This key business driver is already influencing your success, whether you know it or not.
What if the key to growing your business wasn’t about getting more customers, but about building deeper connections with fewer of them? Creating a personal brand can sometimes feel like showing up to a party in a costume when everyone else is in business casual. But once you realize others admire your uniqueness, you start to embrace it.
No matter where you are in your journey, intentional personal branding completely shifts the way you’re seen and sets you apart, and my friend AJ Vaden happens to be an expert on it. As co-founder of consultancy Brand Builders Group, a recent Inc. 5000 honouree, she and I discuss why building your personal brand isn’t optional–it’s essential. Here’s why it matters and how you can get started.
Start with who, not why
You’ve probably heard Simon Sinek’s famous advice to start with why. But Vaden suggests flipping the script–she says start with who. Who exactly are the people you are serving?
“It’s not about trying to appeal to the masses. It’s about finding your smallest viable audience,” Vaden says.
Your personal brand isn’t just about you–it’s also about those you’re serving and how well you understand them. The companies that are killing it right now aren’t trying to be everything to everyone. They’re laser-focused on serving a specific, highly engaged audience.
For example, the dating app Bumble gained early success by designing the platform primarily for women who prioritize safety and empowerment. They differentiated themselves by allowing only women to initiate conversations with matched male users.
Similarly, Marie Kondo built her personal brand around “KonMari,” a philosophy that emphasizes not just physical organization, but emotional well-being through tidiness. She serves individuals who feel overwhelmed by clutter in their homes and lives.
Branding success begins by creating value for the right people, not by having the most followers.
Personal branding isn’t a nice-to-have anymore–it’s the future of marketing
The days when branding was all about logos and catchy slogans are over. In the digital world, personal branding is how people connect, trust, and do business. A national study from Brand Builders Group found that 74 percent of Americans are more likely to trust someone with an established personal brand, and that number shoots up to 85 percent for Millennials.
“Personal branding is a trust accelerator,” says Vaden. For Millennials and Gen-Z, personal branding isn’t about vanity–it’s how they decide whom to buy from, hire, and follow.
I find myself nodding along vigorously. In my keynotes with leaders and sales teams, I often discuss the idea that we’re living in a modern trust crisis. Customers are increasingly sceptical of corporate promises and more likely to trust people over businesses, which makes personal brands even more powerful. Vaden’s research shows that 82 percent of Americans believe companies are more influential when their leaders have personal brands they follow and trust.
Your brand is already being built–so take control of it
Here’s the kicker: Whether you’re working on your personal brand or not, it’s already being built. You already have a personal brand. It’s just a matter of whether you’re building it intentionally or letting the internet do it for you.
Your personal brand is more than what you post online. It’s how people perceive you, from your social media presence to the things people say about you. If you’re not actively shaping that narrative, someone else might.
You don’t need to be famous or omnipresent–just known and trusted by the folks who matter most to your business.
Personal branding makes you money
According to Brand Builders Group research, 67 percent of Americans are willing to spend more money on products or services from companies whose founders have a personal brand that aligns with their values. That’s a pretty clear link between a strong personal brand and business success.
As Vaden points out, personal branding isn’t about looking cool online–it’s about building trust and relationships that turn into dollars and cents.
Overcoming the awkwardness of personal branding
Let’s name the remaining elephant in the room: Building a personal brand can feel awkward as heck. Putting yourself out there and showcasing your expertise might feel self-serving, but it’s essential for standing out in today’s competitive market. The good news? You don’t need to showboat, and you definitely don’t have to be perfect. You just need to be authentic.
One of the best strategies to embrace this awkwardness is to focus on providing value. Instead of thinking about how to look good or be impressive, shift your mindset to how you can help others. What problems can you solve for your audience? How can you make their lives easier? When you focus on being helpful, you naturally build trust and credibility, which ultimately makes the branding process feel less about selling yourself and more about serving your audience.
Ultimately, your personal brand is something that will morph with you over time. It isn’t just a reflection of who you are today–it’s the key to unlocking everything you can become tomorrow.
It’s time to reframe the conversation around personal branding. Here are four of the top myths about personal branding, debunked.
Does the phrase personal branding fill you with dread? If so, you’re in good company.
I’ve been helping corporate leaders define their personal brands for years, and I have seen how often just the idea itself can elicit strong and negative reactions. Despite its long history and roots with management maven Tom Peters, or even when a compelling case for personal branding is made, many executives still view the concept with derision, discomfort, and doubt.
It’s not hard to see why. Culturally, we have a long legacy of discouraging individuality in the workplace. Our corporate norms dictate that we should blend in and keep our heads down, that humility at work is a virtue, and that our identities belong to our jobs and employers.
For working professionals who grew up in this paradigm, defining who we are and describing our value out loud can trigger cognitive dissonance. It feels selfish and egotistical to talk about ourselves like it’s something for the Tik Tok generation—not serious executives.
“I definitely came in carrying some ‘ick factor’ with me,” says Anna Silverstein, a senior communications leader from a global consulting firm who came to me for help with her personal brand. “The phrase ‘personal brand’ seems to exemplify everything there is to hate about the post-social media era. It sounds so transactional, commercial, shallow.”
Understandable though it is, this perspective has become outdated and problematic. Discouraging personal identities and suppressing diverse voices in the workplace has contributed to many of the systemic problems we face in corporate culture today, from burnout and depression to homogeneous C-suites and boardrooms across industries.
It’s time to reframe the conversation. To help, here are four of the top myths about personal branding, debunked.
Myth 1: Personal branding is selfish.
No, it’s actually an obligation. Especially as we build our careers and grow as leaders, it is up to all of us to take responsibility for knowing who we are and what matters to us, and finding the words to describe it.
“Now that I’ve done the work, I see it as a process of self-discovery and growth,” says Anna. “A brand is basically a well-designed shortcut for telling people exactly who you are and what you care about.”
If we don’t do this work, we pass the onus (and opportunity) to define what we want or need onto everyone else. That doesn’t help anyone—especially those from historically disenfranchised communities or with marginalized voices that need and deserve to be heard.
Myth 2: People with personal brands are loud and obnoxious.
Wrong. Personal branding is actually an inherently quiet and internally focused exercise. When it’s done well, defining your personal brand means taking the time to explore and define who you are, what you stand for, and what others need to know to support, benefit from, and work well with you. It should feel quiet, thoughtful, and authentic.
Ultimately, how you implement your brand is up to you. Some people choose to build a thought leadership platform or become an influencer, but for most, it is simply about becoming more deliberate interacting with others as you build your career.
Myth 3: Personal branding is fake and disingenuous.
Not when it’s done well. Defining your brand is about looking at who you’ve always been and how it has manifested throughout your entire journey, your experiences, your value, and the unique way you move through the world.
When I work with executives, one of the best tactics to unlock this insight is to look at early interests and aspirations and track how they evolved. One woman, a crisis communications advisor based in Canada, remembered her childhood dream of becoming Leonardo Da Vinci. She recalled how she loved the blend of art and science in Da Vinci’s work.
Though she never made it into a science field, and she ultimately dropped out of art school, what she started to see was how the blend of art and science continues to characterize the way she approaches the world. Her clients value the way these two perspectives come together in her work, and she has discovered a creative and authentic way to describe how she operates and why.
Myth 4: Branding is only for senior leaders and C-suite executives.
Definitely not. Personal branding can benefit everyone at all stages in their career journey by keeping us connected to what really drives us, where we offer the most value, and where we are trying to go. Having this knowledge will make it easier for others to help support you, throughout your career path.
“You need that clarity for any number of things, whether that’s to take the next big leap in your career, to supercharge a learning journey, or to make choices that will give your life more meaning,” says Anna.
Regardless of their role, industry, or experience level, people with a strong personal brand tend to be centered, intentional, and real. More importantly, encouraging their people to spend the time to understand their individual strengths, style, and value can help cultivate authentic leadership and greater space for diverse perspectives and personalities to thrive.
Encouraging and supporting your employees in their personal branding efforts is not just a strategy for individual growth, but it’s also a forward-thinking business approach to elevate your company in a competitive market.
Key Takeaways
A total of 81% of consumers admitted that their trust in a brand significantly influences their purchasing decisions, with 77% preferring to buy from brands they follow on social media.
The reputation and credibility of a company’s CEO and employees sway the buying choices of 65% of consumers.
For a corporate brand to truly resonate and lead to tangible sales results, the personal brands within it need to be strong and clearly defined.
The intersection of personal branding and corporate success is increasingly apparent as we experience a revival of person-to-person connection. Traditionally, individual and corporate branding have been seen as separate entities, each with its strategies and goals, and at times, they may even appear to be in direct conflict. However, a significant shift is underway due to the growing demand for personalization.
