Tips to Create Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

I’ve recently gotten several enquiries about how to build one’s ‘personal brand’ on LinkedIn. If you are someone who knows what a personal brand is and why it’s worth your time to build one, here are some of my tips on how you can build yours:

1. Why: Try to figure out your ‘why’. Why do you want to build a personal brand? Is it to educate younger professionals? Is it to decode the latest developments in your industry? Is it to jump on a bandwagon because it’s cool? (Please don’t be that person!). Having a strong ‘why’ keep you motivated, gives you direction and helps flesh out your personal brand.

2. Who: Know who your target audience is. Is it young professionals? Fellow colleagues? Potential clients? It is essential you know who they are and what their problems are, so you can find a way to solve them with your content. Based on this information, figure out who you are and develop your persona. For example, are you the “Teacher”, “Decoder” or maybe even a healthy mix of both?

3. What: Your content should be a healthy mix of regular topics you want to write about and trending topics. Have a set of regular topics you talk about regardless of what’s trending. Don’t be a trend monkey. Also when you do jump on trends, have a unique take on the trend instead of just copying everyone else!

4. When: Come up with a schedule you are comfortable with and stick to it! Can you post once a day? Twice a week? Whatever your consistency is, make sure you can stick to it. It helps to be more consistent in the first few months till you gain traction and reducing it to a more relaxed schedule later on.

4. How:

- Take the time to study the greats. Do you admire someone’s personal brand? Study to see what they got right and what they didn’t and how YOU can fill that gap.

- Make sure your content is authentic. You will be surprised as to how easy it is to sense the overly enthusiastic MBA graduate who uses big words to impress.

- Strive to make you content entertaining. Can you impart your knowledge via good storytelling? Can you experiment with new storytelling formats? There is a reason we all remember the knowledge imparted by that history teacher who had impeccable storytelling skill or that chemistry teacher taught us complex equations by showing us interesting chemical reactions in lab.

- Always end your post with a call to action, (CTA), this is what will build engagement.

- Use relevant hashtags because that is just a basic hygiene practice for all creators!

- Analyse your metrics to see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t get attached and stuck to your older methods. Be willing to change!

My most important tip is to not take yourself too seriously and have fun through the process! It truly is a delight to read a post written by someone who enjoys the process of communicating with their audience as opposed to someone who treats regular posting as a painful chore.

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