For those bootstrapped entrepreneurs and hustlers out there, I can tell you full heartedly that I dedicated myself to building my personal brand after I left LinkedIn. I was still posting when I was with the company, but nowhere near the level of quality and consistency I have right now.
Building a personal brand was my way of creating a channel for people to find out about me. Get to know who I am, why I’m starting a business, and what I’m offering. To distribute my content to my audience in an effective way.
I tried other platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. I tried inputting similar effort on other platforms, but the return is nowhere near what I was able to achieve with my personal profile on LinkedIn.
Just look at my example below. Same content, but the engagement level on LinkedIn is off the charts.
I only had wished I started doing this earlier.
Facebook:
LinkedIn:
What can a LinkedIn personal brand do for you?
I’m going to use myself as an example. After I started building on my own personal brand back in Aug 2020, I was able to get:
- Up to 24,000+ views in my best posts
- Over 1K engagements in my best posts
- 4.5K new followers
- 508 to 5K profile views
- 4 Podcast appearances
- 50+ inbound InMails asking about my services
And this is only the beginning. In full transparency, my engagement and reach go up and down, but it has been trending upward ever since I started posting everyday for 3 months.
LinkedIn ultimately serves as a channel for you to distribute your content effectively to your audience and eventually build your own brand. No one buys from people they never heard of or don’t trust.
When you are starting out, the only way for people to know who you are is to create and distribute useful and valuable content. And after testing different platforms, I am proud to say LinkedIn happened to be the most effective one.
Why LinkedIn is so under the radar
To approach this question, let’s look at some background data from LinkedIn first:
- More than 740 million members in over 200 countries and territories
- More than 57M companies have a page on LinkedIn
- Content creation on LinkedIn increased 60% in 2020
- LinkedIn has 15x more content impressions than job postings
- 61 million LinkedIn users are senior level influencers and 40 million are in decision-making positions
- LinkedIn is the most-used social media platform amongst Fortune 500 companies
The data clearly shows that LinkedIn is a platform that works, but why are only 1% of LinkedIn monthly users constantly sharing posts and content?
No time – A huge reason I hear a lot is people say is they don’t have the time. They’re too busy doing their daily tasks and can’t spare 30 mins out each day to do one post.
No motivation – They don’t see how this will benefit their job or their future. They don’t see any value in building their own brand.
Don’t know how – Some people have no idea how to get started. What, when, how to post etc.
Because of these various reasons, the supply of content remains low while the demand keeps growing with more members joining the platform.
Hence, if you are able to be part of that 1% through consistency and patience, you will eventually stand out from the rest and build your own brand to achieve whatever goals you have in life.
How to build a LinkedIn personal brand
Step 1: Turn your LinkedIn profile into your landing page
First, you need to get rid of the mindset of treating your LinkedIn profile as a resume. Instead, it is your unique landing page that tells people your values, beliefs, personality, and what you offer.
This messaging needs to be included throughout your profile from cover photo, headline, summary, to your job experience.
Follow the steps from our previous blog and learn how to write a killer LinkedIn headline and create an amazing LinkedIn profile.
Step 2: Build an audience
Before you start a content strategy, you need to have an audience. Your great content will not have any impact if your first degree connections are just full of recruiters. Your content won’t resonate with them and your content will have less engagement, less reach and less impact.
To build up your network, you can:
Remove irrelevant connections – Look into your existing network to see if there are any first degree connections that you know will not find your content useful and aren’t active on LinkedIn.
Identify target audience – Using the search function on LinkedIn, identify a list of profiles that fit your target audience and who would benefit a lot from your posts.
Engage and start adding connections – Connect with them or engage (like, comment or share) with their previous posts before requesting a connection. By engaging first, leads are more willing to accept your connection.
For more ways to make your target audience your connections, check out our 8 ways to grow to 500+ quality connections.
Step 3: Create and Distribute Content
At the start, you don’t have to complicate things. Don’t think that you have to create a perfect photo or video to post. No you don’t. In fact, pure text posts like below work just fine.
I am not going to dive deep into telling you what to post because you are the expert on your field. You know your target audience better than I do and you can resonate with them.
Instead, I will tell you HOW to post to get more reach and engagements:
Have a structure – A hook, share values/stories, and have a call-to-action. This should be the structure you follow when posting on LinkedIn. The first sentence needs to be attractive or hook people to pay attention to you. Then, deliver value or tell your story. And end with a CTA, like asking your target audience to participate in your conversation.
Don’t lazy share – By clicking share, it doesn’t provide a value add. Your post gets limited reach and there is nothing authentic about it.
Don’t share links in your post – LinkedIn doesn’t like driving members off the platform. By sharing a link in your post, the LinkedIn algorithm will not favor it. Pro tip: put your link in the comments instead.
Comments are king – LinkedIn favous commenting more than anything. If your post is getting a lot of comments, it is driving more people to come back and join the conversation. So think of ways or topics that can trigger a conversation with your audience.
Write short choppy sentences – 57% of LinkedIn traffics comes from mobile. Would you want to see big paragraphs with tons of words on your tiny little screen? Not me. Short, sharp sentences separated by line breaks work best. Make it reader friendly.
Need more ideas? You can see our 7 personal brand building content Ideas and our 10 rules on creating engaging LinkedIn posts.
It’s on you now!
I encourage you to take these tips and steps and execute them.
Are you going to be that 1% of regular content creators on LinkedIn or stay as the 99%? The decision is yours to make.
Join [in]side Content Conversion System™ – Create content that opens hearts + wallets — guaranteed.
