Mastering Linkedin: Building your personal Brand

1. Mastering Linkedin - Introduction: Hello and welcome. My name is John Valentine and welcome to this course. Linkedin, building your personal brand. In this class, I'll be diving into the idea of building out your personal brand on Linkedin, building your brand, building your company, building your presence, whether you're an influencer or a company or whether you have a product or the product is yourself. I'll be breaking down various topics. To do with building your personal brand. So first, let's talk about the content that I will cover, as you can see on the right, the different units. There are five main topics that will focus on. The first one being purpose and path, basically meaning, I will talk about knowing where you want to be, mapping out your trajectory of what you actually want to accomplish. Second, I'm going to be talking about the content strategy, a little bit more about planning or content and so on. Third, I'll be talking about value and worth, basically dissecting what you should focus on, what not to focus on, and so on. Number four, patients had consistency, talking a little bit more about the general idea behind posting on Linked in. A lot of these can come in hand to hand with posting on social media general, but I'll be diving in a little bit more on focus on Linked in itself. And then, of course, talking a little bit more about the actual platform in Linkn and how powerful it can be as a platform. So a lot of these little snippets might not make too much sense, so they'll be further explained, of course, in each unit. Um, so feel free to take a notebook or sit back and relax and take in this content. And then afterwards, of course, you can always click back and forth and check back any specific sections, and if you have any questions, put them in the discussion section below. So thank you for joining me today, and let's get right into the first topic here. 2. Purpose and Path: Let's get into the first part of this class. So purpose and path. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, before you start posting on Linked in, before you build your profile, your brand, and everything, what you want to consider is the reason for actually building your brand and the reason you want to be on Linked in. Right? There is a variety of things that you can use LinkedIn for. Of course, the main thing is always sti traction. But what set f is it to build just a personal brand for yourself. Do you want to network with other professionals in your industry? Are you building a personal brand as an influencer, to make it a job, to grow an audience? Are you using it to grow your personal brand and then sell a product? So you want to really decide beforehand what you want to do, because it will really help you decide on what to post and how to approach your profile, right? So there's a few things that you can do, as I said you on the screen, you can use it for passive income, if you want to become influencer on it, if you want to just make positive impact, maybe you have some kind of um, charitable idea behind it. Maybe it's just because you've been in the industry, and you've done it for so long, you want to give other people advice. Maybe it's just for the benefit of others, not even for profit or anything like that. Maybe you just want to have you know some more reach. Maybe you just want to connect with professionals, and you just want to network. Or, of course, maybe you want to use it just to get your name out there as a figure of authority, which you can then leverage later, right? So Of course, networking with people Linked in, but just sort of pushing the idea of a personal brand just so your name is recognizable in Denise, and you can access that later on, maybe you want to build a brand, maybe you want to become an influencer first, and then a year from now launch a company or something like that, right? So a lot of influencers or creators go that route as well. So, I sort of outlined three past the success in Lincoln. These are, of course, not limited, but these are the main ideas behind building a personal brands. So first, you want to be a creator selling products, workshops, or courses, right? You're a digital teacher, you're an online teacher that creates courses, and maybe you want to have more tidbits on Lincoln, you want to increase your reach. Right? You want to maybe you want to be a freelancer, right? So not just marketing skills for freelancing clients, but you can use Lincoln as a marketing platform, right? Whether you're a graphic designer or website builder, or consultant, or whatever you are, and you want to network and use Lincoln as a sort of marketing platform in order to reach out to new clients and therefore gain business, right? Or you want to establish a thought leadership for high paying sponsorships, right? Maybe you want to become, like I said, that influence or that voice a creator, and then, you know, maybe Notion can sponsor you or Microsoft will sponsor you or whatever it is, right? And sort of become a creator in that sense, necessarily selling a product, but you create content, and you get sponsorships, right? Just the classic influencer routes. So there's a few things that and a few roads you can go down to when it comes to creating that personal