Are You Happy With Your Branding on LinkedIn: Episode XIII | Brand Personality

Today I am celebrating my new brand awareness campaign from Healthy Career Nurses - a fast-moving Generation Z health and fitness brand - that promotes well-being through videos, courses, and merchandise - (app soon to come 2025) Plus more innovations are in the pipeline.

Rather than tell you how to build a global brand on LinkedIn, I will tell you how I am doing it, and hopefully, you will find some useful points.

🤫 DOES THAT SOUND GOOD?

Brand Personality

Understanding How LinkedIn Marketing Can Create Strong Brand Personality

If a brand is strong it could be argued that it has a real personality and may carry the traits of young, vivid, or fun to indicate the human-centric feel of the brand. Human-like characteristics shift us modern marketers into old-school marketing. What I mean by this is giving a brand personality is more than social posts and even product innovations. The brand is an icon in one way yes - however, I argue the personality is grown once it's on the shelf hence the saying the human-centric feel of the brand. (Ogilvy (1985), Aaker (1997), Dahi 2015)

Insights from a traditional brand personality model:

(Adapted from, Aaker, 1997)

1. Sincerity Analysis: A brand face does not have active sincerity when there is no positive movement in the market. (Fahey, 2024) Enlistment of understanding how to engage with creating brand sincerity thus matters for clear business development opportunities. By investigating the true brand identity of a firm's goods or services the modern-day marketing mix has a fair chance of survival and not ultimate performance.
2. Brand Excitement: Beyond sincerity there lies notions of is the brand down to earth and real in its core offering to the consumer. It could be argued that LinkedIn - a modern-day social media networking site offers a clear pathway for B2B brands to at least make the case for brand excitement. Allow marketers may move on excitment through performance marketing - it is more important to test the brand's worth through deep cognitive research and/or preditive and actual data analytics.
3. Brand Competence: Keller also emphasizes the importance of behavioral analysis in understanding our target market. This involves studying our audience's purchasing behavior, brand loyalty, and usage patterns. By understanding how our audience interacts with our brand and competitors, we can identify opportunities for growth and optimization.How competent is a brand on LinkedIn today with all the tools and features available to businesses - except purchasing a sales navigator or other premium packages? LinkedIn like other social media networking sites is not without its flaws as the strength of posts can sometimes play more true to the strength of the algorithm plus the training installed into the marketplace. However, modern tools and systems such as generative AI can increase brand competence significantly. Whilst there are no real mass data pools yet on this assumption the wider market picture is true as OpenAI accelerates growth under the leadership of Sam Altman. It is far too early to tell how competent any brand can be if leveraged well on LinkedIn using generative AI tools in terms of performance marketing - as it hard metric to measure. Thus, brand owners need to evaluate what frameworks that built to leverage generative AI and business development. However, increasing the strength of the brand using modern-day marketing techniques like generative AI does hold when trying to increase how well a brand can bend forward and backward. (Level of competence) It could be a good suggestion to allow social media marketing teams to establish more experiments on alternative platforms like TikTok for instance where different market segments can be played with - before launching a national B2B campaign on LinkedIn.

Applying Insights to Healthy Secrets

So, how do we apply these insights to Healthy Career Nurses ' branding on LinkedIn?

Healthy Secrets is a health and fitness brand - to lower global suicide rates by 30% by the year 2030. It aims to use the brand personality framework laid out above. However, this is by no means an easy task looking at how LinkedIn in particular first meets the global market for subjects like suicide prevention and general wellbeing in the office. At Best Healthy Secrets needs to create brand sincerity first that could be for example, laying out the problems of global health today through a series of articles and videos. It is not a concrete plan as it would require years of social posts on LinkedIn and strong brand relations to meet the need for good educational content to help folks with poor well-being and suicidal thoughts.

In this case study the founder at its early convention would need to establish a soft blueprint to engage with as many stakeholders on LinkedIn as possible and close the gap in modern marketing to understand how to navigate mental health research and change the data trends of where the current trajectory is leading global suicide.

It could start with first pinpointing what specific marketing mix it needs to execute any movement on this bold initiative. Is LinkedIn the right place to achieve this ambition and company mission - yes, as it carries most of the active workforce that is either a parent to children at risk of suicide or the employees themselves.

Summary:

The article explores the concept of brand personality and its significance in the context of LinkedIn marketing, arguing that brands embody human-like characteristics, making them more relatable and engaging to consumers. Drawing on theories from notable marketers like Ogilvy, Aaker, and Dahi, it emphasizes the importance of sincerity, excitement, and competence in building a brand's persona. The piece suggests that LinkedIn, with its professional network and tools, offers a unique platform for brands to express these traits, particularly through sincere engagement, exciting content, and demonstrating competence using modern marketing tools like generative AI.

Recommendations:

1. Embrace Brand Sincerity: Start by clearly articulating your brand's identity and values. For Healthy Secrets, this means communicating its mission to reduce global suicide rates by 30% by 2030 with authenticity. Use LinkedIn to share stories, research findings, and engage in discussions that reflect this commitment sincerely.
2. Foster Brand Excitement: Utilize LinkedIn's various content formats—articles, posts, videos—to share innovative ideas, success stories, and insights related to mental health and wellness. This approach can help to make the brand feel down-to-earth and real, sparking interest and engagement among the professional community.
3. Demonstrate Brand Competence: Show how Healthy Secrets is making a tangible impact through its initiatives. Share evidence of successful strategies, collaborations with mental health professionals, and testimonials from those helped by your efforts. Highlight the use of advanced tools like generative AI to underscore the brand's forward-thinking and competent approach.
4. Experiment and Innovate: Considering the recommendation to experiment with platforms like TikTok, Healthy Secrets should also consider innovative LinkedIn strategies. This could include live sessions with experts, Q&A sessions on mental health topics, or interactive content that engages a broader professional audience.
5. Engage with Stakeholders: Develop a strategy to engage with various stakeholders on LinkedIn, including mental health professionals, organizations, and individuals interested in wellness. Building a community around shared goals can amplify the brand's message and impact.
6. Leverage LinkedIn's Features: Make the most of LinkedIn's tools and features, such as groups, hashtags, and LinkedIn Learning, to reach and engage with a targeted audience. This can also help in establishing Healthy Secrets as a thought leader in the mental health space.
7. Monitor and Adapt: Continuously monitor the brand's performance on LinkedIn using analytics tools and feedback from the community. Be prepared to adapt strategies based on what resonates with the audience and what doesn't, ensuring the brand's personality grows stronger and more engaging over time.

By strategically leveraging LinkedIn's platform and aligning with the brand personality framework of sincerity, excitement, and competence, Healthy Secrets can effectively communicate its mission, engage with a relevant audience, and contribute to a significant social cause.

#LinkedInMarketing #BrandPersonality #DigitalBranding #MentalHealthAwareness #SocialMediaStrategy #ContentMarketing #ProfessionalNetworking #GenerativeAI #HealthAndWellness #SuicidePrevention

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Aaker, J.L. (1997) Dimensions of brand personality, Journal of marketing research, 34(3): 347-56.

Dahl, S. (2015) Social Media Marketing Theories and Applications, Sage. London: Sage Books.

Ogilvy, D. (1985) Ogilvy on Advertising. 1st Vintage Books edn. New York: Vintage Books.