Our insights
Personal branding on LinkedIn: Our practical guide
Mario Sinz
Chief Growth of Leadtree
Published on
In today's digital professional world, we cannot emphasise enough how crucial a strong personal brand has become.
Als wir begannen, unsere Expertise im Bereich Personal Branding auf LinkedIn aufzubauen, hätten wir uns gewünscht, jemand hätte uns eine praktische Anleitung an die Hand gegeben. Genau das möchten wir heute für dich sein – ein Wegweiser durch die Welt des Personal Branding auf der wahrscheinlich mächtigsten Business-Plattform überhaupt.
What does personal branding actually mean?
Personal branding is far more than just a buzzword. It's about consciously building a personal brand that authentically reflects your uniqueness and expertise. In our daily consulting practice, we see time and again how people underestimate their potential. At its core, personal branding is a process in which you strategically communicate your strengths, values and expertise in order to stand out from the crowd and be perceived as a trustworthy voice in your field.
Why use LinkedIn for your personal brand?
LinkedIn is not just any social network, it is the Platform for professionals. With over 850 million users worldwide, LinkedIn offers unrivalled opportunities to gain visibility and make valuable professional contacts. What impresses us as a team time and time again: Unlike other social media, LinkedIn rewards depth and expertise.
Die Plattform LinkedIn hat sich in den letzten Jahren radikal weiterentwickelt und bietet mittlerweile zahlreiche Funktionen, die den Aufbau einer Personal Brand unterstützen – von Long-Form-Artikeln bis hin zu Live-Videos und Newslettern. Ein gut durchdachtes LinkedIn-Marketing kann daher Türen öffnen, die sonst verschlossen blieben.
The tangible benefits of a strong personal brand
A strong personal brand on LinkedIn can make a lasting difference to your professional life. We can tell you from our many years of experience: Since we have been working consistently with our clients to position them as experts, they regularly receive exciting project enquiries, recommendations and speaker invitations without having to actively canvass themselves.
The specific advantages include
- Increased visibility with relevant decision-makers in your industry
- Positioning yourself as a thought leader and go-to person for your specialism
- Greater negotiating power in salary discussions or fee negotiations
- Access to a network of like-minded people and potential mentors
- The opportunity to win new customers through social selling on LinkedIn without appearing pushy
Ready to turn your LinkedIn profile into a customer magnet?
Let's talk and use your personal brand to generate leads together:
How to strategically build your personal brand
The foundation: Your LinkedIn profile as a digital business card
Your profile is the centrepiece of your presence on LinkedIn. We pay particular attention to these elements when optimising your profile:
- A professional profile photoNo holiday picture or selfie! Invest in a high-quality business portrait that conveys your personality.
- An attention-grabbing hero bannerThis valuable visual element at the top of your profile is often overlooked. A customised banner with your claim or core message immediately sets you apart from the crowd.
- A gripping headline: Statt nur Jobtitel und Firma zu nennen, formuliere, welchen Mehrwert du für andere schaffst. Eine unserer Kundinnen entwickelte ihre Headline von „Marketing Manager“ zu „Ich steigere die Markenbekanntheit von B2B-Unternehmen, durch strategisches Content-Marketing | Speaker | Autorin“.
- A personal story in the about section: This is where visitors decide whether to read on or bounce. Share your motivation, your professional background and, above all, how you can help others. People connect with people, not with CVs.
Profile optimisation is also always the first step for us, whether in our ENGAGE– oder SOCIAL SELLING package. We not only analyse our customers' target group, but also work together to optimise each element in terms of sales psychology. This enables us to significantly increase conversion rates.
Clearly define your target group
A common mistake in personal branding on LinkedIn: you want to appeal to everyone and end up reaching no one properly. Define precisely who you want to reach with your content. We always ask our clients this as part of our onboarding process:
- What challenges does your target group face?
- What questions do they ask themselves?
- What content can offer them real added value?
The clearer your picture of your desired contacts, the more targeted your content strategy can be.
Create relevant content that really offers added value
LinkedIn rewards content that generates engagement. Quality beats quantity. We rely on this mix in our own content planning for customers:
- Practical tips from everyday working life
- Case studies with concrete results
- Insights into proven working methods
- Food for thought on industry trends
- Personal learnings and sometimes failures
Authentic stories that combine added value and personal experience are particularly successful on LinkedIn. Since we started regularly publishing content for our customers and networking them in a targeted manner, their reach has often increased more than tenfold.
