Mastering personal branding on LinkedIn was my goal, but the starting point was unclear.
Over recent years, LinkedIn has shifted from a mere job seekers’ haven to a hotspot for entrepreneurs and creative minds aiming to achieve industry authority and boost sales.
Undoubtedly, the results can be potent. LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than either Facebook or Twitter. Plus, 82% of consumers are more likely to trust a firm with engaged leadership on LinkedIn — 77% are more likely to buy too.
Why then, you ask, would a salaried copywriter without a personal product to sell care about personal branding? I have my reasons. First, it’s been a remarkable source of new learning for me since I moved from journalism to marketing in 2021. Additionally, I’m highly ambitious. Being recognized as an industry thought leader and using my LinkedIn content as a living portfolio to bolster my long-term career prospects resonate strongly with me.
However, having realized this value, breaking through the platform’s noise is becoming increasingly challenging. So, I sought help from some of my favorite LinkedIn creators for their top personal branding tips.
Enter the LinkedIn Personal Branding Gurus
- Latesha Byrd, Founder of Career Chasers & LinkedIn Top Voice, 17,602 followers
- Annie-Mai Hodge, Director at Girl Power Marketing, 47,653 followers
- Lorraine K. Lee, Founder of RISE Learning Solutions & LinkedIn Top Voice, 305,687 followers
- Lindsey Gamble, Associate Director of Influencer Innovation at Mavrck, 6,358 followers
- Evan Patterson, Founder & CEO of Evan Patterson Consulting, 23,616 followers
- Erica Schneider, Co-Founder and Instructor at Power Your Platform, 25,794 followers
1. Grasp your audience and their concerns — Latesha & Annie-Mai
Latesha Byrd and Annie-Mai Hodge shared similar words of wisdom: understand who your audience is and what their challenges are.
Latesha explained, “Understanding your audience’s pain points allows you to begin drafting content topics, connect with people who can benefit from your content, and cultivate an authentic following.”
Annie-Mai’s guidance aligned perfectly. “Consider the problem you’re solving,” she counseled me. “My personal branding flourished when I realized I was filling a gap: the need for business owners and social media managers to access social media updates in one common location.”
My Practical Approach
Identifying the right content for a particular audience proved more challenging than simply generating enough content. Getting to know my audience prompted me to shift from sharing a hodgepodge of links to developing valuable insights and actionable strategies that will draw my audience into a dialogue with me.
Using Tami Oladipo’s personal brand framework, I found my niche: ambitious content writers and marketers keen to advance their careers. Unsurprisingly, they face their own hurdles, battling large workloads, generalist roles, and the uncertainty of how to attract the attention of leading companies. By putting this knowledge to use, I began planning my posts with greater precision.
2. Perfect your profile — Lorraine
Lorraine K. Lee vouched for the importance of a “complete” LinkedIn profile which incorporates a keyword-rich headline, a background photo reflecting your expertise, and a turned-on Creator Mode, which exposes your areas of expertise.
My Practical Approach
By activating Creator Mode, easily manipulating my headline to reflect additional skills, and adding a personalized call-to-action on my background photo, optimizing my profile was rather straightforward. As an added advantage, I directed visitors to my Start Page that chronicles my professional journey along with other links of interest, through a custom button.
3. Maintain a steady posting routine — Lindsey
Lindsey Gamble emphasized the power of consistency. Posting frequently around your area of expertise is paramount to cultivating a strong personal brand, according to him.
My Practical Approach
In shifting from sporadic to steadfast posting, defining an audience and their pain points turned out to be invaluable. To make this approach more manageable, I adopted a goal of three posts per week, creating a concrete posting plan and categorizing it into to-do, in-progress, and complete stages.
4. Allocate time to plan, post, and engage — Evan
Evan Patterson suggested time blocking as a means to build new habits, maintain consistency, and manage a busy schedule. He urged the stockpiling of ideas and consistent interaction with other users’ content.
My Practical Approach
Despite a demanding schedule, I found value in reintroducing time blocking to avoid task-switching. Daily time blocks were divided into idea brainstorming, content creation and scheduling, and audience engagement. Incorporating a tool like Buffer proved handy in creating a batch of posts and scheduling them at convenient times.
5. Master LinkedIn writing — Erica
Erica Schneider offered an easy-to-follow framework that embraces a unique LinkedIn writing style to boost audience engagement.
This comprises catching the reader’s attention early, adhering to the four principles of great hook writing, ensuring the body of the post delivers on the hook’s promise, focusing on format, experimenting with post styles, and imbuing your peculiar personality into your posts.
My Practical Approach
Listing ‘Poke the pain’ as one of Erica’s writing tips, I used her guide to reshape a post that quickly racked up more than 11,000 impressions. I also found that not every post would fit this mold, such as a video that attracted about 5,000 impressions and 1,200 views, signaling the importance of varying content formats.
The One-Month Aftermath
A month into implementing these tips, my LinkedIn following grew by 20 percent, and my content performance soared by more than 70 percent.
Engagement with other users significantly amplified follower growth and generated new content ideas. Experimenting with different post types proved worthy while batch post creation and scheduling were real game-changers. Ultimately, I will strive to maintain these tactics, which combined so well, to gain further traction on the platform.
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