Things I had done if I were to start Personal Branding today

Every social media provide two aspects to its individual users:

• For own personal use purpose
• For growth and scale

Am glad, two months into LinkedIn, back in early 2021, I had figured out, Duh! Am not going to use this thing to stay and scroll my feed. I had sensed the visibility and the potential this platform had.

Therefore, for me it was growth. And back then, for the noob me growth meant ‘actively posting’. It’s not wrong, it’s not correct either. But it gave me visibility.

With visibility, came opportunities in the form of freelance clients, talk shows, and podcasts, audience, and network, internships, more people, and clients, promotional posts, and yeah! some money.

And it took me good (2+2)months to figure out, and finally, get into this game even after actively using it. 

The bad news was:- No one in my farthest circle I knew was doing it, so I had literally no one to reach out to.

The good news was:-  No one in my farthest circle I knew was doing it, so I capitalized on it.

Online classes provided me with the much-needed bandwidth. And I admit, I wouldn’t be able to do it with offline classes, yoga, 90% attendance, quizzes, festivals, fests, and exams every 1.5 months. Yes! B-school teaches you discipline and time management with a pinch of salt.

But honestly, one thing I so very wished was - someone to guide me, so that the passion I put into my work wouldn’t have taken 4-5 months to galvanize.

If I were to do it today, almost 1.5 years of being on LinkedIn, I would have done it the following way:-

1. Pushed me to spend 15 mins daily on the platform I choose to build my presence.

Contrary to the belief most hold, I feel a personal brand can be created on any platform. A good social presence, a community, and an audience around your industry/niche in any platform helps, and not necessarily LinkedIn.

The best part is once you gain an audience, and trust in any one of the platforms, the audience follows you wherever you go.

Shreya Pattar started it from LinkedIn, must have taken months to reach a decent number, but her Twitter and Instagram growth was quite flawless, coz she had already gained the faith of her audience.

Saheli Chatterjee started it on Instagram. Became active on LinkedIn really late but within just two months she’s currency at 85K+

Ishan Sharma started creating/sharing content on youtube. Today he has his numbers across platforms.

So it’s not necessary to start off just on LinkedIn. Find your own space. You love creating, and editing reels, maybe Insta is your thing. Try experimenting more. Short sarcastic one-liners? Stick to Twitter for a few weeks to see how things work out for you.

The bottom line is there is no RULE! And you have to be COMFORTABLE with the platform you choose

You have to figure things out and spend 15-20 mins daily just scrolling through your feed and analyzing the kind of posts, tone, length, and context that works on that particular platform.

2. Follow posts created by folks in your niche

I have personally had most of my freelancing and LinkedIn growth knowledge by the virtue of just reading and following the creators who write about the same.

And believe me, there are folks aplenty doing the same in literally every niche.

Choose a few creators whose content you find is of value, follow their posts, threads, and blogs, and attend their Insta, LinkedIn lives, and Twitter spaces. They are value bombs.

3. Hit the Post button

- Finding your reasons,

- Jotting down experiences,

- Being authentic works but only when you break the threshold and gain confidence.

My first few posts on LinkedIn were disastrous. I had no clue. No one has clue when they are starting out.

So, do not wait for the time when you figure out everything. That never happens. Instead, START and LEARN while in the process.

Slowly with time when you start building an audience, narrow down to a niche, share your experiences, and learnings, and don’t step back from being authentic, and putting forth your views.

Speaking of me, I never started off thinking of my target audience, and the topics I would write on. This is precisely why I experimented and tried writing on various topics. Startups, finance, news, experience, memories, etc. It is then that I realized I enjoy writing and decoding brands, LinkedIn Growth strategies, and networking, covering the student community in general

That's when my audience kinda got filtered to the age group 15-30yrs. Brands wanting to gain visibility with the same audience started reaching out to me for promotions. The ‘narrowing’ down of the audience and ‘figuring out’ happened quite late.

One of the mistakes that folks do while niching down is:- Looking for an audience first and their own interest second. Views and content on Startups and finance work a lot. It has one of the finest and best sets of audiences. Therefore, in my initial days, even I used to push myself to study those topics and write. But I wasn’t enjoying it. Later I figured out those topics never interested me. I enjoy decoding and writing about brands, strategies, ads, and marketing. Irrespective of whether or not it had an audience, I wrote about it.

The thing is, I feel in the personal Branding industry, you would always have an audience. Even narrow niches like sustainability, and automobiles. Also, you shouldn’t be caring much about your audience in personal branding. Why? Next pointer

4. Remember, it's ‘Personal Branding’ and not ‘Content Creation’

But isn’t it just writing? Content writing on social media platforms? - is what I get asked.

Well, no!

Educating

- 40% about writing about your own industry/niche/specifications (For me that’s brand strategy, LinkedIn Growth, Marketing, and the student community in general)

-30% Sharing life experiences, journey and learnings specific to you (Posts like how i got into the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program, me leaving Mumbai 13-14 yrs ago)

Entertaining

-20% Sharing views on current /trending topics/ sarcastic funny light hearted posts

-10% Miscelleneaous ( I do occasional shout out posts, promotional posts etc)

To sum up, even if its about writing, its even more about the right tone, right perception you want to build, strategies and finally growth and visibility.

5. Be consistent

Not thrice a week, not specific days and timings, but continuing the process with discipline.

I sometimes used to post daily, sometimes thrice a week, and on some days even twice a day. I used to allow myself the bandwidth to take it at my pace and not to be bogged down by commitment of xx post in xx days.

I rather had weekly plans. That is, every week I would atleast have 2-3 posts. But irrespective of the fact whether I post or not, I used to actively engage in my other’s posts via commenting.

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Thanks for staying in for this long. Hope this was of value:D

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