How to Build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn (+ Why You Should)

A three-step guide to building your personal brand on LinkedIn, featuring some advice from my own journey and other experts.

If you’re looking to grow your career, make connections with people in your industry, and build a personal brand as a professional, you should be on LinkedIn. 

To get a little more, well, personal, nothing has been more valuable to my career than building my personal brand on LinkedIn. It’s difficult to get a remote job when there are many people, and it’s even harder when you’re outside the West — I’d never have landed at Buffer and built my network without it. 

In this article, I'll explain how to use LinkedIn to build your personal brand in three steps, featuring some advice from my own journey and other experts.

Wait, what is a personal brand?

There are many ways to describe personal branding: becoming a thought leader, building an audience, becoming a professional creator, engaging in employee advocacy, and more. 

Whatever you choose to call it, building a personal brand involves sharing your expertise on a public platform to establish yourself as an authority in your industry. 

That can be done via social media platforms, a newsletter, speaking engagements, podcast appearances, and so on. Many professionals building will choose multiple channels to help expand their reach and hit their personal branding goals. 

Why do I need to build a personal brand?

You don’t need to build a personal brand on LinkedIn or elsewhere to level up in your career — but it certainly helps. 

Here are some of the benefits of personal branding:

• Build credibility as a thought leader in your industry
• Stand out among the crowd when it comes to new job opportunities
• Drive website traffic to your own site or your company’s
• Land new customers or clients without doing outreach
• Monetize your following with brand partnerships, a paid newsletter, a subscription offering, and so on.

The idea of publicly sharing knowledge might make you uncomfortable, especially if you’re concerned about appearing to be on the lookout for job opportunities outside your current company. 

But I’m always quick to point out that employee personal branding can be incredibly beneficial to the company, too. 

In this context, it is called employee advocacy — we’ve got a full guide on the Buffer blog. Pro tip: if your manager or boss is concerned about the idea of having employees active on social media, send them this link: Guide to employee advocacy.

Is LinkedIn the right platform for personal branding?

Gone are the days when LinkedIn was simply a place to upload your resume and search for new roles. The platform has evolved beyond a simple job-hunting site and into something so much more — a place for professionals to learn, network, and upskill. 

In the same way that people working in lifestyle industries will turn to Pinterest or Instagram to share content, LinkedIn is the natural choice for those working in more corporate environments, particularly in the B2B industry. 

Consider the ultimate goal of personal branding — if you want to find new customers for your B2B business or stand out as a candidate for new opportunities, chances are LinkedIn is the best platform for you. Ultimately, you want to meet your target audience (New customers or clients? Potential employers? Hiring managers? Industry leaders?) where they are.

Don’t just take it from me either — small business owners Sherell Dorsey, Sheena Russell, and Latesha Byrd all acknowledge the power of building a LinkedIn personal brand.

If you want to take charge of your image, there’s no better way to do that than crafting your personal brand on LinkedIn.

How to build your LinkedIn personal brand in 3 steps

Getting started on your LinkedIn personal brand isn't as intimidating as it may seem!

I've broken the process down into three key points (or steps) you need to hit to put you on the right track.

1. Optimize your LinkedIn profile

Your profile is the first thing people see when they encounter you on the social media platform, so you should optimize it to expand your professional network. At a glance, you want to tell people exactly what they can expect from you, whether as a candidate for a job or a simple follow on LinkedIn.

Here’s a checklist for setting up your LinkedIn profile for success. It might seem like a lot, but don’t sweat — these items shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes each. 

Profile picture: Choose a high-quality, square, 400x400px photo for your profile picture. It doesn’t have to be super strict and buttoned up, but it should clearly show your face and not be from a blurry night out.

Pro tip: Use a tool like Canva or PhotoRoom to remove the background and replace it with a color to make your profile stand out from the crowd.