How to Build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn

It's Will McTighe here. I grew from 4,000 followers to >170,000 followers on LinkedIn between March and September 2024. Here is my take on how to build your Personal Brand.

Here’s how I achieved this growth and how you can build your own personal brand on LinkedIn.

What is a Personal Brand?

Building a personal brand means creating a connection between who you are, your expertise (e.g. what you talk about), and the other topics you are associated with.

You achieve this by providing value to content consumers for free in the form of valuable insights or entertaining content. In return you get their attention and goodwill. Over time, this can turn into sales, job opportunities, and strong relationships. You don’t need to be famous or wealthy—just consistently share valuable content.

What are the Benefits of Building a Personal Brand?

Building your personal brand creates leverage and opportunity. It takes all your career experience and amplifies them.

Some benefits are:

More Credibility: if you post thoughtful content.
Career Opportunities: Open doors for new roles, even inbound offers.
Increased Visibility: Stay top-of-mind for purchasing decisions.
Sales Distribution: Sell to your audience.
Better Networking: Connect with like-minded people.
Distinctive Edge: Stand out from the competition.

I believe there’s a unique attention arbitrage opportunity on LinkedIn right now because there aren’t as many creators compared to consumers. LinkedIn is the only purely business-focused social network, which means its users have high purchasing power. This sets the stage for significant monetization opportunities in the future.

How do you Build a LinkedIn Personal Brand?

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

Define Your Niche
Content Strategy
Build Your Community

1. Define Your Niche

To build an audience you must entertain, inspire or educate people. As LinkedIn is a professional network, educating 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 up to 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 experience.

2. Content Strategy

Find Proven Ideas: Write your spin on proven topics in your niche. Use tools like Saywhat, Kleo and Favikon to find successful themes on Linkedin, Instagram etc.

Write Simply: >70% 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 should include a visual. Visuals act as free advertising because they’re always visible, while only the first three lines of your text are initially shown.

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

High Quality Carousels
Infographics
Simple Carousels
Image
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:

“Hey [x], thanks for supporting my content. It means a lot to me. Let me know if there is anything I can help with. What other topics would you like to hear about?”

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