Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s largest online professional networking site and has become a platform that can no longer be ignored when it comes to building your personal brand in 2025.  In this digital era LinkedIn is your online business card, and your LinkedIn profile acts as an ambassador for your brand, so you want to invest some time in building it.  With our expert guide that walks you through six essential steps you’ll be building your personal brand on LinkedIn in no time.

Why is it Important to Build a Personal Brand?

Building a personal brand in this age is a must not a nice to have. It’s what will set you apart professionally and help you stand out in an overcrowded and saturated world. It gives you more purpose, power, and professional recognition than a job title could ever give. A personal brand is portable and can be carried anywhere even if you switch careers. Without a brand, you’re just a commodity. When done well, a personal brand allows you to become an icon. You become the iPhone not the android, Oprah not another talk show host.  You own a piece of real estate in people’s minds and have raving fans not customers.

Is LinkedIn Beneficial for Personal Branding?

LinkedIn is highly beneficial for personal branding given its the world’s largest professional networking site. You have a global audience for your personal brand so it’s a goldmine. Already there are millions of brands, thought leaders, industry professionals and influencers on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, there are still many people that have the outdated belief that LinkedIn is just a job-hunting site.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Although LinkedIn can be used for finding work it’s so much more than this. Since its founding in 2002, LinkedIn has grown exponentially especially during COVID-19 to become the platform to be seen as a professional.  Many professionals won’t engage with you if you’re not on LinkedIn and many companies now won’t hire someone if they don’t have a LinkedIn profile. So, a LinkedIn profile is essential for both B2B and B2C.  

Let’s Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

It’s essential that you start with the following six steps which are the building blocks to building your personal brand on LinkedIn. Once you get this right, your already halfway in mastering the platform and you’ll start to see a good return on investment (ROI).

Step 1: Start with Your LinkedIn Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is the first step to building your personal brand on the platform. It’s the first thing a visitor sees and shows up high on Google search results under your name. People generally spend 7-8 seconds on your profile. You want to capture their attention in this time and more importantly keep it. Does your profile attract or repel people? Make sure you don’t get a lot of people coming to your profile and just leaving. If this is the case, you’re obviously not doing something right. Get their attention but keep it. Best tips for your profile:

• Fill out every section. So many profiles are incomplete with sections not filled out. It presents a bad image which hurts your personal brand more than you realize.
• Have a professional headshot. A profile without a picture gets 12% less views. A picture helps build trust with visitors.
• Headline is clear, confident and has terms that people search for.
• Your skills at least your top three match your headline for consistency.
• About section is ‘client-centric.’ All about who you serve and what value you provide.
• Your profile is aligned with how you want to be seen. Must be cohesive, consistent, and congruent.

Step 2: Go Premium: Take out LinkedIn Premium

There are still many professionals who believe that the FREE version of LinkedIn is more than enough for your personal brand, but the truth of the matter is that, a premium account can show your serious about building your brand on LinkedIn. In addition, some professionals won’t connect with you if you don’t have a premium account. Keep in mind the following:

• A premium account gives you more indepth analytics than the free version – see who’s viewing your profile, engagement rates on your posts and much more.
• It allows you to connect and extend your reach wider. You have access to more people which means more exposure for your brand.
• You get access to a wide range of courses all for FREE taught by top instructors in the world. There are even courses on personal branding. As a professional you need to be upskilling.

Step 3: Consistently Create Content on LinkedIn

Content creation is essential for not only building your personal brand on LinkedIn but for sustaining it. Without content creation your brand is passive and stagnant. It’s through creating content that you become a voice on LinkedIn and are seen as a brand. Even if you never become a thought leader or influencer you can still become a prominent voice with content creation. But before you start creating content consider the following essentials:

• Create a content marketing strategy. Hire a professional to create one for you.
• Create a variety of content to mix it up and appeal to different consumption tastes: posts, videos, memes, slideshows, PDF etc.
• Create content of different genres: answer questions, share news, industry trends etc.
• Be consistent with your content creation. Create at least twice a week or else people forget you.

Step 4: Build a Community – Your Tribe of People

Adopt the mindset of building a community (your tribe of people) not just getting more connections. Get clear and intentional on how you want to be seen on LinkedIn and who you want to associate with. Be selective with who you hang out with. Don’t just connect with anyone and everyone. This is a sure way to dilute your personal brand and make you look fickle and scattered. Keep in mind the following essentials:

• Know your audience (ideal customer, customer persona, etc).
• Connect and meaningfully engage with your community consistently.
• Personalise at least 30% of connection requests you send out.
• Be authentic (be real & have integrity) and focus on helping your community.

Step 5:  Build Referral Partnerships

Once you’ve laid down the groundwork and down all of the preceding steps above your now ready to get referrals which work both ways – you give them, and they are given to you. This further builds your personal brand and leads to more professional opportunities. It’s all about relationship building. Treat LinkedIn as having a physical relationship with someone. All good relationships take time and need investment. Keep in mind the following essentials:

• Connect people with each other who could benefit from working together.
• Refer people to positions, and jobs you know of.
• Build and maintain relationships (respond to messages, keep in touch etc).
• Bring people together through online networking events, summits etc.

Step 6: Measure your Progress

What gets measured gets improved. Just about everything in life needs to be measured to see if it’s on track. When it comes to building your personal brand on LinkedIn you should measure your progress to see what’s working and what’s not. Keep in mind the following essentials:

• Review your progress at least every quarter and test new things out.
• Use LinkedIn’s in- built analytics to see your engagement rates, profile views and more.
• Use the LinkedIn social selling index tool. It gives you a score on how effective you are on building your personal brand. Check out your score here.

Use these steps outlined here and you’ll be well on the way to building a great personal brand on LinkedIn. For more help with branding,  Book a Time with Our team, the content marketing experts.