteria 1 and 2 goes to a submission that thoroughly enhances the profile and thoroughly describes the changes — so each of those criteria wants depth, specific changes named, not a one-line gesture. Second, the third criterion — posting the URL — is effectively all-or-nothing: its Proficient, Basic, and Below Expectations levels are all marked “N/A,” meaning you either post a working LinkedIn URL and earn the full point, or you do not and earn nothing. A full point for pasting one link is the easiest point in the week; do not forget it.

three explicitly is hard to under-score.

Deliverable 1 is the hands-on work: actually upgrading the Week 3 profile. Work through the profile section by section, applying pre-suasion, keywords, and instructor feedback as you go. Keep a running list of every change — you will need it for the written reflection.

Confirm a professional, current photo and a relevant background banner. These set Photo & banner the first impression before any text is read. Open with the strongest two lines — what you do and the value you bring (pre- “About” section suasion). Through the body, weave in target keywords naturally: roles, skills, and industry terms a recruiter would search. Make job titles accurate and searchable; write each role’s description with Experience concrete, results-oriented language and relevant keywords. Address any instructor feedback about thin or vague experience entries. List the skills employers in your target field actually search for; this section is a Skills direct keyword-match surface. Reorder so the most relevant skills appear first. Feature your best evidence (the Part 1 business card, a project). Set a clean custom Featured / custom URL LinkedIn URL — it is both more professional and the link you will post for Deliverable 3. The official UAGC and LinkedIn resources from the Week 3 activity — the “Create an Effective LinkedIn Profile” checklist and LinkedIn’s own profile guidance — remain useful here as a completeness check. Work through the profile once for substance, then once more purely for keywords.

Deliverable 2 is the written reflection — the artifact you submit to Waypoint. A journal entry is reflective and personal in voice, but it should still be organized and clear. The outline below covers all three rubric criteria in a natural order. Aim for a focused entry of a few well-developed paragraphs — long enough to describe the changes “thoroughly,” not padded.

Pre-suasion changes Describe what you changed to apply pre-suasion — the headline, the photo, the opening of the “About” section — and why those first impressions matter. Describe the SEO keywords you chose, where you placed them, and — the Keyword changes prompt’s exact question — how they help maximize quality views by surfacing the profile for relevant searches. State the specific feedback you received on Part 1 and the concrete change you Instructor feedback made in response. This names a rubric criterion directly. A short reflection on what the upgrade taught you about personal branding, and Close the LinkedIn URL clearly posted (Deliverable 3).

Below is a skeleton of the journal entry, with a model opening sentence for each part. This is scaffolding, not an entry to submit — the bracketed cues are yours to fill with the changes you actually made, and the voice must be your own. Use it to see how the pieces connect. Model Skeleton — Personal Branding Activity Part 2 Reflection Opening “For Part 2 of the Personal Branding Activity, I returned to the LinkedIn profile I created in Week 3 and elevated it by applying the pre-suasion concept and search engine optimization, with the goal of making the profile both more professional and more easily found by recruiters in [your target field].” Pre-suasion changes “Applying the idea of pre-suasion — preparing a viewer to be receptive before they read further — I revised the elements a viewer sees first. I rewrote my headline from [old headline] to [new headline], updated my photo and banner, and rewrote the opening of my ‘About’ section to lead with [your strongest value statement], because…” Keyword changes and quality views “To make the profile searchable, I identified the keywords recruiters in [field] search for — [list a few, e.g., global marketing, market research] — and placed them in my headline, ‘About’ section, experience descriptions, and skills. These keywords help maximize quality views because they cause my profile to appear for searches that are relevant to my goals, so the viewers it attracts are…” Instructor feedback “I also incorporated the feedback my instructor gave on Part 1. Specifically, [the feedback], so I [the concrete change you made in response].” Close and URL “Upgrading the profile showed me that [a genuine reflection on personal branding]. My updated LinkedIn profile is available at: [your LinkedIn URL].” Replace every bracketed cue with the changes you actually made, write in your own reflective voice, and make sure the LinkedIn URL is a working link. The skeleton shows structure only; the substance — and the grade — comes from your real edits.

Common Pitfalls

• Forgetting the URL. Criterion 3 is a full point and is all-or-nothing. A reflection with no posted LinkedIn link loses a third of the grade for one omission.
• Describing intentions, not changes. The rubric scores the changes you made. Name the before and after of each edit.
• Ignoring instructor feedback. The prompt and criterion 1 both name it explicitly. State the feedback and the change you made in response.
• Treating pre-suasion and SEO as one thing. They are two distinct ideas — one about first impressions, one about searchability. Address each by name.
• Keyword stuffing. Keywords must read as natural professional prose. A stuffed profile reads badly to humans and is penalized by search.
• Skipping the “quality views” link. The prompt asks specifically how keywords maximize quality views. Answer that exact question.
• Submitting only the profile. The graded artifact is the written reflection. Both the LinkedIn work and the write-up are required.

The Submission Step The journal is submitted through Waypoint, not by a normal Canvas upload. Click the Assignment Submission button on the Canvas page; the Waypoint Student Dashboard opens in a new browser window; browse for your file, click Upload, and then confirm the submission by checking the appropriate week’s tab in Waypoint. If anything is unclear, the Waypoint Tutorial linked on the assignment page walks through the process.

Day 7 (Monday) by 11:59 p.m. Submitted through Waypoint. Due Part 2 of a two-part activity; Part 1 (the LinkedIn profile) was the Week 3 journal. The activity Enhance the LinkedIn profile using the pre-suasion idea, SEO keywords, and Deliverable 1 instructor feedback. Describe the changes made and how keywords maximize quality views. Deliverable 2 Post the LinkedIn URL link in the response. Deliverable 3 Preparing a viewer to be receptive before the message — applied to the headline, Pre-suasion photo, and “About” opening. Terms recruiters search for, placed naturally in the headline, “About,” experience, SEO keywords and skills — they surface the profile for relevant searches. Three criteria, 1.00 each (total 3.00): enhance the profile; describe the changes; Rubric post the URL. The URL criterion is all-or-nothing. Stettner (2024) on Cialdini and persuasion; Puntoni et al. (2024) on LLM-powered Readings search — both behind the UAGC Library; verify before citing. Companion to the BUS 622 Week 5 Comprehensive Study Guide. Prepared as a self-contained writing resource for the Week 5 journal. Verify the due date, rubric details, and the substance of the library readings against Canvas and the UAGC Library before submission.