Companies are finding that leveraging the individual brand strengths of their employees can achieve greater reach and awareness. A staggering 81% of consumers admit that their trust in a brand significantly influences their purchasing decisions, with 77% preferring to buy from brands they follow on social media.
The impact remains robust across both B2B and B2C sectors. Interestingly, the reputation and credibility of a company’s CEO and employees sway the buying choices of 65% of consumers. These statistics underscore a crucial point: Brand credibility plays a significant role in sales efforts. For a corporate brand to truly resonate and lead to tangible sales results, the personal brands within it need to be strong and clearly defined.
Having been immersed in communications since the late 1900s (and yes, I find it amusing to say that), I’ve witnessed many branding evolutions — from the advent of email to the rise of social media and, now, artificial intelligence. However, in my view, no technological advancement can ever replace meaningful human interaction; it only redefines what sales groups consider meaningful. You can use AI to generate leads, but if they aren’t the right fit or meaningful to your business, do they truly count? The key lies in a strong corporate brand that invites individuals to join in its journey.
There is a synergy between personal and corporate branding
The above concept isn’t new. We’ve all seen or worked with a “unicorn” employee at some point. What makes them a unicorn? Their individual brand. When employees establish strong personal brands, they bring authenticity and a human touch to the corporate narrative, making the company more relatable and trustworthy in the eyes of consumers.
This synergy not only enhances the company’s reputation but also drives engagement in the places where employees are active—be it in community events, on social media, or among their friends. Employees with robust personal brands naturally amplify the company’s visibility and influence. They become the ‘unicorns’ who direct qualified leads to your company. A LinkedIn social selling study even measured this phenomenon, finding that 92% of B2B customers are more willing to engage with sales reps who are recognized as industry thought leaders.
Encouraging personal brand development without losing control
Many businesses struggle with the idea of encouraging employees to amp up their personal brand, fearing it will diminish the quality of their messaging or they might lose control of their corporate story. Before I share a few tactical strategies to address this, I want to emphasize that your corporate brand must be solid and credible for this to be effective.
A strong corporate brand provides a stable backdrop against which individual employee brands can shine. It offers a cohesive narrative that aligns with the personal stories your employees are telling. Before you encourage your employees to engage in their own branding exercises, it is crucial to conduct some branding exercises at the corporate level. This ensures that your brand welcomes collaboration and instils a sense of pride in everyone associated with it.
You want all individuals to feel positive about being openly associated with your company. These characteristics are essential for personal branding efforts to be effective. Otherwise, you might end up helping individuals build their personal brands, only for them to take that strength to another company that is already well-positioned.
How to get the strongest individual brands without sacrificing consistency
The most fundamental way to maintain control of your corporate messaging while promoting individual branding efforts is to ensure a strong alignment between the company’s values and the personal values of your employees. Here’s how you can accomplish this without compromising the company’s branding efforts:
Define clear guidelines that outline how employees can align their branding efforts with the company’s values and objectives. This ensures consistency and prevents any potential conflicts or off-brand messaging. This is why it is important for you as a business to have your brand already developed — so you can communicate its characteristics clearly and provide guidance.
Offer training programs that help employees understand the best practices for social media and content creation, including workshops on writing, personal presentation and ethical considerations online. These can be both educational and fun, giving people permission and confidence to share your branding goals.
Encourage employees to become thought leaders in their respective fields. This can be facilitated through full support of speaking engagements, writing opportunities on industry blogs and participation in industry and online panel discussions. Thought leadership both boosts the individual’s brand and positively reflects on the company.
Highlight your employees’ achievements on your corporate channels. This will boost their personal brand and show that the company recognizes and values their contributions. One thing we have is an internal message board where examples of social posts are included with these announcements. We also send AI prompts to create social content when we ask people to share our content.
Regular monitoring and constructive feedback are essential to ensure that employees’ messaging remains aligned with the company’s brand identity. Part of our town hall team meetings focuses on the positive contributions individuals have made toward marketing. The feedback here should be consistent and mostly positive. If there is a need for redirection or negative feedback it should always be done privately and one-on-one.
Integrating personal branding into your business strategy creates a win-win scenario: Employees feel valued and empowered, which enhances their loyalty and productivity. For the company, this alignment between individual and corporate brands leads to increased trust and better relationships.
As the lines between personal and corporate branding continue to blur, companies that recognize and leverage the symbiotic relationship between personal and corporate brands will likely see the most significant growth and success. Indeed, at a minimum, they’ll encourage the curation of better relationships and more defined sales leads.
Christine Wetzler is a PR and marketing strategist who knows how to generate consistent, widespread media coverage as well as offer strategic digital insights to business owners. She knows how to accurately integrate public relations, social media and digital marketing to achieve desired outcomes.
Your impact on the perception of your organization is more significant than ever, and this is where personal branding becomes a key tool to leverage.
As a CEO of your organization, you are likely thinking about investing in your personal brand, but you are likely also hesitant. My personal branding agency works with GenX CEOs from across the globe, and I can assure you that you’re not alone in your hesitation.
As a GenX’er — member of the often called “forgotten generation” — you did not grow up with a cellphone in your hand and did not develop a habit of sharing every single opinion and all your whereabouts online. Many of the leaders we speak with hesitate to put themselves out into the public eye because they have no affinity for the spotlight. Instead, they want to focus internally — on building a world-class organization, scaling teams and inspiring enviable organizational cultures. And of course, many CEOs have internalized the importance of discretion – choosing battles with careful deliberation to avoid any controversy.
The importance of personal branding for modern leaders
And yet, the world we live in has changed. Hiding behind the proverbial curtains of our organizations is no longer an option. Research shows that nearly 50% of Millennials expect CEOs to speak out, and this number is growing year to year. Silent CEOs risk criticism from employees, the media and certainly consumers.
Edelman Trust Barometer study showed that workers expected their employers to take a stance on a variety of societal issues, including vaccine hesitancy (84%), climate change (81%), automation (79%) and racism (79%).
Whether generated internally or externally, the pressure to have a more visible public profile is more prevalent for you than ever. And it certainly comes with a myriad of risks to mitigate. The court of public opinion can be merciless when it comes to hot-topic issues. Just ask the CEO of Anheuser-Busch about it!
And before you use the Brendan Whitworth example as another reason why a low profile is the winning strategy, let me offer a paradigm shift. I posit that the very reason Whitworth and Anheuser-Busch have faced the amount of backlash we all saw is not because of a public stance, but rather because of a knee-jerk decision to capitalize on a trend. The trend of an influencer-du-jour.
You see, in branding — both corporate and personal — it is crucial to first understand what your brand actually is and what it stands for, and then remain “on brand” across all marketing efforts. Anheuser-Busch did not do that. And neither did many of the “cancelled” CEOs you think of when considering your own public presence.
Let’s use their examples as a reminder of the crucial importance of going through the process of brand discovery, creating a personal brand architecture, and then aligning all communication to remain “on brand” at all times.
It all begins with identifying a brand positioning for your personal brand. And, by the way, if the term “personal branding” feels overly narcissistic and unrelatable, simply replace it with “leadership branding.”
Brand positioning
What is it and how do you identify yours? In personal branding, brand positioning is a way to express who you are or what you stand for in a singular word or phrase. In order to define yours, you need to zoom out — away from what you do, away from the vertical you serve, and as close as possible to the essence of your core beliefs.
A personal brand positioning is typically a reflection of a core:
Belief
Value
Trait
If you have discovered your purpose, the WHY in Simon Sinek’s terms, the question to ask is: WHY is that your WHY? Please forgive the tautology, and focus on uncovering what core belief fuels that purpose.
For one of our clients, his brand positioning is expressed as “timeless principles.” This is a reflection of his core values: He is someone who believes in the power of a handshake over a signed agreement and investing in gold over crypto. Another brand positioning we developed for a client was “interiority” — the “inner space” of physical spaces, with feelings over things at the core. Her WHY as an interior design entrepreneur is to give people a sense of a home, and the core belief behind that “why” is that spaces are built out of things, but their key purpose is to create feelings and memories.
My brand positioning is cantered around “radical authenticity.” I believe in taking a stance against censorship in every possible form, including self-censorship and censorship of every opposing opinion (cancel culture is the stuff of nightmares for me).
Here are some exercises to help you uncover yours:
Build out your “lifeline.” Identify the most significant moments of your life, both personal and professional. Look for patterns. What keeps surfacing for you? Engage a qualitative researcher or a personal branding agency if you are stuck.
List out your core values. Is there one that expresses the true essence of who you are?
Do you have a point of view on something that is so unshakeable that you would defend it at any cost?
Now take what you uncovered and hand it to a branding specialist — or put on your own creative hat — to turn it into a concept that you can “own.”
