Blueprint for building a personal brand on LinkedIn

I’m gonna come right out and say it – Working towards a booming personal brand is one of the most incredible things that I’m doing for my career.

LinkedIn is perhaps the most powerful social media platform for business today. And if you’re not fully embracing LinkedIn in 2021, you’re missing out on the opportunity to talk and engage directly with your audience. Building your personal branding through a social media platform like LinkedIn means getting people to know, and trust you so that they’ll eventually want to work with you or buy from you.

With so many people putting their time and effort into building a brand, it can be challenging to find your footing. But how do you stand out? The key seems to lie in executing the right strategy—if not, then there’s no point in even trying. But, if that happens, you don’t get to reap the rewards of getting it right.

So, do you want to distinguish yourself as being a thought-leader?

Well, now is the time to unlock the perks of LinkedIn.

1. Appearance
2. Content
3. Audience

Appearance

When building a brand, I focus on three things for appearance: the profile picture, the banner image, and the tagline.

• The Profile Picture: Try to post a recent profile picture. Choose a headshot image. You don’t have to spend $$$ on getting a professional photo. A clear, decent, and solid background portrait image would do the job.
  P.S: At any cost, do not post a shot where you are drinking, or hanging out with a friend, sitting on your sofa, or… you get the idea, right?
• The Banner Image: You need an image that self-explains the story behind your brand. You can head over and create a free banner image at Canva. It’s quite simple.

• The Tagline: Okay, we get it that you work as a Senior Consultant at an XYZ company, but you don’t really have to write that in your tagline. Instead, use your tagline wisely. Carve your tagline about whom you help, what you help them with, and what you talk about.
  P.S: Remember you are building your personal brand, so at all costs, don’t parasite on other brands, i.e., avoid writing Ex-Amazon, Ex-Facebook, Ex-XYZ. Get creative!

Content

I can’t emphasize this enough, but creating content is important. I learned it the hard way, but now I know and see the result myself. People try to post regularly for a few days or weeks, and then they give up. And that’s where they go wrong. Posting for 2 weeks may not show the result now, but you will 100% see the result in 30-40 weeks.

Now, for starters, start jotting down your ideas somewhere. I am a fan of Notion these days. You can note them down either in Google doc, Notes App, or go old school and write them on pen paper, whatever suits you. But do write them down.

The next thing you’d wanna do is create a content calendar and schedule everything beforehand. Again, you can take Hootsuite‘s free plan and schedule your content to go out at a certain time.

Also, LinkedIn’s Algo-god loves “Comments”. When you comment on a post, LinkedIn notifies every person, and it even shares your comments with everyone in your network. It’s like having a second voice online. This means you now have the opportunity of placing yourself, your insights, and your ideas in front of a broader audience that extends way beyond the limits of your own network.

Don’t be lazy and comment something like – “Nice post”, “Great Post”, and the worst of all, “Interested”.

Instead of simply commenting on something, craft your comment like a mini-post. Acknowledge the original content to give your followers context and then add insight.

Use good hashtags, but never more than 3-4

Using too many hashtags decreases the engagement rate. Instead, pick not more than 4 hashtags relevant to your content.

P.S: As a writer, it can feel like you’re dreadfully boring if you talk about the same 3 – 5 topics every week. As an audience who sees maybe 1% of your output, it just means that I understand what you care about. The more you repeat yourself in different ways, the more your audience will find you.

Audience

LinkedIn is all about networking, learning, creating, career development, and whatnot. Once you have cleaned up your LinkedIn profile, it is now the time to find a niche and engage with your relevant audience. Building a strong LinkedIn network takes time and effort, but it’s super valuable.

To build an audience:

1. Find some of the most influential people based on your niche on LinkedIn.
2. Start engaging with their content.
3. Comment some meaningful insights on their posts and try to do it regularly.

This way, not only are you reaching out to them, you are gaining visibility to a more like-minded audience. Engage with them and then reach out for a connection. You’re doing 2 things when you execute this play: 1) you’re gaining visibility – face, & name, everywhere the folks in your niche exist, & 2) you’re aligning your brand with other people that your niche pays attention to. Win/Win.

When you prioritize continuously posting quality content, you’ll have LinkedIn users outside your immediate network like / commenting on your posts. So reach out to them to make them valued by sending a connection request or message.

LinkedIn limits you to 30,000 connections, so be thoughtful about who to connect with.

Avoid connection messages for greater acceptance rates at all costs.

You will find guides all over the net suggesting you include a custom message when sending connection requests on LinkedIn.

Consider avoiding that.

Data says that when everyone is loading connection requests with templated messages, requests without messages seem more real—and get accepted more.

Well, that’s it for now. Be good and consistent. Make the most out of LinkedIn, and it will come back to you in the form of revenue (clients, projects, jobs) and exposure (podcasts, speaking events, guest blogs).

What do you think? Hit me up on LinkedIn to chat more.