brand, right? So What does it matter? Well, you really want to decide on what you do because then it will just help you go down that path, right? And it can help you create a content plan that's structured to reach that sort of audience and to reach a goal that you're setting out to be. Maybe you want to be an influencer, right? And you say, Okay, in order to start making money from this, I need to have 20,000 followers in six months, right? That's a great, very specific goal that you can reach. And therefore, you have to say, if I want to reach that many people, I have to post every two days, and then you can say, k, if I post every two days, I can't always be a text post. I have to post you know, a video on Monday, then a text post on Wednesday, then a picture on Friday, and so on. So this will help you create that content plan and become very, very strategic and very exact on what you're doing and what you're posting, because you know exactly who you want to reach, right? So your content also, of course, depends on what you want to do because that will shift to target audience, right? If you just want to connect with people in your already given industry, If you're in the automobile industry, for example, you want to connect with other people in the car industry, then you know who you want to reach out to, you want to know who you have to attract, right? If you're selling a product or a course, you know that you want to attract other kind of people, right? If it's more a broad, it's a little bit more a broad, right? So you want to really nail that down, and that will give you the leverage to create that content plan and that focus energy into where you actually want to go. 3. Content Strategy: Now moving on to the second unit, and that is the content strategy. This one works hand in hand with the previous one purpose and path because it also highlights the idea of knowing where you're going. Right? You want to know where to go. You want to know what you're doing and where you want to go in the future. Because that will help you create the contents that you want to create. So similar to the last units with purpose and path and knowing the reason why you want to create a personal brand or why you want to create your profile and who you want to create it for. This will help nail down what kind of content you want to do, right? If you want to create have a certain target audience and you've identified your customer, right? Let's say it's males between the age of 18 and 30, you know what kind of content to create, or you know what to hone in on, right? If it's a little bit more broad. If there's no age, no kind of any sort of restrictions like anybody can consume your content, then even better, right? Then it's a little bit more broad, and that helps you keep it open. But the importance of knowing where you want to be with your content is very, very important. So what I wrote you on the screen, for example, is three types of content plans are based on goals, right? You want to have creator selling products or courses, marketing skills for freelancing or thought leadership for sponsors, right? Similar to the first unit, this will help you identify what you want to do, right? And the content plan that you can do is you can decide what kind of content to post, when to post it, how many times to post it, right? You can post, let's say, three to four times a week. You know on a Tuesday, you want to post a testimony from a client or a quote or a review. You want to show off what you've done. Let's say you're an online creator that offers courses on certain subjects. Then every Tuesday, you can post a video purview or you can a video testimonial from one of your clients, and they can speak on how the course helped them get more business, get more passive income, whatever it is, right? Then on Wednesdays, you can do a Tips and Tricks video, a tutorial video. Maybe if you're a digital creator that focuses on Excel, you can have a little five minute Excel super tip. And every Wednesday, it can be Excel Wednesday. You can upload a video that will show other people how to use Excel, and you can show off a little tip, right? Every Friday, you can share a personal story, for example. Maybe you have a paragraph of a struggle that you had when you were building your business, right? You're like, the first time, I you know, got on a client. They didn't like it afterwards, and they got mad, or maybe you said the first time, I got a client, they were super happy, and it showed me how much impact I or maybe you can share a story of the first time you had to buy something, maybe the first time you bought a laptop with the first money that you earned from your business. So whatever it is, right? A nice story of yourself, of a client, anything that kind of can connect to the consumer, right? So create that content strategy, and it will help you not wholy pose and get closer to that target audience. It would also just help you structurally, right? I'll help you be organized. You know not to struggle during the week because you know Wednesday you have to post a video, Friday, you have to write something like a paragraph. Monday, you have to post a picture. O, whatever it is Thursday, I have to find an article and comment on it. So having that structure will really help you be organized not