What to do next
This is merely step one. It is likely the hardest piece of the branding puzzle, but it’s the one that allows you to align all of the other pieces of the personal branding architecture. Before you step out into the spotlight, you will need to have clarity on your:
Brand descriptors: How do you want to be perceived?
Brand voice: How do you want to sound, both digitally and offline?
Content pillars: What topics do you want to be associated with, and which ones do you want to stay away from?
CEO story: Gone are the days of the boring bios that nobody wanted to write, let alone read. Research shows that storytelling helps release cortisol, dopamine and oxytocin in the brain — all chemicals that enhance human connection, empathy and an emotional response. Replace your corporate-sounding bio with one rooted in storytelling. You will use its components for your social media profile, speaker page and when you’re introduced at events.
I spend my days speaking about the importance of personal branding with CEOs individually and from global stages. The hesitations are the same regardless of geography and, yet, so is the understanding that personal branding is inevitable for the modern leader. With 82% of people more likely to trust a company when its senior executives are active on social media, and with 77% of consumers more likely to buy when the CEO of the business uses social media, your impact on the perception of your organization is more significant than ever. Will 2024 be the year you build and scale your personal brand?
Co-Founder of Brand of a Leader. Marina Byezhanova is an entrepreneur, global speaker and university instructor. She has spoken to audiences in North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Her mission is to inspire entrepreneurs to stand up, stand out and to be radically authentic through the power of their personal brands.
Some people consistently earn hundreds of likes and comments on each of their posts, and their audiences have helped them achieve financial freedom and security.
However, they all started with no network and zero followers.
So what actions did they take to achieve this success?
In this post, I’ll share 15 outstanding personal branding examples and break down their strategies to build successful personal brands so you can use the same process to achieve similar results.
3 Things All Strong Personal Brands Have In Common
As I analysed these individuals with strong personal brands, I noticed that all their strategies have three key things in common.
While there are many ways to build a personal brand, implementing these three commonalities into your personal branding strategy will significantly increase your likelihood of success.
Consistency
Every person on this list posted content consistently for an extended period of time (i.e., posted content 2-5 times per week for several years).
A consistent publishing schedule is essential to build your personal brand for a few different reasons:
It takes time to find your own brand identity and voice.
It takes time to build trust and a genuine relationship with your target audience.
It takes time to find audience-content fit (i.e., content that your audience likes and that you enjoy creating).
Therefore, even if you don’t think your initial content is very good, publish it to start gathering data and figure out what you enjoy creating and what resonates with your audience. You’ll also get better at creating content by publishing more.
Target A Single Niche
Another commonality I noticed among these individuals with great personal brands is that they all focus on a specific niche.
A key mistake many creators make is discussing too many different topics or expanding into other niches. While it may be boring to talk about one specific niche, the reality is that your audience probably follows you because they enjoy learning about that specific topic you cover.
For example, if you talk about digital marketing, NFTs, and solopreneurship, there’s a good chance that the people interested in digital marketing won’t be interested in your NFT content. As a result, you’ll find it difficult to build a loyal audience that loves all of your content.
Additionally, most people are only experts on one topic, so choose the niche you feel you know best.
However, if you want to post content related to your personal life and growth, this content can make you more relatable and strengthen your relationship with your audience.
As a general rule, make about 80% of your posts related to a specific topic, and then the other 20% of posts can be about your personal life or interests.
Share Real Experiences
Many readers don’t enjoy blog posts written primarily for SEO because these posts often lack personal experience. In fact, many people now turn to ChatGPT for strictly factual information.
Sharing your personal experiences makes your content more relatable as your audience is likely facing challenges you’ve also faced, and they’d love to hear someone else’s perspective on how they approached and solved that problem.
Bonus: Choose A Primary Platform
Most large influencers today began by publishing content on just one platform.
Over time, many of them branched out to different content formats, but at that point, they usually had teams behind them to assist with content repurposing. If you’re beginning your personal branding journey and don’t have a team to help you repurpose your content, focus on just one platform.
Brett Williams is a designer who makes over $100,000 per month with his one-man design agency, DesignJoy, and $50,000 per month from a course on productizing service businesses.
Nearly all of his customers for both businesses come from his 70,000 followers on Twitter.
To grow his audience, Brett followed all of the best practice advice, like posting consistently, owning a specific niche, and sharing his authentic experience. However, he also shared a lot of revenue numbers.
Here’s just one example of the transparency he regularly shares around revenue numbers.
He is also a solopreneur, which is currently a trending topic.
So the combination of real revenue numbers around a trending topic helped him quickly build a large audience.
Codie Sanchez has built a strong personal brand in the entrepreneurship category. Specifically, she has established herself as an expert on buying boring businesses and has helped make that niche a trend.
Before focusing on building her personal brand, she had already built a portfolio of “boring” brick-and-mortar businesses. So when Cody decided to double down on building her social media presence, she already had capital to deploy and hired social media experts to help her repurpose the content across YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even a newsletter.
Today, she uses her audience as lead generation for her portfolio of businesses, and she also has a course that helps students identify and buy great “boring” businesses.
The key to her growth on social media likely comes down to a few things:
She hires experts. She hired people like ex-YouTuber Jamie Rawsthorne to help her grow her YouTube channel, and she also hired people to help build her social media profiles. These experts already understand the nuances of how each algorithm works, making it easier to optimize the content for each platform and grow faster.
She has unique experiences and shares them through excellent storytelling. Few people have worked on Wall Street and then built a portfolio of boring businesses, like car washes and laundromats. This experience gives her content unique context, which makes it more interesting.
She had a strong personal network. While she was in the trenches building these businesses, she also built a strong network. Therefore, when she decided to double down on building her online presence, she already had a leg up. So meet more people in real life and build genuine connections by attending conferences, hosting your own events, or sparking thoughtful conversations in the comments on other people’s social media posts.
Chris Do is a designer and the CEO of The Futur, an online education platform whose mission statement is to teach 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love.
Today, Chris has a strong online presence across multiple platforms, but his primary growth channel is Instagram.
He outlines the approach he used to grow to nearly one million organic Instagram followers in this video:
As you’ll hear in the video, Chris’s main strategy to grow his Instagram following was transforming his existing keynote presentations into fun, engaging carousels.
This arsenal of content made it easy for him to post consistently, because he just had to reformat it into carousels. Additionally, he had already tested these keynotes with live audiences and knew what did and did not resonate with them.
The main takeaway is to look at the content you already have that has resonated with your audience and then repurpose it into engaging content formatted for that platform.
Chase Dimond has built a strong follower base on LinkedIn, and there are a few key reasons why he’s been successful.
First, he positioned himself in a very specific niche. Rather than trying to compete in the larger marketing consultant niche, he established himself as an email marketing expert for ecommerce companies.
In fact, if you look at his LinkedIn profile, he has sent over a billion emails for ecommerce companies that have collectively generated over $150 million in attributed revenue.
As a result, any ecommerce owner struggling with email marketing will immediately identify him as a specialized expert who can solve their specific problem.
He also publishes daily on LinkedIn, and you can tell that his posts are very visual. In fact, rather than typing out text-based content, he just uses screenshots from Twitter. This helps the text jump out at scrollers and capture their attention.
Jon Youshaei is an ex-YouTube employee who left his job to build his own YouTube channel.
Today, he is a well-respected thought leader and has interviewed YouTube experts like MrBeast, Danny Duncan, and many other creators.
While Jon publishes fairly regularly, he publishes less often than some other creators on this list.
Instead, his fast growth is mainly due to the outstanding guests he has on his podcast.
If you want to grow your personal brand faster, consider collaborating with other influencers in your industry. Jon already had some connections from his time as an employee at YouTube, but you can always start by interviewing smaller influencers and then work your way up.
Ideally, target influencers that also share content they participate in creating, as that will help your content earn more reach.
Jon also puts a lot of effort into editing the podcast videos to make them more entertaining than a traditional conversation. If you plan to do content collaborations with other influencers, think about how you can make your interviews unique and entertaining.
Romana Hoekstra is a SaaS marketer who quickly built an impressive audience on LinkedIn.
While many of the creators on this list are founders of multi-million dollar businesses, Romana is a great example of a freelancer who has built a strong personal brand. So even if you don’t have a stack of impressive accolades, like a multi-million dollar exit, you can still establish yourself as an expert by niching down and consistently creating visually attractive and actionable content.
She was even named a top content marketing voice:
About 80% of her content is focused on content marketing for SaaS companies and the other 20% is related to her personal life, making her a relatable and interesting creator.
Romana also puts a lot of effort into creating visually appealing graphics.
Regardless of the social media channel you’re posting your content on, think about how you can make it more engaging and fun for people to consume.
Elena Verna is the Head of Growth at Dropbox and has mastered the art of balancing entertaining content, like memes, with thought-provoking ideas that interest other high-level executives.
