📈 Level Up Your Personal Brand

Hey friend! Welcome to Level Up 📈.

Every Sunday, I dive into one topic to level up your career.

Today at a Glance:

• Deep Dive: How to Build a LinkedIn Personal Brand

• Real-Life Example: My Journey from 4k to 100k in 4 months

• Challenge: Your First LinkedIn Post

Read time: 5 minutes

Learn How to Create Viral Visuals

• These 8 visuals garnered 9.1m impressions, 52k likes, 1.4k comments, and 6.8k reposts, making it one of my most viral LinkedIn posts ever.

• The key is creating emotionally impactful content that stands out visually.

• Differentiate yourself by illustrating your expertise and industry insights uniquely.

• Learn how you can grow your audience with impactful visuals in Junhan's visual storytelling webinar on 6 July.

Deep Dive

Sections:

1. Why build a Personal Brand?

2. What is a Personal Brand?

3. How do you build a LinkedIn Personal Brand?

Why Build a Personal Brand?

It is the highest leverage thing you can do in your career. It takes all your career experience and amplifies them.

Some benefits are:

1. More Credibility (if you post thoughtful content).

2. Career Opportunities: Open doors for new roles, even inbound offers.

3. Increased Visibility: Stay top-of-mind for purchasing decisions.

4. Sales Distribution: Sell to your audience.

5. Better Networking: Connect with like-minded people.

6. Distinctive Edge: Stand out from the competition.

I suggest building your brand on LinkedIn because there is an attention arbitrage opportunity (i.e., not that many creators vs. consumers), and it is the only purely business-related social network, so it will likely have large monetization opportunities in the future.

What is a Personal Brand?

Building a personal brand involves creating an association between you, the topics you discuss and the energy you give off. 

You do this by giving valuable insights or entertainment for free to gain attention and goodwill, which can later be converted into sales, job opportunities, and relationships. You don’t need to be famous or wealthy—just share valuable content.

How do you Build a LinkedIn Personal Brand?

There are 3 parts to building a personal brand on LinkedIn:

1. Define Your Niche

2. Content Strategy

3. Build Your Community

1/ Define Your Niche

To build an audience you must entertain, inspire or educate others.

As LinkedIn is a professional network, educating people is my preferred strategy.

Share your expertise (e.g. from your industry) or lessons learned from others (e.g. Oprah Winfrey’s lessons on communication).

Choose 2-3 topics (content pillars) relevant to your experience / passions.

I suggest keeping it relevant to your work history. LinkedIn promotes content aligned with your professional background. 

2/ Content Strategy

Find Ideas: Write your spin on pre-validated viral topics in your niche. Use tools like Kleo and Favikon to find successful themes on Linkedin, Instagram etc.

Write Simply: 88% of LinkedIn users are on mobile. Use simple language, one point per sentence, and white space. Simplify with Hemingway Editor.

Post Frequently: Aim for >3x/week. Friday is usually the worst day.

Use Visuals: Every post needs a visual. It is free advertising space because they are visible to everyone, while your text is not.

The best visuals for follower growth (in order May 2024):

1. Infographics

2. Carousels

3. Image

4. Image + Text

5. Video

 Videos are rising with LinkedIn’s new short-form video feed.

3/ Build Your Community

Respond to your comments: Respond to everyone. Ask them questions, start conversations.

Build creator relationships:

• Build authentic relationships with other creators.

• Find 3 creators in your niche each day and comment on their posts. Find them in the comments of large creators in your niche or on Favikon.

• Send them voice notes as connection requests (more personal). Chat to them in DMs and start supporting each other consistently if you vibe.

• This takes a lot of time but every successful creator who has built a LinkedIn brand recently has done this.

Nurture your reposters:

When someone reposts your content, send them a connection request with a message like:

That is enough to get you started - good luck! Amazing things await you on the other side!

Real Life Example

I started posting on LinkedIn in February 2024 and my initial posts went nowhere. I got 3 likes on some posts. I was ridiculed. I even had someone say to my friend “Do we need to do an intervention on Will?”

The reality is that you will always be ridiculed when you do something that stands out.

I learned from my mistakes and got coaching from some of the best. Now, I’ve built a following of more than 95k followers and will earn >$10k from my personal brand this month. 

It feels scary but I promise you, consistency pays off.

Challenge: Your LinkedIn Post

Good luck leveling up this week.

Talk soon,

Will McTighe

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