Personal Branding On LinkedIn
I will assume you already know that LinkedIn is the right place for you to connect with your ideal audience and deliver your message. If you’re not so sure, I recommend you read my summary of The 7 Systems of Influence and then return here if you feel reassured that LinkedIn is indeed the place you want to focus your attention.
What is a Personal Brand?
Your personal brand is not what you think about yourself, but what others think about you.
“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” — Jeff Bezos
What do people say about you when you’re not around? Do they say that you’re:
Kind?
Generous?
Smart?
Effective?
Easy to work with?
Do they say “She’s great with anything tech-related,” or “He’s a brilliant marketer,” or “They’re really great at communicating in difficult situations?”
No matter what they say, it’s all part of your personal brand. But simply having a personal brand is not enough. You need a powerful personal brand.
What is a Powerful Personal Brand?
A powerful personal brand is one that helps you accomplish your objectives. If you’re an executive, perhaps you want to:
Grow your business
Attract and retain top talent
Share a message
If your personal brand facilitates these outcomes, then it’s powerful. If it’s merely nice to have, but you’re not sure how it benefits you or your business interests, well…that’s nice.
What a Personal Brand is Not.
A personal brand is not fake…that is, you can’t fake it for long. If you try to fake a personal brand, the personal brand you’ll end up creating is that you’re a faker.
In order for a personal brand to be powerful, it must be authentic. Sincerity and real intent are key.
I once met a colleague in real life, after working together virtually for several months. After talking over dinner for a few minutes, he said, “You’re the same in real life as you are online.”
I took that as a great compliment and it’s what we should all strive for.
Another colleague once told me about the time he met a celebrity entrepreneur. “That guy is a total jerk,” he told me. “I was in his house for a few minutes, he didn’t even know me, and he’s telling me how he hates people coming up and asking for his autograph at events and he calls his own customers and fans ‘losers.’”
I was disappointed to hear this, because up until that time I thought that entrepreneur seemed like a nice guy. It’s easily possible my colleague was exaggerating things, but regardless the personal brand of the entrepreneur was tarnished, at least in my eyes. If you’re a jerk behind the scenes, it’s only a matter of time before everyone will find out.
3 Ways to Build a Powerful Personal Brand on LinkedIn
When it comes to building a powerful personal brand that will help you in your business and career, there may be no more accessible and quick way to do it than on LinkedIn.
Sure, you could write a book, but that’s hard and takes a long time (trust me, I’ve done it a few times).
You could get into a bunch of magazines and build a personal brand that way, but again, I’ve done that too, and that also takes time and substantial effort (although I have a PR firm that can make it easier and faster).
On the other hand, you can start building a powerful personal brand on LinkedIn today, it won’t cost you a dime, and you can get results immediately. Here are three ways to make it happen.
1. Optimize Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is first place to work on your personal brand. We’ll talk about making meaningful connections and creating compelling content in a moment, but the reason optimizing your profile comes first is because if you have an outdated profile, that will hurt your efforts to connect with others. Also, if you’re creating great content then people will consume it and visit your profile, but if your profile stinks…well, that ain’t no good.
To optimize your profile, start from the top and work your way down.
Photo. Is it professional? Can people recognize you in real life from it? Are you following LinkedIn best practices for your photo? Are your settings set to “public” so that anyone can see your photo? (click on your photo to see if the settings are public)
Banner. Most people will only look at your banner for a split-second, if at all. It’s not a place to cram as much information as possible, it’s only a place to reinforce your personal brand. If you have nothing but a blank area with a tasteful version of your company’s logo, that’s fine. A cityscape of where you live is also ok. If you’re a speaker, a photo of you in front of an audience is great, or if you’re an author, this is a good place to promote your book. No matter what, keep it simple and clean. Don’t try to communicate too much.
Name. Just your name, unless you have credentials your ideal audience will recognize. Even then, you may want to just use your name.
Title. If you’re the CEO of a well-known company, you’ll probably want to include that, but for the vast majority, including famous CEO’s, it’s often more effective to use what I call your “personal brand tagline.” This is a short statement that says what you you, who you do it for, and the results you deliver. For example, “I help salespeople in the solar industry 10x their leadflow,” is a great personal tagline, assuming that’s what you do.
About. This is your bio, and it’s one of the most important parts of your LinkedIn profile. Others sometimes disagree, but I strongly favor a bio written in the first person, none of this “So and so is an effective executive who…” This isn’t a Wikipedia entry, this is your chance to speak directly to your ideal audience, so talk to them like a normal person! In your About section, tell us again who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and the results you get. Then tell us a story. We’re hardwired to pay attention to and remember stories, so make it long, make it dramatic, and give us insight into who you really are. Your goal is to make strangers come up to you and say, “I read your LinkedIn profile and I feel like I know you!”
There are many other things you can do to optimize your LinkedIn profile, but if you focus on these, you’ll be at least 80% of the way there. If you want more detailed tips on LinkedIn profile optimization, grab yourself a copy of 60 Days to LinkedIn Mastery.
2. Make Meaningful Connections
Once your profile is optimized, the next step towards building a powerful personal brand on LinkedIn is to make lots of meaningful connections.