just with your audience, but also for yourself, right? It's random posts. It can be very structured and organized in order to push a certain thing, right? So again, if you're an online creator and you have online courses, you know, let's say, on the Monday, you post a Tips and Jerks video on Excel, right? It'll show people that you are knowledgeable about the subject. And on Wednesday, you can talk about one of the clients that you had or maybe it's a testimony from McClient. You can post that how happy they are with the course that they have purchased from you. And then on Friday, you can share a story about your personal struggles, right or your personal wins, right? You're like, Okay, the last three months have been so great, I've been able to do this. Been able to do this with my business. We've been able to do this together, and all these three posts kind of focus on the idea of selling that online course, right? So focus on what you want to do, where you want to get to, and it will help you create that constant strategy, and it will help you be aligned with yourself and your target audience, right? Because that content plan does have to be in line with where you want to go. So just randomly posting content whenever, like, maybe on a Tuesday or two, then sometimes on a Wednesday, then you take a two week break, then again on a Friday. Very inconsistent, it won't give you that leverage of being constantly present in your followers eyes, right? Being consistent and being present in your faller's eyes in your target audience, will help build that relationship, will help build that brand, and then, of course, help build that connection, and at the end of the day, help whatever you want to sell, whether it's yourself, whether it's networking or a physical product, digital product, whatever, right? So creating that content strategy is very, very important when it comes to building that brand. 4. Value and Worth: On to the third unit here. Value and worth. What does that mean? Well, this is just a suggestion, of course, this will go from person to person and this will be very customizable. But when it comes to value and worth is the general consensus and suggestion I can give you is just choose a high paying skill. You want to understand the value of skills packaging. One of the ideas we can use, for example, is writing, right? If you are a writer, instead of writing single posts and maybe selling them for $50 a post, right? If you have a Linked in paragraph or text or essay based post, and instead of writing blog posts for $50 each or one of those $0.05 a word deals, what you can do is you can sell packages. Monthly packages, right? You can say, I will create five block posts, a month, one Linked in posts, and maybe two captions to your videos or photos or whatever it is. These are, of course, just rough ideas, and these will differentiate from customer to customer, just a general idea. But what you want to understand is that building these packages can be much more profitable for you, and can also make it much easier for the client as well, right? Because if you come in it from a per sort of post basis, yes, you can make $50 a post, and you can get three or four posts here and there. But nothing is that guaranteed on a long term basis, and of course, you only get $50 per post, right? As an example. If you make it $2,500, you can eight charge more, and it will be much more attractive to the client because you can say, Okay, I'm going to charge you $2,000 a month for three months. And I will give you five posts a month, right? So 15 months total, 15 posts total. And you can break it down for them, right? For 15 posts, now I'm charging $2,000. But you also get more captions, you get my engagement, you get more revisions. I will revise the post until you're satisfied, right? They don't have to deal with you every time they're like, Oh, I need another post, I need another block post, I need another text based post, whatever it is, right? Now they know that they will get five posts on the first of the month. You will get five posts on the 15th, whatever it is, that you come to the conclusion with them, right? But it will be much more organized for you and for them. So this is quite a win win situation. Of course, for you, it is great because you can sell it as a package rather than a single service. And that oftentimes is more attractive to a lot of clients, but also just for you. It's better because you can sell it as a more high paying skill, right? Instead of saying, Okay, I'll write one block post for $50, you can be like, I will be your social media advisor for three months. I will create this content for you. So you know, emphasize the importance of thought leadership and charging higher rates, right? You want to say, I'm a experienced writer. I have five years of experience. I've wrote written hundreds of blogposts. I will do these blog posts for you, but I don't do this single ones. I only charge in packages, right? I only say monthly base packages. You will come across more authoritative, and it will be easier for you as well. I mean, charging for every block post and negotiating for every post will be much more time consuming than rather just having, let's say five clients on payroll, charging $2,000 per month, all of a sudden, you're getting $10,000 a