No time for continuous content creation on LinkedIn?
We take care of strategic personal branding for you while you concentrate on your core business:
From presence to thought leader
A mere presence on LinkedIn is not enough to be recognised as a leader in your field. The path to becoming a thought leader requires continuous commitment and genuine expertise:
- Take an active part in relevant discussionsSearch specifically for posts where you can score points with your expertise. A well thought-out comment can generate more attention than your own post.
- Share your thoughts on current developmentsWhat does the latest trend mean for your industry? What experiences have you had? I have noticed that critical reflections in particular are attracting a lot of interest.
- Use hashtags strategicallyWith the right hashtags, you increase the chance of being found by people outside your network. A mix of popular and niche hashtags works best. However, don't overload them.
- Form collaborations with other expertsJoint live sessions or mutual interviews can massively increase the recognition value of your personal brand and give you access to new target groups.
For strategic social selling approaches, we also recommend our detailed guide.
Practical tips from our experience as LinkedIn experts
After years of managing successful profiles and having several LinkedIn Top Voices in our client base, we can share these concrete tips:
Finding the right posting frequency
It's better to share something thoughtful once a week than irrelevant updates every day. We have achieved the best results with 2-3 high-quality posts per week.
Respond to comments, always!
The algorithm rewards engagement. More importantly, you build real relationships when you respond to comments and seek dialogue. Our success in social selling on LinkedIn is based precisely on this continuous dialogue.
Actively manage your own reputation
What others say about you carries more weight than how you present yourself. Ask specifically for recommendations from colleagues and customers with whom you have worked successfully.
Actively network with the target group
Content gives you a strong pull factor, but of course you can only indirectly influence who follows you in the end. It is not uncommon for competitors or people who are not "sales-relevant" to feel attracted to you. By actively networking, you ensure that people who are really relevant to sales see your content.
We put these practical tips into practice for our customers every day. One example: We optimised the LinkedIn profile for Gyde's CEO and grew the network from 882 to over 12,000 relevant contacts from the target group. Additional result: an average of 13 relevant appointments per month, which ultimately contributed to the successful Series A financing.
Measuring success: How do you recognise that your personal branding is working?
Unlike traditional marketing, the success of building a personal brand is not always immediately measurable in figures. Pay attention to these indicators:
- Increasing profile views and new contact requests
- More engagement (likes, comments, shares) with your posts
- Direct requests for your expertise or service
- Invitations to interviews, podcasts or as a speaker (such as at OMR - one of the largest digital conferences in Europe)
- Leads that explicitly mention your content contributions
Since we have been pursuing this holistic approach to personal branding for our clients, they have been able to reach customers who previously seemed unreachable.
Ready to turn your LinkedIn profile into a customer magnet?
Let's talk and use your personal brand to generate leads together:
Conclusion: Building a personal brand takes time and authenticity
Der Aufbau einer überzeugenden Personal Brand auf LinkedIn ist kein Sprint, sondern ein Marathon. In einer Zeit, in der Arbeitgeber und Kunden zunehmend auf Authentizität und persönliche Verbindungen setzen, wird deine eigene Personal Brand zu einem unschätzbaren Kapital – sowohl für deine Karriere als auch für dein Unternehmen im Rahmen des Employer Branding.
Our most important final piece of advice: Stay authentic. Personal branding is about showing your best qualities, not playing a role. Develop your personal brand continuously, but never lose sight of your authenticity.
We hope this guide helps you build your personal brand on LinkedIn. What is your experience with personal branding? We look forward to getting to know you and developing your LinkedIn strategy together.
An insight into further LinkedIn marketing strategies can be found here.
Mini glossary: Important terms for your LinkedIn personal branding
- Personal BrandYour consciously designed professional identity that reflects your values, skills and expertise.
- Thought LeaderRecognised expert whose opinions and insights are valued and shared in the industry.
- Social SellingThe process of building and maintaining business relationships via social networks.
- B2BBusiness-to-Business; refers to business relationships between companies (in contrast to B2C: Business-to-Consumer).
- LinkedIn Top VoicesOfficially recognised by LinkedIn as thought leaders in an industry who share particularly relevant content.
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