Here’s just one example of a meme she shared recently that is funny to her target audience:
However, she also frequently posts thought-provoking, original content like this post:
While Elena certainly has an advantage as an executive at a major company, anyone can use her strategy of mixing memes with thought-provoking leadership content.
You’ll also notice that a lot of her content is observational. For example, rather than telling you her opinion, she shows you an interesting fact and then offers her analysis.
This is another great example of her “observational” style content:
If you don’t have anything interesting to share and are looking for content ideas, identify patterns and share them with your audience. Then, you can provide your observation on it.
Alex Hormozi’s personal brand blew up seemingly overnight.
He grew from just 180,000 to 1.2 million followers in just six months, and two main factors allowed him to achieve such rapid growth in such a short period.
First, he had already built several eight-figure businesses, so he had very unique (and valuable) personal experiences to share. Even if you don’t have experience building multiple eight-figure businesses, you can still create equally interesting content by either interviewing these experts or taking their advice, implementing it, and then documenting your results.
However, he also credits his rapid growth to his content repurposing strategy. He was originally only producing seven pieces of content per week, but his growth took off when he increased his content output to 80 pieces per week.
The best part is that he didn’t even increase the amount of content he created. Instead, he simply hired people to repurpose the content he was already producing across more platforms.
Justin Welsh has established himself as one of the most prominent solopreneurs on social media and has over 450,000 followers on Twitter and over 500,000 followers on LinkedIn.
He was previously an executive at a successful startup, and after getting burned out, he eventually built his own personal brand.
Justin revealed that he relies heavily on content repurposing and publishing workflows, as he believes consistency is essential for building a personal brand.
Here, he shows that he posted the same piece of content 12 days apart, and you can tell it performed very well both times.
Using templates prevents you from starting from scratch each time you create a piece of content, and you feel intimidated staring at a blank screen.
The key to building a strong personal brand really comes down to consistency, so consider creating content templates to make it easier to create content. This way, you won’t waste time staring at a blank screen as you won’t have to start from scratch each time you create a piece of content.
Jay Clouse quit his job to become a full-time creator and has grown his social media following to over 35,000 followers on LinkedIn and over 40,000 followers on Twitter.
He is also a top voice on LinkedIn and earns over $50,000 per month as a solo creator.
He recently revealed exactly how he would focus on building an audience in 2024, and here’s the step-by-step process he recommends:
Choose one word or catchphrase to be associated with. For example, Nick Huber is known for “sweaty startups,” whereas James Clear is known for building small habits.
Create a free email course. An email course will help you build a deeper relationship with your readers, and unlike on social media, where you depend on an algorithm to show them content, you own the audience. Email subscribers have also permitted you to be in their inbox, so you’ll probably have a deeper relationship with them.
Choose a discovery platform. Similar to the advice I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Jay recommends that you double down on one platform (YouTube, Twitter, etc.).
Design your social media profile to align with your premise. Whatever you choose to be known for, optimize your tagline and personal brand statement to speak to your target audience. The most effective personal brand statements are clear, concise, and make it obvious what kind of value you provide.
Study, study, study. Whatever you choose to be known for, aim to become an expert on that topic so you provide the most helpful advice possible.
You can read his full step-by-step guide on building a personal brand, but those are the main steps to get started.
Jay also does interview-based videos with top creators, and leveraging their audiences has helped accelerate his growth. He is also a master at content promotion and creates mini-trailers of the interviews, which he then promotes on social media.
Ross Simmonds has over 65,000 followers on Twitter and is known as an influencer in SaaS marketing.
He has an impressive content publishing frequency and Tweets several times per day, and he revealed in the post below that he also relies heavily on content repurposing and republishing.
Most of his posts include helpful tips SaaS companies can use to improve their marketing strategies, but he also includes the occasional personal/philosophical post to keep his content relatable and personal.
Ross also creates many different types of social media content. For example, while most people only post text-based Tweets, Ross frequently posts graphics and even video content on Twitter.
If video content is your primary content format, you can easily repurpose them into short clips or even hire a copywriter to repurpose snippets of it into written content formats.
Unlike other influencers on this list, Noah Kagan has steadily built his personal brand over the past decade and didn’t use a single platform to build his audience.
Instead, he hosted in-person events, attended conferences, and made a real effort to build personal connections with people in real life.
As many of these people he met levelled up in their careers, these personal relationships have helped him grow on social media. For example, he recently launched a book and is well on his way to becoming a bestselling author, as his friends all pitched in to help promote it.
The main takeaway you can learn from Noah is that sometimes the best way to grow an audience is to meet people in real life, provide value, and cheer for them when they win.
He has also consistently posted content on his podcast, YouTube channel, and social media accounts for over a decade, so have a long-term mindset as you build your personal brand.
Nick Huber has risen to Twitter fame thanks to his unique niche (storage sheds) and the occasional controversial and/or uncomfortable statement.
Unlike most tech entrepreneurs, he stands out as a down-to-earth, country person, which makes him unique and fits his brand nicely.
Think about your unique interests and hobbies and then weave them into your content marketing strategy.
If you don’t feel that you fit in with the traditional tech entrepreneur mold, embrace your unique characteristics, because they will actually help you stand out.
Kevin Espiritu runs the largest YouTube channel on gardening. He began as a blogger and eventually transitioned to YouTube as his primary platform.
After switching to YouTube, he became the face of the channel and eventually began building his personal brand in the broader entrepreneur community.
Today, he regularly shares content on Twitter about his experience as a top player in the creator economy.
However, unlike many other solopreneurs and influencers on this list, Kevin doesn’t have a specific content framework or strategy for his personal brand. He purposefully writes on his Twitter biography that his Tweets are mainly notes to himself.
If you’re struggling to think of content ideas, write about anything you’ve recently discovered that you find interesting. If you find something interesting, there’s a good chance other people will also find it interesting, and as a result, you’ll grow a following.
Alex Lieberman is a co-founder of the popular newsletter Morning Brew. Yet today, he’s best known as a content creator and regularly creates content around entrepreneurship, the creator economy, and business ideas.
A key reason Alex is such a successful content creator is that he’s great at sharing his personal struggles and experiences.
For example, he openly shared about his failure with a backyard game he began after leaving Morning Brew.
If you’re posting primarily instructional content, think about how you can post more experiential-style content so that you seem more relatable.
Start Building Your Personal Brand Today
As you can see, there are many different ways to build a personal brand, but finding your niche and voice can be challenging.
To help you navigate the challenge of personal branding, we created the Copyblogger Academy, a community of solopreneurs and content creators building personal brands. You’ll also have access to courses on personal branding and direct feedback from the team behind Copyblogger and top personal branding experts.
If you want to invest in yourself and take your first step towards financial freedom, try the Copyblogger Academy today.
2023 is a great year for the personal brand. Influential CEOs are securing investment, winning customers and grabbing the attention of the media. Thousands of dollars are flowing towards popular YouTubers, LinkedIn profiles and Twitter personalities. If your name isn’t well known by now, you might feel like you’re at the bottom of a steep hill. But that can change in an instant.
You might not need to jump on a call with a personal branding specialist. You may be able to utilize ChatGPT to get the answers you need. With these 7 clever prompts, you can get clear on your mission, vision and values and be ready to get famous for the sake of your business.
Use ChatGPT to develop your personal brand: 7 powerful prompts
1. Define your personal brand
Use this prompt to set the scene and uncover your unique value proposition. This is where you describe who you are and what you do, in as much waffly detail as you like. ChatGPT doesn’t care how coherent you are, it will take your words and make them make sense. It will wade through the details to find a catchy premise that you’re proud to get behind.
Here’s the prompt: “I describe myself as a [your professional role] and I help [specific target audience] achieve [main outcomes you help your audience achieve.] What are the key elements that define my personal brand and make me unique?”
2. Craft your brand story
Stories sell. A well-written story, with a catchy beginning, intriguing middle and exciting end will ensure you’re memorable for all the right reasons. Engage and connect with your audience by sharing your story in a way that compels them to work with you. As you’re defining your personal brand, get clear on the story that surrounds your message.
Fill in the gaps and type this prompt into the same chat: “Throughout my business journey I have faced these challenges [summarize any challenges you have overcome.] Given this information, what is the compelling story behind my personal brand? How can I craft a brand narrative that engages and resonates with my target audience?”
3. Establish your online presence
Not every platform will be right for you, and you shouldn’t waste your energy going in multiple directions. Choose one place and double down. Whether it’s Twitter, LinkedIn or Threads, do it really well, and think about the others when you’ve nailed the first. Use this prompt in ChatGPT to help choose the right platform, prioritizing based on your audience and business goals. While you may not agree, it’s worth hearing the advice.