month from five clients, and you know exactly what you have to do for the next three months, right? You don't have to hustle for every block post, you know that they're locked in for three months, you're getting $10,000 for the next three months each each month, and you have to create 25 block posts every month. You know what exactly you have to make, and you know what to charge. So that kind of comes from being that ran and building that relationship with your clients, right? So that's how you want to choose to go forward. Of course, these are just suggestions. But when it comes to actually building that rapport with your clients and building that strategy, that's what you want to focus on. 5. Patience and Consistency: Moving on to Unit four, patience and consistency. Of course, this is a lesson that will come with honestly almost any social media and any kind of content creation, whether it's personal brand or a company, right? This will be very, very important when it comes to not just building a brand, but just in general, building a business, building connections and anything, right? When you're on social media, of course, when you start, a lot of people think, you will just have a sort of viral post and get 1 million follows right away, right? You want to acknowledge that there is a massive time factor in building a personal brand. And, of course, with some people, it'll be faster than with others, right? But what you want to take into account is to avoid that frustration, right? You want to maintain your dedication, right? If you post for a month, a lot of the times, that is not enough. You know, there are some of the big creators, right when you think of influencers, whether it is Lincoln or anything else, YouTube Instagram, Water, right? People have been posting for six months, a year, two years, three years before they see any kind of traction, right? So don't get discouraged when you don't see any results after two months, right? Some platforms will be better than others, right? There will be more on Instagram or more on YouTube sometime, depending on what kind of content you. Sometimes Lincoln is hot. And Lincoln is one of those platforms that currently is doing very well, especially when it comes to natural growth. But you do want to keep that dedication in mind, right? You want to make sure that you don't get burnt out, you don't want to get frustrated because building a personal brand and being on that content creation journey, whether it's for marketing or anything else, will take some time. Yes, you can get lucky with a good viral post and then you get 10,000 folars overnight. But realistically speaking, that's like not that realistic, it's not that planable, right? You can plan for good posts and you can plan for good content, you can give it all. But sometimes, I mean, we've all seen on social media. Sometimes the worst things blow up and the least effort things or sometimes they're good, but they take 5 minutes to great, and then there are hidden gems where people spend hours and hours and hours of their content, whether it's video or text based, and it just reaches nobody, right? So sometimes social media, you can plan for it as much as you can, but sometimes it's just completely unpredictable. So So things that you can complete for really complimenting the journey here, are, for example, analyzing your audience preferences, right? If you just blindly post for a year and just post and close the app, that you know, can work for some people, but a good idea is to just continuously analyze what you're posting, right? If you're posting a video every Monday, and that outweighs any kind of content that you create the rest of the week, right? If you post a video on Monday and then text on Tuesday and then a picture on Wednesday, and then another photo on Thursday and then another text on Friday. But every Monday is your highest reach, you know, your highest views, profile views, or whatever it is, then you can say, Oh, maybe I should post more videos, right? So you want to really analyze and audit yourself and see what's working, even the type of content, right? If it's inspirational stories that always do well, great, post more inspirational stories. If it's a behind the scenes look of your business, people love to see that post that, right? You really want to figure out what your target audience likes and then do more of that. Right? Audit yourself, look what's working, and look what's not working, right? If something you think is great, and you like it, but it performs horribly, you can't judge that on yourself. You can't say, you know, oh, I thought it was great. That means it's going to do well. Of course, you want to focus on content that you enjoy doing, but you also want to consider your target audience, right? You can't just do something that nobody in your target audience likes and then expect them to like it. And then never repeat something that really, you know, was a hit with them. So figure out what you're doing and what you're doing well and then do more of that. And that goes hand in hand with tweaking the content strategy, right? So, you want to, you know, try different things. Don't be afraid to try. Maybe if things are working, you can keep stay on that. But yeah, don't be afraid to try certain things, right? If you've never posted