This week on Ungated, we’re chatting with Joey Alvandi, Account Executive here at Tourial about unlocking and growing your personal brand.
Joey started going all in on LinkedIn about a year ago and since then has been able to increase his following from around 2000 to 9000 by being active on LinkedIn, creating new relationships, and working to build his brand in the space.
What are the benefits to building a strong personal brand, especially on LinkedIn, and how can it lead to success? We’ll also cover how to get started and some tips from Joey based on his recent experience.
Let’s dive in!
Key Takeaways
1 - Start with structure — set a schedule
To become a successful LinkedIn creator, you have to be willing to put in the time to engage with other people’s content. For Joey, this looked like blocking time out of the day to engage with and comment on posts he found interesting.
Set a goal for how many pieces of content you want to engage with everyday before putting your own content out there. Start with around 15 engagement points and try to increase it from there.
Your schedule will also include time for you to create your own content. Depending on your role, industry and expertise, think about what you know and what would be valuable and interesting for your audience.
Joey said his main goal has always been “spreading awareness of the company [he’s] with, but at the core, it’s just about building quality relationships with people”.
2 - Leverage free educational materials
There’s a ton of free resources within LinkedIn and outside of it to help you grow your personal brand. You don’t have to spend a ton of money to learn best practices. But there are also some really great paid courses out there.
Follow the creators that are talking about LinkedIn best practices, trending types of content that get a lot of engagement — there’s so much out there already to educate yourself.
What’s important is experimenting and seeing what works best for you. Do your research, but don’t be afraid to just reach out to people, start a conversation and inevitably post your own content — whether it’s good or not.
3 - Consistency is key to building momentum
Like with everything else, Joey recommends continuing to comment and foster those relationships even if it doesn’t feel like it’s paying off right away.
It’s a give and take relationsip. You won’t be successful in building a brand and awareness if you’re only focused on putting your own content out there. It’s really a two way street. TO foster deepter relationships, it’s about more than “liking” 300 posts in a day.
Meaningful comments and sparking conversations are what really drive increased trust so that when you do post, people want to engage with you as well.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you can build relationships beyond the platform. One thing Joey loves to do is coffee chats whether in person or over video with people.
What’s next?
Once you’ve begun building your brand and fostering relationships, what’s overall success look like and what do you do next?
For Joey, he’s starting to think about other types of content he can create to connect with people outside of a LinkedIn post. Lots of content creators are also heavily invested in other platforms like Instagram, TikTok, their own Podcast, etc.
Everyone’s evolution will be different, and again it goes back to experimenting what works best for you and also the types of content you like to create.
The future of personal branding as it relates to those in the sales industry like Joey? The trend seems to be moving toward a lot more social selling. Joey mentions in the near future (if not now), it’ll be a lot easier to be successful in sales if you have a brand presence on LinkedIn, or wherever your target audience lives.