Tips for Building a LinkedIn Personal Brand

Building a personal brand on Linkedin is nothing new. The social platform has more than 810 million members around the globe making it an obvious choice for professionals. 

The opportunities really are endless.

Want to connect with prospects? You can do that on LinkedIn. 

Want to keep a finger on the pulse of your industry? LinkedIn can help there, too. 

Looking to build a personal brand and use social selling strategy? You guessed it, LinkedIn can help. 

LinkedIn is particularly effective for B2B SaaS companies, considering it drives 46 percent of social traffic to company websites. 

Yet, most people aren't active on LinkedIn. 

Only around 2 million posts, articles, and videos are posted per day—which means less than .24 percent of LinkedIn users post on a daily basis. (Possibly less, considering the folks I see posting 3-4 times a day. 👀)

The rest of the professionals? (Including you, maybe.) They're reading and maybe interacting with other people's content—rather than building their own personal brand on LinkedIn. 

Why are so many of us hesitant to leverage the power of LinkedIn? It's often due to thoughts like these: 

• "Ugh, another platform." 

• "LinkedIn is worse than Facebook, I just want to focus on my work."

• "I have no idea what to post."

• "I don't have anything useful to add to the conversation." 

I get it. I'd much rather put my head down and work than share memes on LinkedIn. But, I've also seen the power of social selling—in fact, I've used it to drive real results for Leadfeeder. When you do it right, building a personal brand on LinkedIn is a great way to highlight your company's benefits, kickstart social selling, and generate co-marketing opportunities. 

Over the years, I've built a simple strategy for building a personal brand on LinkedIn—and it might be easier than you think! Keep reading for all of my LinkedIn personal branding tips. 

Note: Leadfeeder is a website tracking tool that identifies B2B site visitors. Oh, and we integrate with LinkedIn to help you retarget hot leads. Try us free for 14 days. 

How to build your personal brand on LinkedIn 

Below are my expert LinkedIn personal branding tips (if I do say so myself). 😏

You wouldn't create a marketing campaign without defining your goals, right? The same approach applies to building a personal brand on LinkedIn.

Ask yourself this question: "What do I want to be known for?" 

Do you want to be known as the person who helps B2B companies make prospecting easy, the ABM expert, or the person who knows everything about SEO? Are you the person who posts Christmas carols about sales? 

If you're struggling, use this framework: I help [WHO] to do [WHAT], which [OUTCOME.]

Remember, your core goal is to be useful, so focus on the value you provide, not just what you want to get out of posting. Let’s go through some LinkedIn personal branding examples.

Share the good and the bad 

Social media has become a place to share the perfect moments—working from a balcony in Mexico City, that huge deal you just closed, or bragging about another round of funding. 

People want to share good news—and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The issue is, most social media users only share the good stuff. The positive results, the stuff that makes them look smart. 

Building an effective LinkedIn personal brand means being authentic—and that means sharing your challenges and successes. Here's an authentic LinkedIn personal branding example: 

Does this paint her in a great light? Not really. (Though she does share a great lesson at the end.) 

However, when I saw this post it had over 31,000 reactions, 770 comments, and more than 1,000 shares—it clearly struck a nerve. 

Sharing mistakes helps people relate to you and can drive a ton more engagement than just bragging. 

Not sure what type of content to share? 

Think about the challenges and pain points of your prospects. How have you overcome the same challenges? What lessons have you learned in building your business, interacting with your customers, or creating your career? 

LinkedIn personal branding tip: Speak with your customer support team; they have a deep understanding of the challenges your audience faces. 

Use storytelling to be more relatable 

Storytelling isn't a new strategy—but it is one I don't see leveraged as often on LinkedIn. Stories help highlight your personality and build a real connection with your audience.  

Start by documenting what you’re working on and your process for tackling certain scenarios and challenges.

Did you launch a paid campaign that saw fantastic results? What strategies did you try? What didn't work and why did you test different methods? Share the path, not just the final results. 

You can also share your background and how it's helped you succeed. Did your bartending job in college prepare you for sales? What lessons did you learn coding your first website? 

Don't be self-congratulatory; just be honest.  

Use a LinkedIn content calendar 

I love using a content calendar for brand building on LinkedIn. Some people think it's restrictive, but it actually gives me more freedom to focus on other tasks, because I'm not spending hours trying to figure out what to post. 

Your LinkedIn calendar can be as detailed or basic as you want. For example, you might use a content calendar like this one from LinkedIn: 

It's pretty detailed, with specific themes for each day. But you don't necessarily need to get that granular or post that often. For example, your LinkedIn personal branding content calendar might look like this: 

• Monday: Meme related to industry 

• Wednesday: Case study/report I find interesting w/ opinion

• Friday: Lessons I've learned 

It's simple, but will give you a bit of guidance. 

You can also batch your tasks and create and schedule all your posts at the beginning of the month. 

No matter which path you take, make a plan so you don't get overwhelmed or put it on the back burner. 

Want results on LinkedIn? Be consistent. 

Ok, one last Linkedin personal branding tip:

When it comes to building a personal brand on LinkedIn, there’s no such thing as overnight success. Posting once a week for a month isn't going to drive massive traffic and explode your profile views. 

To build a successful personal brand, you need to show up every day. 

Block off a 30-minute slot every day and dedicate it to LinkedIn. Spend 15 minutes working on new content, 10 minutes engaging and interacting with content on your news feed, and five minutes to connect with at least one new person. 

Over time, that effort will snowball, and you'll start to see real results. 

Building a LinkedIn personal brand in B2B SaaS is about being social 

Building a successful personal brand on LinkedIn isn't just about what you share—it's about who you know. 

Spend time connecting, interacting, and engaging with people whose target audience is the same as yours. Join groups related to your industry or your target audience and interact with business leaders and influencers. 

Basically, be social! A successful personal brand isn't only about talking about yourself and your business—it's about getting to know people so you (and your brand!) come to mind when they have a problem. 

If you’d like to see some LinkedIn personal branding examples in the wild, follow me!

Note: Leadfeeder helps B2B SaaS businesses use website data to drive more pipeline. Want to see who is visiting your site? Try us free for two week.