Here’s the prompt to retrieve this information: “Which online platforms are most relevant to my personal brand and target audience? Recommend in order of where my target audience are most likely to be. How can I establish a strong online presence on these platforms?”
Powerful personal branding prompts: using ChatGPT to build an influential online presence. GETTY
4. Curate engaging content
Now you know your value proposition, your compelling story and where you should show up, prompt ChatGPT for the type of content you should share. Provide value and showcase your expertise, networking online with the types of people who will become your client or introduce you to their audience. Use what you have so far to expand the plan, and get ideas for engaging content that will work for you.
Use this prompt to start generating suggestions: “What valuable content can I curate and share with my audience to establish myself as an expert in my field? How can I consistently provide value and showcase my expertise?”
5. Engage with your audience
It’s not enough to share on a social network. To build your personal brand, you have to engage. You have to foster meaningful connections by talking to new people every day. You have to keep in touch with the people you meet. You wouldn’t arrive at a party, do a quick scan of the room then swiftly depart, and this is no different. Get ideas of how to engage to never be lost for words, and action them daily to watch your metrics increase.
While you’ll have your own ideas of how this should be done, add this prompt and see what comes up: “Using [the main social media platform you’ll focus on], how can I actively engage with my audience to foster meaningful connections? What specific strategies can I use to encourage interaction and conversation? Create an action plan of 3 things I should do every day.”
6. Leverage visual branding
The stage is set and you know how to perform. Now it’s time for your costume. Use ChatGPT to create a cohesive and memorable image of you as a professional, that represents your brand in its best possible light. Scruffy profile pictures, wonky headers and a colour scheme that doesn’t fit are not part of the plan. Use this prompt to be guided through your visual brand, based on who you’ve told ChatGPT you are so far.
“How can I develop a visual brand identity that aligns with my personal brand? What elements and design choices can I use to create a cohesive and memorable image?” Use the resulting recommendation to brief a designer or AI graphic design tool accordingly.
7. Monitor and enhance your brand
To break records, you have to make records. Make a note of where you are today and write it down. Number of followers or connections, monthly hits, average engagement per post. Keep the information somewhere safe to benchmark your progress. Your personal brand should continuously evolve and adapt. Over time, you’ll hit upon new topics. You’ll go down rabbit holes. You’ll learn more about what your audience wants and you’ll head in the direction of your interest and passion.
For ideas of how to improve, ask ChatGPT: “How can I monitor and assess the perception of my personal brand online? What steps can I take to enhance and adapt my brand as needed?”
Prompt ChatGPT to be your personal brand consultant
Get set up for success with your personal brand by training ChatGPT to be your personal brand consultant. These seven prompts might be exactly what you need to start the creativity flowing and get some ideas. Think of ChatGPT as less of a coach and more of an interactive journal. You know yourself, your vibe, and how you should show up. You have nudges in the right direction with some options for testing. All that’s left is to get on and do.
Founder of Coachvox.ai – we make AI coaches. Forbes 30 under 30 class of 2017. Post-exit entrepreneur and author of Ten Year Career. Competitive powerlifter and digital nomad.
If you’ve ever tried to build an audience, you might have experienced the painful scenario of posting a piece of content you’re particularly proud of and… crickets.
As the supply of content increases, accelerated by the introduction of AI content tools, it’s harder than ever to earn attention.
However, this also means that the value of attention is increasing, and those who succeed have more leverage than ever before. Famed investor Andrew Wilkinson sums this up well in the following tweet:
The good news is that building a new audience isn’t impossible.
It just requires a different strategy than before. So in this post, we’ll discuss a step-by-step strategy you can use to build an audience from scratch in 2023.
Step 1: Select a Topic, Medium, and Angle
If someone consumes a piece of content you created and then follows you, it’s probably because they liked it and want to see more similar content. So if you change the topic and style of your content, you might lose those subscribers because they might not like the new topic or style of content.
As a result, you’ll find that your subscribers frequently churn, and you’ll struggle to build a loyal following.
This was a key mistake Eric Siu mentioned he made when building his YouTube channel. He discussed marketing in some of his YouTube videos, while in others, he discussed NFTs and cryptocurrency. His audience began unsubscribing as the audience interested in marketing didn’t care about his NFT videos, and the NFT audience didn’t care about his marketing videos.
So the key to building a sticky, loyal audience is selecting a topic, angle, and medium. Here’s how I define each of these:
Topic: This is what you’ll talk about. Examples of topics include marketing, finance, food, travel, etc. Choose a topic you have unique knowledge about and are genuinely interested in. Content is a long game, and you’re much more likely to be successful if you have a genuine interest in the topic, as there will be a period of time when you won’t receive any reward for your efforts.
Medium: This is how you communicate your content. Examples of mediums include video, text, or audio content. The key to choosing the best medium is to select one you enjoy and can produce consistently. Publishing consistency is key to long-term growth, so if you don’t think you can produce that medium of content weekly, choose a different medium. For example, if you don’t think you can produce video content each week, you might want to choose text-based content.
Angle: This is how your content will provide a different perspective from other existing content. Similar to product-market fit, your angle is the differentiator that helps you achieve “content-market” fit. For example, if you’re starting a Japan travel vlog, how will it differ from existing Japan travel vlogs? Maybe you’ll interview local Japanese chefs and film them making a meal. The key to selecting a successful angle is to make it both unique and repeatable. For example, interviewing Japanese chefs and filming them making a meal is a repeatable format.
To help you choose your topic, medium, and angle, here are a few examples for inspiration.
Angle: Asks people on the street how much they pay for rent and then tours their apartments.
If you look through each of these individuals’ content, they cover roughly the same topic in a repeatable format.
Note: You’ll notice that they all have audiences across multiple different platforms (Twitter, YouTube, etc.). Below, we’ll discuss how you can take an omnichannel approach, but when you’re first starting out, it’s best to focus on just one medium on one platform.
Step 2: Create Content and Publish Regularly
The main cause of content failure is the creator quitting too soon.
Your first pieces of content probably won’t hit, and that’s okay. In the early days, the most important thing to do is to get the reps in and hone your abilities as a content creator.
So select a specific content topic, medium, and angle and commit to publishing consistently for the next three months.
Here are a few tips to help you publish consistently:
Set a reasonable content publishing frequency. If you plan to publish every day, you’ll probably burn out quickly and give up. As consistency and a long-term vision are essential for content success, create just one piece of content, see how long it took you to produce, and then select a realistic publishing schedule you can realistically commit to for at least six months.
Batch your content in advance. Many creators find it easier to produce several pieces of content in one sitting once they’re in the flow state rather than setting aside several content creation sessions throughout the week/month. Batching content also ensures you publish on time.
Outsource and automate non-creative work. Plenty of minor tasks are involved with content creation, from editing videos to scheduling social media posts, but these small tasks can quickly add up to hours each week. So use software tools to automate tasks or hire a virtual assistant on a platform like Upwork to help you. By offloading low-value tasks, you’ll have more time to dedicate to content creation, decreasing your chances of burnout.
Once you publish some content, you can ask for feedback from mentors and peer groups.
For example, platforms like Intro.co and Clarity.fm allow you to schedule mentorship calls with world-class experts.
Alternatively, you can join a community like the Copyblogger Academy, where you can ask me (Tim) questions and receive feedback from other peers. We also do Q&A sessions with top content creators.
If you want to learn more about how to level up your content creation skills, here are a few additional resources you can check out:
Another excellent method to improve your content is to study your competitors’ content and determine which content receives the most engagement or positive comments.
For example, if you produce video content on YouTube, you can filter by the most popular videos and then look for patterns and popular influencers to incorporate into your content:
Step 3: Partner with Existing Creators
There’s a misconception that as long as your content is high quality, it will naturally earn engagement.
Unfortunately, most algorithms (social media, search engines, etc.) give more visibility to content that earns a lot of traction and engagement within the first few hours.
When you’re starting, you probably only have a handful of followers, so your content won’t receive much engagement within the first few hours of publishing. Unfortunately, this means your content probably won’t receive much organic reach from the algorithms – even if the content quality is next-level.
This creates a vicious cycle that makes it hard to earn a following and receive more engagement.
To break out of this cycle and help your content receive more organic reach, consider collaborating with an influencer that already has the attention of your target audience.
When they promote your brand to their audience, your content will naturally receive more impressions, which will help it receive more engagement and ultimately help you earn more followers.
The tricky part is getting an influencer with a larger audience to agree to do a content collaboration with a smaller brand with a small audience.
As a rule of thumb, partnerships are most successful when incentives are aligned.
So before you ask an influencer to collaborate with you, ask yourself how this partnership will benefit them.
Some influencers agree to interview smaller brands if they can repurpose the content on their own social media accounts. As most influencers are already setting aside time to create their own content, many will agree to an interview with a smaller brand if they can use that content for their personal brand.
