I Build a 15k Personal Brand on LinkedIn: Here is How
For a while, I wanted to talk about growing my profile on LinkedIn.
An honest, bare truth moment.
These are the good, the bad, and the tactics you can use to do it too.
The secret?
Consistently giving value,
engaging, and
connecting with people … emotionally, in posts/comments, and DMs
It took me ~3 years to reach this stage, it could have been ~2 years if, one times, I did not stop posting for 1-3 months at a time. Burnout is real, especially if you also want to deliver on your day-job!
P.S.: I talk about burnout & mental health in my post here and taking care of mental health here.
Positioning
Choose well your positioning. It’s very hard to re-positiong yourself later.
Be sure to be very clear:
Who is your ICP - ideal reader/client
What you write about - where you are the expert
Niche down - specialize in something, and keep repeating it
The simplest, hard advice I have seen incredible results from is consistency in posting & positioning.
My original goal is to learn, and I tend to write for topics I am:
Passionate about
Want to learn more (writing helps me research)
Handling at work or through personal projects
Re-positioning is hard
I am trying to escape my positioning in SEO, and my reach has gown down, HARD.
Decide your niche as it’s pretty hard to “grow out” or “reposition”.
Your followers that know you e.g. for SEO will not care that much about Growth Marketing topics.
SSI Score
If you like gamification, your Social Selling Index helps you understand where LinkedIn sees value in you and how.
Since my repositioning I fell from score 72 to 64.
Still, I don’t think it’s an important metric to obsess, it’s a cool tool to check once every few months.
Profile Optimization
There are so many thing to consider:
Job title
Profile image
Cover image
Experience
Description
Optimizing your profile to show up on potential readers, clients, or recruiters is important.
If you don’t know how, I wholeheartedly recommend Vasileios Mylonas 🤘 to help figure it out.
Content Posts & Topics
There is so much advice on posting, it’s confusing.
My top advice is be consistent and show up often. Yeah, clear and actionable you say…
It’s not a one-size fits everyone, unfortunately.
Frequency
I try to post, almost, daily. That’s 5-7 times a week. You don’t need to do it.
I write my unfiltered thoughts, being vulgar, do grammar mistakes. That’s my style of writing, and that’s how I come out as authentic… and, I complain a lot!
Some of the top influencers I know produce TOP quality material - studies, carousels, data posts, in-depth articles.
If you post 3-4 times a week a TOP quality post, that could be enough. A carousel takes hours to do well, you can post 1-2 per week at best.
Co-promotions / collaborations
Collaborating with people around the same level as you is great. You share your audience, engage with each other.
I have made great friends by talking to others on LinkedIn!
Do some cross-posting like:
Tagging others
Co-carousels
Common lives
Collaborative posts / graphics
Brand, Templates & Canva
A couple of cheap tools, free or paid have saved my life. I uploaded my brand colours on Canva and did some easy templates to re-use.
My brother (who is a designer) helped me decide some colours and recently did another round of rebrand. Now, everything is there and I can quickly prepare graphics on-brand.
Find your style, and be consistent. I pay $12/m on Canva, and that reduced my work for decent visuals (I am not great at design).
Be Original & Useful
Originality, opinion, and expertise are more important than regurgitating what others say.
The times I heard an executive or CEO mention my lowest performing post at an event I met them physically is extraordinary.
Do not get discouraged.
Write great content with true, good, actionable insights.
It’s a professional community.
They want professional post with an emotional appeal (still, it’s also a social network).
I am happy when I have ~30% of my posts being read by Directors, Owners, and CXOs, that’s my target group. And, I don’t care if a post underperformed.
10 CMOs reading my posts is more important than 1000 junior marketers, even though I care about educating new marketers (a lot), but the value is in the potential network.
Newsletter — Powerful tool
I write newsletters, like here.
They send notifications and have better readership, I can add images, links, embeds, and can be long-reads.
They are also great for parasite SEO 😉
Growing Your Audience & Reach
So, how do you actually grow?
You won’t see me boasting 1M impressions, but I get my days with 5-10k impression posts here and now.
One of my posts reached >100k impressions because an influencer in the industry commented and everyone got into the train! (and all it took was a small mistake in writing)
Regular Invitations
My “secret” is connecting with my ICP.
I have a small list of people & locations I am targeting, and spend 5 - 10 minutes every morning inviting people. Those are targeted, industry people who fall into two categories:
ICP, or
Cheerleaders
P.S.: I wrote more about it here. This is a more personal post.
About half my followers are organic follows and the other half are invitations. Each one boosts the other.
Tactics:
From comments to other influencers (find engaged users)
ICP hunting through search
Daily 20 invitations at least (start slow)
I am not happy if I don’t see this at the end of the week. But, after 14k people, I slowed down as it’s not needed as much.
Engaging in Comments
Engaging is important, commenting to others, liking, answer your commenters, helps build your engagement.
Writing insightful comments
Funny comments
Emotional comments
Not regurgitating information or trying to self-promote is important.
My recent comment on Chris Cunningham’s post is getting crazy attention with 17k impressions.
The Good, The Bad, and A Conclusion
I have almost reached my word-limit.
Before we end up with some positive and negatives, be sure to comment if you are interested in learning more on how to grow a personal brand on LinkedIn!
Comment, like, and share this post, and I will write again :)
The Good
Making real connections - for work, sales, or being better at what you do
People reaching out with great comments - after years of writing, I occasionally get someone sending me a message that they enjoyed what I wrote, this helps me move forward, as I don’t really monetize my content :) (some occassional sponsorships)
The Negatives
It’s exhausting being there, engaging, and writing every day
You can’t take a break without getting hit by the algorithm
Algo updates since late 2024 have reduced reach for everyone
What about you?
Are you building a brand on LinkedIn, Substack, or someplace else?
Let me know in the comments!