11 LinkedIn Post Ideas to Build Your Personal Brand
Building a personal brand is a popular topic these days and a goal for many professionals. At its root, building a personal brand is consistently sharing key themes about yourself.
First, you have to determine who you are professionally and personally and how you want to represent yourself on communication channels.
> What’s your voice?
> What topics are you an expert in?
> What values do you hold?
These are the types of questions you need to answer before you begin communicating. Then, once you’ve determined your personal brand, it’s time to start sharing with the world. Nervous? One of the major hurdles people face when building a personal brand isn’t determining their brand but the actual “building” part. It takes time with sometimes very little positive feedback in the beginning, and it’s challenging to know the nuts and bolts of what to say.
If you’re in the throes of building a personal brand on LinkedIn specifically, here are some post topics to help you brainstorm. Tailor to your personal brand but use these to spark LinkedIn post ideas.
Achievements
The first LinkedIn post idea is the first that comes to mind for most of us – achievement post. These LinkedIn posts include starting a new job at a new organization and getting a new job at the same organization. In the copy of these posts, be sure to reference how the new role will align with your expertise and/or values. You want to show recognition to the organization and people in it and reinforce what you bring to the table.
Achievement LinkedIn posts can also include areas of growth outside of work. For example, educational achievements, new experiences within your role, and personal achievements that in turn show your strengths as a professional. Specific examples here could be: gaining a certificate in your space and talking about how you’re excited to use it in your role, event planning for the first time and posting a picture with key takeaways, or running a marathon and talking about the discipline it took to achieve that goal.
Interesting Facts
What are some interesting tidbits of information you’ve gleaned during your career? Do you have any interesting data points, quotes, sayings, or memorable learnings? Share these interesting facts in the form of posts. These types of LinkedIn posts likely won’t come to you at the exact moment you click “start a post”. Inspiration will strike at unlikely moments. Write a note in your phone or in a planner when you think of an interesting industry or professional fact you’d like to share.
Organizational Updates with Own Thoughts
Resharing a LinkedIn post with your own thoughts added. If your workplace, school, or nonprofit group you support (really anything your connected to) shares an update you take an interest in, reshare the post and click the “reshare post with own thoughts” option. Then, write a little copy about what this update means to you.
Warning: Don’t make your entire feed organizational updates. Your audience wants to get to know you, not just the places and people you’re connected to. Use this LinkedIn post option periodically, not constantly.
Hot Takes
In any profession, there are pro/con stances on popular topics related to the industry or profession. Do you have any strong opinions related to one of these? Share your opinion with logical reasoning. Maybe even add in some data or personal examples to back up your opinion. These types of posts can spark comments from people who agree, disagree, or want to add on to your opinion. Be ready to field comments!
How-to Guides and Tips
Be a teacher in your LinkedIn posts. Tap into that expert part of your personal brand. Think of skills that you have deep knowledge about. Write and design a simple how-to guide and create a carousel post from it. Example: how to take a professional headshot. Or, if the content is more conducive to tips, you can simply write out all the tips related to the topic. You could present in carousel form or copy only. Example: 8 tips to integrate new members into an existing team.
Career Stories
For this LinkedIn post idea, think of pivotal moments in your career or stories that caused new ways of thinking. Tell the story and takeaway on LinkedIn.
The key here is to grab attention at the beginning. It may be a fairly wordy post. Tell the story and takeaway, walk away from the draft, then come back and see if you can tighten up the writing. These types of posts often do well if accompanied by a picture that illustrates the story.
Interactive Polls
Similar to the Hot Takes LinkedIn post idea, think of popular topics that have a range of positions associated with them. Write a poll question and post on LinkedIn using the poll feature. Not only will this be a great way to engage with your audience, but you might glean some interesting data that could be helpful in your job or future LinkedIn posts.
Humor
Clever cracks at your profession or industry can help you connect with others. If done well, your expertise will also peek through. Don’t use humor to digitally roast a colleague. Do use humor to show personality and funny things that happen in your profession. Have a second set of eyes on these types of posts to see if they land before sharing online.
Seasonal Thoughts
Are there any upcoming holidays that you find it appropriate to post about? This could be a commemorative post around the date or it could be related to your industry/profession. Let’s take New Years for example. In your commemorative New Years post, you could talk about goals or recap key moments from the previous year. A post more related to industry/profession could look like a marketing professional reminding other marketers to do an inventory of all their content and update with new dates. No one wants an automated email to have the wrong year sent to a prospective customer.
Inspiration
Inspirational LinkedIn posts could also be combined with one of these other post ideas. For example, you might share a story that is both a career story and an inspiration to others. Where have you found inspiration or thought-provoking moments in your career? Write about it and share with others. This can be particularly daunting since it can be personal at times. Share what you’re comfortable with but don’t talk yourself out of your own story. LinkedIn doesn’t need to be a life diary, but reading others’ inspirational moments can help us be better professionals.
Personal Life that Transforms Professional Life
Our life events aren’t in neat little boxes. The events of our personal lives bleed into our professional lives. And, that’s not always a bad thing. Personal life moments can give us increased wisdom, better leadership skills, more empathy, added skills, and much more. What life moments have transformed your professional life? Write about the connection and learnings. For example, maybe you coached a team for the first time, and you write a post about how the experience taught you some skills you’ll lean on as a manager.
Vary these posts. Don’t lean on one topic style repeatedly. Make your feed a mix of logic, expertise, humor, inspiration, storytelling, teaching moments, and more.
Sure, depending on your brand, personality, and profession, you’re likely to lean on one style more than others. In this instance though, don’t give one thing 100%. Give your audience a variety of ways to connect with you.
Don’t let writer’s block stop you from connecting with your audience through LinkedIn posts. Use this list to generate more LinkedIn post ideas.