Alex Hormozi is a great example of this in action. He often repurposes all of the interviews he does as social media content, like this clip that he swiped from an interview he did on Impact Theory:
Many influencers also share the content when it goes live and give your brand a shout-out. Here’s a great example:
Not all influencers will agree to an interview, especially if you have a smaller audience. To increase your chances of receiving a “yes,” look for influencers that have recently done interviews with competitors that have a similar audience size.
You can also look for influencers launching a book, as they tend to be more open to interviews.
Note: Even if you’re just writing text-based content (like Twitter or LinkedIn threads), you can still interview someone and then write out the key points from the conversation and post that on your social media channels.
If you’re struggling to get an influencer to collaborate with you, consider paying for an interview. For example, you can use a platform like Intro.co or Clarity.fm to pay for calls with world-class experts.
You can also pay an influencer directly to promote your content. However, collaborations tend to be more effective as influencers are often more vested in the partnership when their own thought leadership is involved.
If you’re producing audio or video content, you can also offer written guest posts to blogs with similar audiences and simply ask that they insert the video or podcast link somewhere inside the guest post. For example, popular car YouTuber Doug DeMuro got his first several thousand YouTube subscribers by writing for the car blog, Jalopnik, and then inserted his videos into the written content.
Finally, you can also pay to promote your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
Step 4: Adopt an Omni Channel Approach
Once you’ve established a solid publishing schedule for your main channel, the best method to increase your output and reach with minimal additional effort is to adopt an omnichannel approach.
For example, if you’re already creating video or podcast content, you can chop that video up into multiple shorter clips and post it across social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.
This allows you to scale reach and engagement exponentially, as your single long-form video is now ten or twenty pieces of content.
Eric Siu and Neil Patel do a great job of repurposing the content for Marketing School. You can see an example here:
To help you automate this process, you can use a tool like Repurpose.io. Or, if you’d prefer to outsource the entire process, you can hire an agency like Shortzy to do it for you.
For example, you can also put the video script into an AI content writer tool and ask it to write a blog post or social media content based on the script.
The key to succeeding with an omnichannel approach is optimizing each piece of content for the platform on which you intend to publish it. For example, if you’re repurposing a piece of content on TikTok, optimize it with subtitles and edit it in the fast-paced style of content that TikTok users like to consume.
If you feel overwhelmed at the prospect of repurposing your content across multiple additional platforms at once, choose just one additional platform and then add more as you become comfortable repurposing.
Step 5: Double Down On What’s Working
The content marketing landscape is always changing, and the marketing campaigns that work today might not work as well a year from now. So as you grow your audience, consistently collect audience feedback to learn what content resonates best and then produce more of that content.
The same methodology applies to your general audience growth strategy.
Look at your growth metrics and double down on the partnerships and marketing strategies that drive the most audience growth.
Many entrepreneurs become distracted by new trendy marketing tactics, but the key to long-term success is focusing on what works and doubling down on those marketing strategies.
While experimentation is a great way to discover more effective strategies, limit new marketing campaigns to just one or two per month. Other than that, focus all your efforts on the top two or three marketing campaigns currently driving the most growth.
For example, if email marketing promotions currently drive 50% of your growth, double down on doing more email campaigns.
Bonus: Consider Different Monetization Strategies
The purpose of building a following is to eventually convert them into paying customers, but when and how you monetize will significantly impact the long-term revenue you receive.
First, monetizing too early can cause your audience to lose trust in your brand, and many will either unfollow you or ignore your offer.
You can think of the trust you build like a bank account – the more value you provide and the longer you wait to withdraw, the more you can ask for when you pitch an offer.
So how do you know when you’ve built enough trust that you can make an ask?
There isn’t a hard and fast subscriber count or engagement rate, but a great test is to make a small non-monetary ask and see how many people respond. For example, you can ask your audience to respond to a specific question in the comments or on social media.
Responding and engaging with your audience is also a general audience-building best practice, so you’ll probably be able to estimate your audience’s loyalty based on the comments you read daily.
Once you feel that you’ve built a loyal following and have reached a stage in the business where it makes sense to monetize it, there are several different monetization strategies. Here are a few you might consider:
Start a business: This strategy is probably the most work, but it’s also the most profitable long-term monetization method. Ryan Reynolds’ business, Mint Mobile, is an excellent example of a billion-dollar business created mainly on the back of a single influencer’s audience.
Offer a course: This is one of the most popular audience monetization methods, and Ramit Sethi and Pay Flynn are excellent examples of content creators that have built multi-million dollar course businesses off of their audience.
Affiliate sales: There are always plenty of product businesses that need promotion, so you can partner with other brands and offer their products and services to your audience. When your audience purchases those products, you receive a commission. This is a great way to quickly generate revenue, but it isn’t as profitable or long-term focused as the previous two options. The Influencer Marketing Hub is an excellent example of a website that built its audience through SEO and monetizes primarily through affiliate sales.
Sponsored posts: This option is similar to affiliate sales, as you’ll be promoting other products or services to your audience, but instead of receiving a commission based on sales you generate, you’ll be paid a flat fee.
There isn’t a single best monetization strategy for everyone, and you can run multiple monetization strategies simultaneously.
The key to successfully monetizing your audience is taking a long-term approach and balancing the ratio of value to asks. You’ll lose credibility if you’re constantly promoting products and services, and your audience will eventually stop following you.
Start Building Your Personal Brand Today
As attention becomes more difficult to capture due to the increasing volume of content online, the value of attention will also continue to increase.
The good news is that as the volume of content increases (aided largely by the introduction of AI tools), the percentage of authentic content continues to decrease, so you can still stand out if you have a genuine, authentic message to share.
Your first few pieces of content probably won’t hit, but if you seek feedback, consistently hone your skills as a content creator and deliver an authentic message, you’ll eventually build a loyal following.
If you want to accelerate your skills as a content creator, consider joining a peer/mentorship group like the Copyblogger Academy. You can ask me (Tim) questions directly, and we also do regular collaborations with other top content creators like Amanda Natividad, Brian Clark, and Steph Smith. You’ll also have access to a group of supportive peers that you can lean on for advice, feedback, and inspiration.
Personal branding is about authentically delivering value to the people you seek to influence, inspire and impact. One of the best places to do that is in meetings. In fact, meetings (both in-person and virtual) are among the most powerful ways to build your brand and advance your career, when you actively engage in them. That’s because:
The people you seek to impact and influence are there
Many of the people you need to impress so you can keep you career moving upward are right there, face to face or on Zoom. It’s the place to showcase your work and talk about the unique contributions you make to your team or a project.
Meetings take you out of your solo world
Delivering value that’s invisible will not catapult your to career new heights. Everyone’s busy. You can’t expect your boss and other influential people to be actively figuring out what you’re doing every day. Meetings bring your value out of the shadows.
You learn what’s going on
Meetings are learning opportunities. They often provide context, important details and sometimes valuable insights—all of which can be helpful to your success and make your contributions more impactful. You also learn things that have nothing to do with the project at hand—like who the boss chose for the new team member—but are important for you to know.
You build connection and relationships with your peers
It’s hard to build a relationship via email, texting or Slack. Meetings let you connect more deeply and bolster relationships with key stakeholders. Relationships are built through multiple consistent touchpoints. Meetings are among the most meaningful touchpoints.
Meetings let you showcase your expertise
That doesn’t mean bragging. It means demonstrating what makes you exceptional. Meetings let you make your mark and reinforce your brand differentiation. By actively participating (not multitasking) and sharing your ideas and opinions, you show your knowledge and point-of-view.
You demonstrate your communication skills
Meetings provide the forum for articulating your ideas clearly and concisely (and in a branded way—with humor or structure or data). Solid communication skills make you look confident. And by actively listening and participating (no checking your email!), you show respect for your colleagues and let people know you are interested.
Meetings provide a forum for acknowledging otherspublicly
Everyone wants to be recognized for their contributions. Acknowledging others and expressing gratitude is fuel to those around you. And when you do this in meetings, in front of a group, it’s more like rocket fuel.
You can get feedback
Feedback is essential if you want to learn and advance your career. Meetings provide a forum for others to provide candid actionable input you can use to refine what you do and how you do it.
You demonstrate that you are a leader
Meetings are places where decision makers identify emerging leaders—those who demonstrate leadership skills without holding the title. When you take an active role in meetings, you demonstrate your leadership and collaboration skills and get on the radar of those who have the power to promote you.
You enhance your credibility and likability
By actively participating in meetings and providing valuable input and unique insights, you build your credibility as an expert in your field. The way your deliver your input and interact with other meeting participants can make you likable. Strong personal brands sit at the intersection of likability and credibility.
Make meetings matter. Be deliberate in the way you participate in meetings so you can stand out, grow your brand and advance your career.
