What Is Personal Branding On LinkedIn?

Building your personal brand on LinkedIn starts with storytelling.

I know what you might be thinking:

Why would anyone pay attention to what I have to say?

The answer is simple – you never know how relatable your experiences are when you keep them to yourself.

See also:

• 3 Steps To Build A LinkedIn Personal Brand
• Who Is a LinkedIn Personal Brand For?
• Why Building a LinkedIn Personal Brand Is Important
• Best LinkedIn Post Formula To Use
• What Not To Do On LinkedIn
• The Key To Building A Personal Brand? Storytelling.

Last week I shared how I built my personal brand on LinkedIn in 3 steps. Check it out for all the full details and examples but the TL;DR version to building a personal brand on LinkedIn is:

• Engagement
• Posting Content
• Connecting

Sara Blakely keeps it real in this throwback post documenting the wild success that SPANX experienced over the course of 20 years. What started as an idea on a cardboard sign turned into an iconic brand and household name to every American woman. But what if Sara hadn’t taken the time to document her process and engage with LinkedIn to tell the story as her own personal brand?

What does “personal brand” mean?

The phrase “personal brand” might seem new and strange if you haven’t spent time on the social media platform of choice for professionals – LinkedIn. But once you surround yourself with others who speak the same language, it all starts to make more sense.

On LinkedIn, your personal brand is who you are and what you represent. It’s the authentic stories you tell the world about the work you do and your experiences in life. This is your opportunity to show up in a way that supports investing more of yourself where it matters most to you.

Want to land a job in a specific industry but don’t already have experience there?
There’s no reason you can’t show off what you ARE capable of. Build a personal brand around telling stories that show your interest and expertise in that field with tangible examples from your personal life or past work experience.

Know you’re just perfect for a role with your dream employer but don’t know how to get their attention?
Don’t just DM the CEO, VP of HR and Director of Marketing with the same copy and paste message. Focus on engaging and connecting with others who already work there by tactfully inserting yourself into the conversations they’re participating in on LinkedIn.

How to engage on LinkedIn

In order to get the attention of the right people, here are some quick steps to jump into conversations that matter. Keep in mind that any engagement (comments, questions or answers) should be relevant and timely and it should always be with the intention of helping others or furthering a conversation. Don’t just comment for the sake of visibility. Keep it authentic.

LinkedIn Activity

Click on a user’s profile and scroll down to their Activity section. Scroll to the bottom of this section and click Show all activity to see everything they have posted or engaged with.

Clicking on All activity will show you posts the user has engaged with. This is a good place to dive into conversations they have participated in. It’s an opportunity to ask a question or answer another user’s question. It’s possible the user you’re interested in connecting with might see your engagement.

Clicking on Posts will show you all of the posts from the user. Engaging with their posts is almost always a sure fire way to get someone’s attention. Push yourself to do more than just like a post though. Engage in actual conversation. Share a compliment, lesson learned and tips or tricks to really stand out.

Companies can get in on the personal brand action too

The truth is that people do business with people, not companies. With that in mind, companies can be doing more to ensure their clients or customers are interacting with people rather than faceless brands.

There’s a dirty little secret about business accounts on social media. For the most part, it’s pay to play. The algorithm on everything from Facebook to LinkedIn is inclined to ignore the content shared by business accounts because they can buy advertising instead. Why would these social media platforms give away the goods for free when they can capitalize on monetizing their format?

That’s where companies and businesses can leverage the voice of their team. An individual building their personal brand on LinkedIn shouldn’t be seen as a sign of career discontent. No, instead, more companies need to see it as an added asset of their business to have happy employees evangelizing their professional experience.

This is something we will certainly see more companies leaning into as business accounts continue to see less traffic. Thought leadership content will always do well on LinkedIn. Encourage and even incentivize your team to build their own individual personal brand on LinkedIn. Provide training or mentorship resources for the entire team to get everyone onboard and create a custom hashtag for employees to use online.

Ready to build your personal brand?

The good news is that if you’re feeling a little shy about storytelling or if you’re just too busy to take on one more to-do, I can help. Check out the Work With Me page to set up a chat so we can strategize together. Two brains are better than one.