LinkedIn allows you to have 30,000 connections and unlimited followers (these are people who don’t count as connections, but they have opted to follow you and therefore they see content you post).
Don’t get me wrong—I would never advocate connecting with folks just for the sake of bumping up your connection number. There’s no point in that, it’s a waste of time. However, if you can connect with people you can serve, and who can serve you, then the more connections the better.
To start out with, connect with everyone you already know. These people are highly likely to accept your connection request because after all, they know you! These are also people who are likely to appreciate your content and share it with others. In addition, when you add these people, it grows your total network of 2nd connections, or people on LinkedIn with whom you have at least one connection in common, which leads to our next step in your connection strategy.
Connect with peers and colleagues who are 2nd connections. You always want to connect with 2nd connections and almost never 3rd connections, because if someone receives a connection request from you, and they see that you have 50 mutual connections, that might be all they need to see. They’re thinking, “Looks like we have a lot of friends in common, might as well connect with this person.”
On the other hand, when you send a connection request to a 3rd connection, they say, “I have no idea who this is, and nobody I know knows them either…I think I’ll pass.” Don’t waste your time on 3rd connections unless you have a compelling reason.
The reason to connect with peers and colleagues is that these people are also likely to accept your connection request because they’ll see that you work at the same company, or went to the same school, or are in the same industry.
So far, we’ve ignored connecting with who you really want to connect with—your ideal audience. That’s because when we get to your ideal audience, we want them to see that you have as many mutual connections as possible, and the only way to do that is to grow your network first. Once you’ve done that, then you start reaching out to members of your ideal audience, and now they’ll be more likely to accept your connection request.
Creating a large network is key to the next step of creating content, because LinkedIn only shows your LinkedIn content to a fraction of the people you’re connected to. The more people you’re connected to, the more people will see your content, and the more impact your content will make.
3. Create Compelling Content
This is where building a personal brand really happens.
Plain old text posts tend to perform the best on LinkedIn, although LinkedIn is constantly tinkering with the algorithm, so the only sure way to know what works best for you is to experiment.
Note: When I say “post” I’m talking about going to the homepage of LinkedIn, where your feed is, and clicking in the area that says “Start a post” and then typing.
As a general rule, don’t post photos, don’t post videos, and don’t write articles—none of these will perform as well as a plain text post. But again, sometimes you’ve got to experiment, so try all of them out to see what works best for you.
In order to create compelling content, the kind that build a powerful personal brand on LinkedIn, it must be:
Professional. I don’t mean formal, but this isn’t the place to talk about what you had for lunch, your sick dog, how your neighbor won’t mow his lawn, etc. This is not Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and it certainly isn’t TikTok. Keep it focused on professional topics, things related to what is in your personal brand tagline. Also, no religion or politics! Trust me, you’ll regret it.
Personal. Although you want to be professional in your topic selection, you want to get personal in the sense that you want to be authentic, real, and vulnerable. Talk about how you feel about things. Don’t be afraid to open up. People want to know who you really are. Some of the best posts I’ve ever read on LinkedIn have been people talking about their professional challenges and struggles.
Relevant. If people don’t think your content will help them, or that it’s not interesting to them, they won’t read it. On the other hand, if you can help someone solve a problem, that’s relevant. If you have a unique perspective on something that matters to a lot of people, that’s relevant.
Now, a few best practices for creating LinkedIn posts that get attention:
Get comments. Comments are the lifeblood of posts. When someone comments on a post on LinkedIn, it sends a signal to LinkedIn that people are interested in your post. That makes LinkedIn want to show your post to more people, which can lead to more comments, etc. One way to get more comments on your posts is to respond quickly to people who comment on your posts and get them engaged in conversations back and forth.
Ask questions. Asking a question is a great way to get comments on a post. Make sure the question really invites people to respond. Don’t ask a question that is too easy nor too hard. Ask questions that people feel they simply must respond to. Ask a question at the beginning of your post (otherwise people may not know you’re asking a question in your post) and again at the end (to remind them you really want their answers).
Be contrarian. Be bold, make a statement, and say something others may disagree with, but don’t be needlessly offensive. “Only men should be CEOs” would be contrarian, but offensive and stupid. “I don’t hire anyone with an MBA” is also contrarian, but interesting. Everyone will want to know your reasons, and you’re going to get strong opinions on both sides which means lots of comments. However, remember that it’s important to be relevant, and that goes for yourself as well as your audience. There are lots of contrarian things you could say to get lots of attention, but if it’s not building your personal brand in the way you want, it’s not relevant to you, and there’s no point.
How often should you post each week? At least once, but for most people 2-3 times is realistic and enough. If you can post every day, and keep up with the comments, more power to you–the more you post, the faster you can build your personal brand.
There are many other things you can do to build a powerful personal brand on LinkedIn (that’s why I wrote a whole book about it) but if you did nothing but follow the tips above, you’d be well on your way.
I Don’t Have Time For All This
That’s how I feel sometimes!
Good news then, we have a done-for-you LinkedIn service for busy executives and time-strapped entrepreneurs who know they need to do all the above but simply don’t have the time.