I’m a personal branding pioneer, motivational speaker, founder of Reach Personal Branding and cofounder of CareerBlast.TV. I’m also the bestselling author of the definitive books on executive branding: Digital YOU, Ditch.Dare. Do! and Career Distinction. I’m passionate about how personal branding can inspire career-minded professionals to become indispensable, influential and incredibly happy at work—and I teach my clients (major global brands and 20% of the Fortune 100) to increase their success by infusing personal branding into their cultures. Here’s a fun fact: I have the distinct privilege of having delivered more personal branding keynotes to more people, in more countries, than anyone on earth.
LinkedIn is a paradise for many types of business professionals, and if you are not finding success on the platform, it might just come down to your personal branding as manifested in your LinkedIn profile. I hope to inspire you to revise your profile by showcasing some standout LinkedIn profile examples.
Since LinkedIn is a great place to find a job or recruit a new employee, everyone on LinkedIn should have a profile that gives their experience and qualifications, which makes it easy to identify opportunities. Likewise, people in sales use LinkedIn to find sales prospects and decision-makers.
Of course, people don’t only use LinkedIn to locate immediate opportunities. Instead, it’s a place for networking and relationship building. Then, when the time comes, professionals have a network they can rely on for help. This could be a job, help fill a position or even a sale.
With that said, LinkedIn wouldn’t be a powerful tool if people didn’t have high-quality profiles to represent themselves online. Here are some tips to create a great profile, and some LinkedIn profile examples to inspire you.
What’s a LinkedIn Profile?
A LinkedIn profile is a LinkedIn member’s page, where they have a picture, career goals, and other material. In other words, it’s like a business card or personal website but with a social media twist. LinkedIn calls the profile a “professional landing page” because it’s supposed to be the first impression people have of you on the platform. Often, this is the “actual” first impression because LinkedIn introduces a lot of people who’ve never met in person.
Why Should You Update Your LinkedIn Profile?
Updating your LinkedIn profile makes sure that your profile accurately reflects your professional life. People go through a lot of transitions, both personally and professionally, over the years. By keeping your profile updated, you’ll make it easier to meet the right people, find the right opportunities online, and put your best foot forward.
Here’s an example. Especially during a recession, lots of people look for new opportunities. They might go get a degree or new certification, get laid off, or decide a new career is their best bet. Some people even start a business or retire early. In turn, their goals and needs on LinkedIn change. If someone switches from recruiting to operational management in another company or industry, they won’t need to find recruiting candidates anymore. Or, a person starting a business might need new employees. Either way, their LinkedIn profiles should reflect the job changes.
The Elements of a Great LinkedIn Profile
It’s difficult to talk about the best LinkedIn profile examples without talking about what makes them great. After all, some profiles are more effective than others. In addition, LinkedIn profiles can be quite different depending on the member, whether that’s related to their career, their personal goals, or individual branding. With that said, here are some “must haves” for a good profile.
Professional Profile Photo
Having a professional picture is important because profiles with photos are 14 times more likely to be viewed. Besides this, a great picture helps you introduce yourself, especially in an era where there are fewer in-person meetings than there used to be. Therefore, a nice profile picture also helps people recognize you when they meet or see you at some in-person event.
However, you should always use a full-focus photo, and it needs to be a close-up shot. This isn’t where you use special effects or a blurry, poorly focused selfie that you adapted from Instagram. Remember, your LinkedIn profile picture is part of what provides a good (or not so good) first impression.
Besides the need for clarity and professionalism, you’ll need these parameters:
PNG or JPG file, because this is what LinkedIn requires.
LinkedIn recommends a square photo shape of 400 x 400 pixels. You can get this by cropping a rectangular picture to showcase your smiling face.
Generally, you’ll want a file size under 8 MB, though you can go larger if needed.
In other words, choose a small, high-resolution photo that has a relatively small file size. These parameters will get you the best results. Otherwise, the photo might not look nice once it’s posted online.
Cover Photo or Background Picture
This is the picture or graphic that you see at the top of someone’s profile, and it’s a great opportunity to make a splash. Generally, I recommend something that promotes a professional accomplishment or other parts of your online presence. For instance, you can promote a portfolio of work, a website, free resources, books you’ve written, or client testimonials.
These aren’t as difficult to make as you might think. A graphics editing tool like Canva can help you create awesome content for social media. You can use several design elements with this tool and others, offering the opportunity to create something special.
Finally, your cover photo should always reinforce your personal brand. While most people are used to a personal brand when job hunting, in the social media age you should project your brand whenever possible. Ideally, people will see you as a go-to person when they need what you have to offer.
A Brief, Powerful Profile Headline
A great headline is one of the most important elements of great profiles, and you’ll see some of our LinkedIn profile examples highlight this element. One reason for this high level of importance is that the headline text gets shown in search results within LinkedIn and Google SERPs. This means that your profile will get discovered more easily if you have a great headline. Plus, a good headline can help you edge out the competition for that often-critical profile view.
Technically speaking, a headline can be difficult to write. That’s because the headline is limited to 120 characters long, so you need to say it quickly. Be sure to include your industry-related keywords, skills, and interests.
Summary or the About Section
Next, there’s the summary. This is the piece of text below your headline, and it allows for more detail about why you’re special. When people click through your headline and see your profile, they are often on the fence about following up, especially if they are looking for an opportunity more than a particular person (you). The job of your summary or about section is to convince people to contact you.
12 Killer LinkedIn Profile Examples to Inspire You to Update Your Own
Even the best LinkedIn profile tips can be hard to follow if you don’t have some examples. After all, these examples can help you understand the best way to apply the tips. In addition, some inspiration is always useful when you’re writing an expressive piece like this. Here are some of the best LinkedIn profile examples I could find. Each of these can give you some inspiration to write a killer profile yourself.
Why is this profile great? At first, her profile immediately grabs your attention. You can tell she is an artist at heart (her qualifications bear this out) and that she’s both unique and motivated. However, this is also one of our better LinkedIn profile examples because of its technical excellence.
Her headline precisely describes what she does. The string is a serial entrepreneur and creative who makes plenty of money helping other people create wealth (while doing it herself).
She uses emojis to make her message more memorable. For instance, since her name is String, she inserts violins (stringed instruments) in several places.
Presents a captivating story about her roller coaster ride from a “KFC Chick to building a multi-million brand.” That includes working a 9-5 job in a conventional career and deciding it wasn’t for her.
Uses self-deprecating humour: “I could have won Forbes 30 under 30, and I asked: “thanks for recognizing my skills, will I win an award for looking under 30?” They lol’d and said no. ” Somebody who talks like this is generally a competent person who doesn’t let success get to their head.
Is inspirational – “If a KFC chick can do it, so can you. ” In other words, String knows what she wants, and will work hard to achieve it. This is very attractive to many employers and potential business partners.
Laszlo is actually a prominent business leader, having served as an executive at Google. However, he left Google to start a new business that takes a more humane approach to human resources. This need for humanity in HR is deeply felt by many within the business community.
Why is this a great profile?
Besides checking on all boxes, what stands out is the summary section of Laszlo. In five succinct paragraphs, Laszlo weaves his professional story by highlighting his accomplishments and achievements while he was at Google. Then, he talks about his current activities.
Then, Laszlo gives you a reason to connect with him on a human level: he has a world record for Greek Syrtaki dance which reveals his personal passion. Of course, choosing this particular fun fact helps paint a picture of someone who knows how to relax and have fun.
Among the LinkedIn profile examples we’ve discussed so far, Lalaina’s profile is the most conventional. She tells you what she’s like in simple terms, but doesn’t use humor or fun facts to make herself out. It’s all business.
Why is this profile great?
Her simple background image is impactful because it uses simple symbolism to define her personal brand. In addition, she wears an outfit for her profile picture that’s the same color as her background image, boosting the brand message.
Reading her summary, you can easily see her passion for her job: She loves it and finds her work very satisfying.
She ties the messaging of her background photo as well as the passion for her job together in a convincing way to understand her mission, “to help others discover and nurture the leader within,” in a very memorable way.
Lalaina lists her volunteer work, which also helps support her personal brand as someone who dreams big with heart.
Ted is someone who’s spent a lot of his career in academia. Nowadays, he teaches marketing and communications to the next generation while staying active in the business.
Why is this a great profile?
Note the consistent branding of his glasses, from his background photo to his profile photo to the emoji in his name. Even better, he tries to use glasses on his profile that are similar to the ones in his photograph. Makes me wonder if similar frames are part of his signature look.
Ted uses the Featured section smartly to showcase a New York Times article in which he is quoted. Because the New York Times is a well-respected publication, being quoted there is often prestigious.