video, go ahead and try a video. Maybe it'll do well. Post a paragraph, a blog post, if it does well, right? You can just really, really experiment with these content formats, right, post some shorts, some shortcut videos. Maybe if you're a serious guy, and, you know, they have been doing, well, maybe try posting a skit or something like that. But still while still maintaining the brand consistency, right? A good example will be Captain Sinbad, right on YouTube. He posts a lot of motivational videos, but he also posts comedy skits that sort of lean on this motivational idea, right? He makes fun of sort of self help people, but in a good manner, right? So considering that is a great idea to switch of your content as well. Um, and, of course, the, you know, age old tradition that you can use is collaborations. You know, if you are a creator in a certain niche and a certain industry, let's say, whether it's fishing, 6. LinkedIn as a platform: Ring Lincoln as a powerful platform, right? I did just want to go over how powerful Lincoln can actually be as a platform, especially recently, again, it's gotten very, very good in organic growth. So if you're looking to build your personal brand, especially when you don't have that high of a budget for marketing or, you know, ads, any kind of ads where you can push your posts and promote them, Lincoln is definitely a great platform to use when it comes to facilitating that organic growth, right? So you want to really consider all the units that we've talked about, focus down on having that content be strategic, right? Not really having casual content as I wrote here, because casual content. Again, it can work, right? It's not like it's never going to work. If you casually post for two years, maybe every week or every two, three weeks, you post a post or a video or anything like that. Of course, at some point, it will get engagement and maybe you will gain a couple of followers. But it will just go a lot faster and more strategic and better if you plan it all out, right? If you have a content calendar. If you know what you're going to post, if you know who you're posting for, your target audience. So really taking that into consideration and using Linktn as a powerful organic growth machine can really really really help you in building that personal brand all Linkon. 7. Conclusion: And that would be it for this class. So I just wanted to give some closing thoughts here when it comes to building your Linked in personal brand. And just to go over the units that we covered. So first, I talked about purpose and path, right? Discovering why you're making this brand, why you're making this account, right, whether it's for building your network, in your profession, in your industry, whether it's because you want to become an influencer, in sponsorships, and so on, or it's because you want to be a voice of reason in your chosen profession, you want to be become an online teacher, you know, sting courses, anything like that. And then that led into the second part content strategy, creating a content strategy plan, right? You want to do it for a month or three weeks, for example, maybe every Sunday, you do a weekly content plan, or maybe at the beginning of each month, you plan out what you want to post for the rest of the month. And then you can say every Tuesday, video, every Friday, you post, every Wednesday, testimony, and so on, right? So having that strategy in place is really going to help you be successful when it comes to building your bran but also helping you stay consistent. Number three, of course, knowing your value and your worth, knowing what to charge when, when you have you an influence, when you have sponsorships, knowing what to charge for your prices, when you use Lincoln to build your personal brand as a freelancer, knowing how to charge your prices and what to do there. And then, of course, staying patient and consistent. And I talked about a couple of strategies that you can use in order to stay patient inconsistent because, you know, let's face it becoming A building a brand is not an overnight success thing. You have to stay on the ground. You have to stay very, very consistent with your post, with your voice, with your content. And then, of course, you can help switch it up by using collaborations or having a content plan in place, and then switching up the type of content that you create, and so on. So Lastly, just touched on Linked as a powerful platform, basically saying how Right now, especially, there's a lot of natural and organic growth that's happening on Lincon. And even if you don't have a big budget, you can use it in order to propel your personal brand for it. So yeah, that basically sums it all up. So I really appreciate you Stopping by this course. There's, of course, a bunch of more classes on my channel and on my page. If you go on my profile. I talk about all things digital marketing, whether it's Facebook ads, Instagram Reels, Tik Tok, twitch, anything like that. So make sure to check out all the other classes, and feel free to leave some questions and comments in the discussion section, make sure to check out the project section as well. I will leave feedback as possible. And yeah, that will be it. So thank you so much for joining me today, and I will catch you in the next one. Goodbye.