3 steps to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn (as told by my journey to 11k+ followers)

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How does a girl from Lagos, Nigeria get a job at a top remote company and 11k+ LinkedIn followers?

Picture this.

It's January 2020 and you have plans to live. You have prospects, offers, and a vision for the next 12 months.

Then COVID-19 hits. You lose your job. You have to move back in with your parents. And no one's hiring.

In today's newsletter, I'm getting a little vulnerable. We'll cover:

1. 📨 Three steps I took while building my personal brand through LinkedIn.
2. 🤖 A template I wish I'd had during these rough days.
3. 👀 Some recs that'll make you better at content or AI or life.

Ready? Let's roll.

📨 Three steps to building my personal brand on LinkedIn

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert at personal branding. I write and share advice from my perspective – what's worked for me.

But somehow, I hadn't considered that it'd probably be cool if I shared what even led me to the few things I've been able to achieve.

So when Jennay Horn (We Edit Podcasts) emailed me asking "What were your first steps for building your personal brand on LinkedIn?" I was immediately inspired.

I scrapped the initial idea for today's issue (finding your audience, which I'll cover next week) and did this instead.

Here are three steps that I can now say helped me grow my personal brand on LinkedIn.

Step 1: Just be doing things

I used to pysch myself out about trying new things. Now, I'm in what I like to call my "just doing things" era.

"What if you fail?" "What if you look dumb?" "What if it's not what you really want to do?"

The answer to all three questions? Yes, yes and yes. I've tried things and flopped. Hard.

That hasn't stopped me from trying.

If you never try, you'll never know – Coldplay

The minute something sparks an interest, I take it as far as I can. And I can often draw a direct line from pursuing my interests with near-obsessive fever to the many opportunities I've gotten through LinkedIn.

Step 2: Talk about your things and yourself

I've accumulated a lot of random experiences in my short lifetime. And I grew up on the Internet so it's always been second nature to share those experIences.

When COVID first hit and we went into lockdown, there was a weeklong period where I still had my old job. I'd never worked remotely before so I was excited about the new experience.

I shared my thoughts on what it was like working remotely through LinkedIn posts (that are super cute – and cringy – to revisit).

Whenever I got a new opportunity or something sparked a thought or I started pursuing a new interest, I'd post about it. Sometimes two sentences, sometimes whole paragraphs – I'd post.

Now, it's second nature to share with that audience. And they reciprocate with their attention and time (and I'm super grateful for it).

Step 3: Constant reviewing

I wasn't thinking of "building a personal brand" when I started doing all these things. I was thinking "Oh, this [thing that just happened] is cool, let me share how I feel about it."

And that worked.

And it still works.

Sure, things have changed as I've become more intentional and more polished (ish) with my content, but the heart of it still remians the same.

What's going on in my life? Which of these things are relevant to folks?

That's why I recommend being as self-centred as possible. Other people's journeys do not matter nearly as much as your own when it comes

Throw out the humble pie and start baking the richest me-pie you've ever (too much?)

Be self-centred!

Don't overdo it of course, but don't under-do it either. Talking about other people or brands is great and all, but even then it should be in service of showing you as the expert.

If nothing else, consider that the LinkedIn algorithm rewards talking about yourself.

All my top-performing posts from the past year have started with "I's" and "me's".

Action: Find the intersection of things that interest others + your perspective – then share, share, share.

Today's prompt is an oldie but a goodie that'll get you moving quicker with figuring out what you want to post about from your perspective and how.

📩 But first, if you like this, you'll love these

My mission is to help you grow your personal brand through writing powered by AI and these newsletters fulfill at least one of these three promises.

1. Get the top tools & tutorials in AI through Prompts Daily – every day.
2. Sahil Bloom's personal brand growth is legendary – learn from The Curiosity Chronicle twice-a-week.
3. Subscribe to the The Story Grid to learn how to write stories from a writer with 30+ years of experience.

🤖The "Ikigai for personal branding" prompt

Doubling down on the prompt from my Content Ideation template that uses the Ikigai principle to help you find your content pillars.

As I shared last week, content pillars can be a great way to kick off the initial wave of ideas you need to build up the practice of writing + consistency.

Use this prompt to get some inspiration as to what those pillars might be:

I’m [Name].

My Skills:

• [Skill]

• [Skill]

...and so on

My Interests:

• [Interest]

• [Interest]

...and so on

My Work Experience:

• [Work experience]

• [Work experience]

...and so on

[Optional] Trends I'm Watching:

• [Trend]

• [Trend]

...and so on

Your task:

Based [Name]'s skills, interests, and work experience, produce a list of 15 potential content pillars for growing my personal brand through written content on social media based on the Ikigai principle (intersection of what you are good at, what you love, what you can get paid for and what the world wants)

Expand and extrapolate the interests based on the information provided. Do not use an intro or outro. Get straight to the point.

Start like this: Tell me your skills, interests, work experience and trends you're watching...

Get the prompt right in ChatGPT ↗

👀 A Thing or Two

*This is a referral link.

That's it!

– Tami.

P.S. My email list got this 5 days ago – consider subscribing to the newsletter so you always get my content, prompts & templates first!