He clearly spells out his experiences in a succinct manner in his summary, including numbers so that we can better understand the scale of his many accomplishments. In other words, as someone who’s always looking for additional opportunities (Ted wears many hats), he makes it easy to see what value he can bring.
Beth specializes in helping non-profits navigate the digital age, including through a digital transformation. She also helps them reach out to donors and other stakeholders. Her goal is to keep non-profits focused on their human mission even with technology.
Why is this profile great?
Beth uses a mix of powerful keywords in her headline to convey that not only is she an innovator in the non-profit world for which she is best known. Beth is also known for both digital transformation and workplace wellbeing, creating a truly unique and compelling brand.
Beth speaks to us directly in her summary where she talks about the questions that have guided her career, leaving a lasting impression on the reader of her passion for serving others.
At the end of her summary, she not only talks about her past books but also about her present research, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, about Artificial Intelligence and Scaling Generosity. Talking about her sponsored research ties her branding together in a very concise and powerful way.
Neil is a world-famous marketer and technology person that lectures all over the world and owns an agency.
Why is this profile great?
If you searched Google for anything related to marketing, chances are that you have come across Neil Patel. His profile reflects the wide circulation of his work.
Neil’s got a professional profile photo and his cover photo lists his expertise in different aspects of digital marketing that reinforce his personal brand.
The summary section outlines his achievements, including being recognized by President Obama. He says all of this without bragging or coming across as arrogant.
Pam is another veteran marketer, and she’s had a recent job change.
Why is this profile perfect?
Pam has a nice picture that looks like it came straight out of a magazine and was probably taken by a professional. Besides this great picture, Pam has a cover photo of a foot race. That picture piques the viewer’s interest because there isn’t anything else about running on her profile.
Her headline has a list of keywords that describe exactly who she is. As a result, you not only know why you should contact Pam, but the keywords help her profile show up on a lot of searches.
Pam’s summary is quite elaborate, but without being overbearing. In other words, you can quickly see her many accomplishments.
She has a very complete profile, with information that includes courses, projects, honors, and awards.
Elise has a sales background, but she’s turned her skills into a new career: coaching.
What’s awesome about this profile?
Elise’s profile picture has a video behind it if you click. The video message makes her likable and approachable instantly, which is especially important for someone in her field.
Her banner image precisely says what she does – Coaching, specifically for men. She also helps men push past their failures and work through what’s holding them back.
The headline clearly states what problem she solves, how she does it, and for whom.
Elise’s summary uses bulleted lists to outline the problems and solutions she offers, being more specific than her headline.
As a professional coach, she has listed all her licenses and certifications to establish credibility.
Jay is a superstar marketer for Convince and Convert, as well as a conference speaker and writer. However, that doesn’t mean that his profile has to be boring. Far from it.
Why is this profile incredible?
Jay has a great headshot that makes one want to know more about him. In particular, his smile is friendly and engaging.
A branded cover photo shows off his skill set and his tagline while remaining minimalist.
Jay’s headline is precise and punchy so you’ll remember it easily.
The opening lines of his summary are to the point and give an immediate impression of his expertise in marketing.
Juhli is a trainer who specializes in teaching small businesses to do marketing. Her practice focuses on social media techniques.
What is good about this profile?
Juhli uses a very inviting profile photo combined with her background photo to almost personally welcome us into her backyard in British Columbia. For someone who works with small business owners, this is highly effective because SMBs thrive on personal relationships.
Her headline is equally inviting, not just in making it clear as to what her specialties are, but also that she is about building relationships online and connecting with opportunity. In other words, Juhli pitches herself as approachable.
She continues this welcoming environment by featuring her women’s business networking LinkedIn Live replays. Of course, it’s also a great example of simple content marketing.
Finally, her profile summary begins by focusing on her passion ”to help get more positive voices online” and ends with her real-life passions, humanizing her profile and truly completing a welcoming presence on LinkedIn.
Anthony is a business coach, but he also has a heavy IT background. This makes him a multifaceted professional with a diverse point of view. In this profile, Anthony emphasizes coaching because he runs a business doing it.
Why does this profile rock?
In the headline, he talks about someone named Rachel who charges what she’s worth. This is bound to immediately pique your interest. It also tells what problem he solves for people: not knowing what they are worth professionally, and how to ask for it.
You will never see another about section like this one. It tells a fictional story about Rachel who is struggling with imposter syndrome. The story is relatable because it talks about the struggles and aspirations of his target audience: small business owners.
The summary also has a clever CTA that subtly nudges the reader to connect with him – “Do you know a Rachel? She probably wants to connect with me.” Best of all, the CTA drives home his point that someone who is stuck in a rut business-wise needs a coach like him.
LinkedIn Profile Examples Conclusion
Writing a killer LinkedIn profile is important for professionals. After all, LinkedIn these days is more than a resume site. Instead, it’s a place where professionals build their personal brands and look for new opportunities. I hope that these LinkedIn profile examples have helped you to see where your own profile is great, and where it might be lacking.
Neal Schaffer is an authority on helping innovative businesses digitally transform their sales and marketing. Founder of the digital marketing consultancy PDCA Social, Neal currently serves as a Fractional CMO to several companies. He also teaches at Rutgers Business School and the Irish Management Institute. Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has spoken on four continents in more than a dozen countries. He is also the author of 4 sales and marketing books, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley) and the recently published The Age of Influence (HarperCollins Leadership), a ground-breaking book redefining digital influence. Check out Neal’s Maximize Your Social Influence podcast for marketing inspiration.
Entrepreneurs have long been quick to adopt new marketing trends, and personal branding is no exception.
Personal branding has finally become something that most entrepreneurs have accepted as a must-do. Thanks to Elon Musk, Gary Vaynerchuk, and other public-facing founders, more business owners are hopping on the personal branding train and making an effort to put a face to their companies.
The problem is most entrepreneurs are throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. If you want to build a personal brand that helps your business’s bottom line, you need to be intentional with how you show up.
And no, that doesn’t mean picking out the perfect filter for your Instagram grid or paying for thousands of fake followers to “look” important.
After helping entrepreneurs in all industries step into the spotlight and grow a personal brand people buy from, there are three non-negotiable questions you must ask yourself before getting started. (If you’ve already been trying to grow your personal brand for some time — don’t worry. Take a moment now, ask yourself these questions, and notice the gaps in your strategy that might be stalling your growth).
1. What kind of impression do you want to leave?
Modern-day personal branding is like going to an event, meeting someone new for the first time, and finding yourself talking about them a month later because something about them got etched so deeply in your brain.
When you leave the room at a party (i.e., when you finish having an interaction with an ideal client):
What do you want them to take away?
What do you hope they remember?
What do you want your target market to associate you with?
How do you want to be remembered?
These questions all fall under the same roof: defining what kind of impression you want to make on your target audience. By answering these questions, you create (or recreate) the foundation of your personal brand. Without the proper foundation, the house can’t be built.
2. How do you want to make people feel?
Continuing from question one, we’re taking it one step further. While most entrepreneurs on social media spend their time making sure their personal brand “looks” a certain way, they forget that’s not ultimately what makes someone buy.
People buy from you because of how you make them feel.
All humans make their buying decisions based on emotion. We buy with emotion and justify with logic. To grow your personal brand, you must clarify how you want to make people feel at the core. Think about your target audience and how you want them to feel after they come in contact with your personal brand.
Do you want them to feel:
Empowered?
Brave?
Confident?
Relaxed?
Energized?
Calm?
After you answer this question, you will have the creative clarity to craft a content strategy that shares one common goal: to make people feel a certain way.
Gary Vaynerchuk is a shining example of this. His personal brand’s biggest objective is to help people feel empowered and in control. Every single piece of content he puts out aims to help his target audience feel capable of creating a life they truly love.
3. Am I willing to let my audience in?
Here’s the hard truth: today’s biggest, most widely known personal brands are the ones who take their audiences behind the scens. In other words, if you are serious about growing a personal brand that people not only love — but buy from — you need to be willing to connect with your audience on a human level consistently.
While this can be done in various ways, the easiest way is to tell your story. Instead of the company’s story — tell your story. Show your audience who you were before you were a leader. Show your audience what you overcame to build your company and bring your vision to reality. Show your audience that you’re so much more than your title, and show them that you’re a human just like them.
This doesn’t mean you need to tell all of your deepest darkest secrets. It means you need to decide what things you’re comfortable sharing with your audience from your personal life.
For example, some CEOs share everything from their quirky hobbies outside of work to their family, their kids and numerous other hats they wear. In contrast, others prefer to share only one or two different components of what makes them.
The most important thing to remember is that what works for someone else doesn’t have to be the way you do it. You get to let your audience in whichever way feels most authentic and aligned for you.
As long as you aren’t hiding behind your title, accomplishments and computer, you’re one step closer to building a personal brand that grows your business’ impact and income.