Hey ,

Do you know what most people say about developing a personal brand?

• Show up consistently on LinkedIn (5 days a week)
• Share valuable content
• Be patient and expect the results

But what if you don’t have time to consistently hang out on LinkedIn and share content? What if creating and sharing more posts on LinkedIn, publishing more articles, and engaging with all the content out there is not bringing you any closer to your goals?

If any of these questions resonate with you, then it’s about time you switched your focus and applied the right playbook that’ll help you build a strong relationship with your target accounts and ensure they see and consume the content you’re creating. 

But how do you do that?

The blunt truth is you don’t need more views, more likes, or more followers. Neither do you need to hang out on LinkedIn for 2-3 hours a day commenting on every post from every single influencer you know.

In this newsletter, we will show you how to build and use your personal brand to drive pipeline and revenue. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

​+ What is personal branding?

+ What do most people get wrong about personal branding?

​+ How to develop your personal brand while working for a company?

+ How to articulate your point of view in a language that resonates with your audience?

Before we dive into it, here are some listings from our job board that might interest you or someone around you.

TRENCHES JOB BOARD

CLICKUP IS HIRING A PAID MARKETING COORDINATOR (Junior +1)

Job responsibilities:

• 3rd party/small scale channels & promotional vendor management & coordination.
• Managing/preparing reports & analyzing the competitive landscape, market trends, customer behavior, and budget pacing.
• Develop and manage creative and promotional materials including logos, static images, videos, etc.
• Google Ads search term reporting, etc.

Learn more about the job and apply here.

COMPLIANCEPOINT IS HIRING A CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER

Job responsibilities:

• Facilitate ongoing content planning and manage day-to-day content creation;
• Coordinate with subject matter experts, freelance writers, graphic designers, and internal team members to create, edit, and review all content to ensure consistent messaging and branding;
• Build and execute an effective editorial calendar by staying up to date with customer challenges and the latest industry news and trends

Learn more about the job and apply here.

Now, let's get to the meat of the matter.

What is personal branding?  

In its simplest form, personal branding is the act of promoting and marketing yourself. It is the unique combination of skills, experience, and personality that you want the world to see in you.  

Whether you're posting on LinkedIn, Twitter, or you’re doing Tik-tok, your personal brand and your reputation are parallels. 

Basically, the only difference is that your reputation is how people perceive you while personal branding is how you want to be perceived by people. In other words, it’s your outward projection of what you want people to think of you. 

Pro tip: Always stay true and portray who you are in real life. Never fall into the trap of pretending to be something that you're not. 

What do most people get wrong when it comes to personal branding? 

The number #1 mistake most people make is they think they constantly have to be stuck on LinkedIn all day creating content. They overanalyze and are far too indecisive. 

Imposter syndrome is real, GRANTED! Mental barriers to creating content are also real.

But thinking too much about what people might think of you or your post is the surefire way to never publish anything and therefore miss the chance to carve out a reputation for yourself and grow your brand.  

For Nick Benett, there’s no point in spending more than 5minutes creating a piece of content. You can rather spend time engaging with the community where they will answer you. And that place is the comment section.

Once you understand that the comment section is where everything happens, then you’ve got it. You’ll start getting interesting DMs from important people in your niche. 

Mind you, those people can be lurkers in most instances. They won’t even engage with your content but they see, read, and enjoy everything. And in this regard, there is a "1 - 9 - 90" formula that you’ve got to keep in mind.

Basically, this means that: 

• You’ve got 1% of your audience that are active members of the community and engage a lot with every single thing you post. They like your content, share it, and tag friends and colleagues. 
• Then you've got 9% of people with average engagement. These people engage with your content from time to time and may even send you DMs every now and then.
• And in the end, you’ve got 90% of lurkers. They see everything but almost never engage.

The second biggest mistake is that most people make all their conversations about prospecting and getting leads whereas the most ideal thing would be to engage with people and treat them as your peers so that they start to like you and see you as a trusted advisor. And ultimately, this will create awareness and demand.

How to build a personal brand while working for a company?

Make a list of 15-20 influencers in your niche that you think you can add value to the content they post regularly. You can click on the bell icon or bookmark their URL to be one of the first to see and comment on their posts. 

One of the benefits of being the first to comment is that niche influencers usually get a lot of engagement and your comment can easily get lost in the shuffle.

That said, being one of the first to comment can give your comment a chance to be seen by a large number of people who might click on your profile, see what you do, and maybe connect with you. 

That way, you'll start to build organic traffic to your page/profile without even having to post yourself. 

If you’re just starting out, make it a goal to engage with 15 to 20 people a day, for a month straight. Add valuable comments under their posts and, whenever possible, foment your own post from those comments.

A valuable comment here can mean sharing a personal story that relates to the post, or talking a bit about a relevant project you are working on that can help someone out there. 

In the same vein, it can be a piece of written advice or an inspirational comment that answers the most common question out there. Also, it can be a referral, (you tag a friend or colleague who is able to help someone in the comments). 

Do it consistently for 5 days per week and you’ll be surprised by how much you grow. 

In a nutshell, the comment section is the best section. That's where all the fun happens. That's where you meet all these people that you want to have authentic conversations with. And a lot of times, they will move over to a DM and then you might be able to get business from them or at least grab a coffee.

How to articulate your point of view in a language that resonates with your audience? 

Truth is, as soon as you hit POST on something, there will always be people with a misconception or a different opinion. It’s something that you’ve got to accept and deal with.

Your content isn't designed to please everyone. Rather, it is designed to please the people in your ICP that you truly want to please. 

Here’s a few tips you can use:  

• study and know your target audience; 
• be authentic to yourself and be professional;
• try as much as you can to avoid calling people out. 

Remember that while it’s not a bad thing to have strong opinions, you should make sure that you can provide facts and results to back up every single thing you say. 

NOTE: This podcast has been condensed and edited for clarity. You can watch the full interview here with Nick Bennett.

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Adechina D. Odjo,

Content Editor @Trenches