How Can You Build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn?

Don Barnett (00:02)
it's really about putting out a quality message that is really giving your knowledge. there's some apprehension to putting things out online because I think people are worried about giving up their secret sauce. like it's grandma's potato salad recipe that nobody else can ever know. But in reality, I've never worried about anybody eating my lunch, so to speak.

with me sharing these tips in reality. And this is kind of a harsh truth, but in reality, a lot of people aren't going to act on them. And you know what? If somebody does and it helps them get ahead. Great. There's enough opportunity in business out there for everybody to win. So I say, go for it. Share your knowledge. It makes you a thought leader. It makes you somebody that's really valuable in your industry. And it opens up opportunities, things like referrals for business.

for speaking engagements, any number of things.

Benjamin Ard (01:15)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Don. Don, welcome to the show.

Don Barnett (01:21)
Thanks for having me, Benjamin. Appreciate it.

Benjamin Ard (01:23)
Yeah, Don, I'm excited for this conversation. think it's going to be a lot of fun. But before we dive in, let's get to know you and your career. And then we always ask our guests, what do you love about content and marketing?

Don Barnett (01:33)
So I went to art school, so hence director of sales marketing, a hotel, right? Perfect transition. But I went to art college to be a graphic designer, but was working through art school at a hotel and just had a great opportunity to be promoted to a sales manager. And I thought to myself, you know, there's nothing to stop me from continuing to do my art, which I still do to this day and follow this path.

which I was truly enjoying and also paid a lot more than a graphic designer did. So I guess I sold out, but I still do my art and I get to work in hotels. And now I'm at London house Chicago for the past seven years now. And it's the best job I've ever had. It's a...

great team, great boss, great product, great service, great location, all around. Best culture I've ever worked at, so it's the best job. And then to answer your question about my favorite thing about content and marketing, I'm one of these right brain type of people, so I love the opportunity to be creative. know, putting out content is an opportunity to show people something through my perspective and how I see it.

and hopefully show them something they've never seen before.

Benjamin Ard (02:44)
I love it. That's awesome. Well, Don, we were emailing before the show and today we decided to talk about LinkedIn and personal branding. And you've been really successful here. I think there's a lot of listeners that are really focused on this. They're getting on LinkedIn. They're seeing all the LinkedIn influencers and wondering, okay, how do we do this? Or they might be at a business saying, how do we get our CEO or other executives on the platform?

I guess to kick it off, the real question I have is kind of why? Why should we care about personal branding? Why is LinkedIn a good platform for it? What are your thoughts on that?

Don Barnett (03:17)
So LinkedIn is the best platform for it because as opposed to the other social media platforms out there, it's the most under saturated with quality content creators. You've got people that will post about their promotions and things like that, which is great. But the people that are actually putting out things that are really, truly helpful to people that are both educating and entertaining or edutaining.

are far and few between. if you have that skill, it's like the wide open West. So it's a great platform for that. I think you have to ask yourself what it is you want to accomplish. Are you trying to grow your business? Are you trying to improve sales? Are you trying to recruit people for your company? So those are great whys.

And you have to approach it as trying to help people. What problems can you solve for them? It's not about you. It's about them. how are you bringing value every day and showing up consistently? And I like to call it your reputation at scale. your personal brand is your reputation and it's you doing this publicly.

and letting people know this is my MO, this is what I do, this is why you should care.

Benjamin Ard (04:25)
I love that. That makes a lot of sense. So after we found our own why, and I love that it's not just a generic why across the board, it could be grow revenue, it could be just to connect with other professionals, it could be to find a new job. Everyone has their own unique why. And I love that because businesses and everyone else, everyone should have their own unique why. So once I've found the why.

How do I turn that Y into tangible results? How do I approach this? What are your thoughts there? How do I actually make progress?

Don Barnett (04:53)
So this'll have to be the super condensed version how, because I could probably talk about this for about three hours. So the first place I always tell people to start when it comes to LinkedIn and building your personal brand online is start with engaging with other people's posts. There's a lot of pressure to come up with content, but start to go through your feed. Look for the people that you want to work with.

What type of content are they putting out and what type of questions are they asking? Find out what those pain points are. Look at people that are already doing it in your space. So that way you kind of pick up what is working well, who's getting a lot of attention. And ultimately when you dive into creating content, the question becomes, well, what should I do? Should I create videos? Should I just type text? Should I do selfies?

And sure, the algorithm may play with certain things, you know, one way or another, but ultimately you're going to have the most success if you do what you enjoy. So for me, I like to mix it up. My brain's all over the place. It runs a thousand miles a minute and I do what keeps me interested. So that's a combination of video, selfies, GIFs, graphics. I like to mix it up and keep it interesting for people, but I've seen people that do mostly selfies.

And different things work for different people. And

it's really about putting out a quality message that is really giving your knowledge. think a lot of there's some apprehension to putting things out online because I think people are worried about giving up their secret sauce. like it's grandma's potato salad recipe that nobody else can ever know. But in reality, I've never worried about anybody eating my lunch, so to speak.

with me sharing these tips in reality. And this is kind of a harsh truth, but in reality, a lot of people aren't going to act on them. And you know what? If somebody does and it helps them get ahead. Great. There's enough opportunity in business out there for everybody to win. So I say, go for it. Share your knowledge. It makes you a thought leader. It makes you somebody that's really valuable in your industry. And it opens up opportunities, things like referrals for business.

opportunities for speaking engagements, any number of things.

Benjamin Ard (06:59)
I love it. So specifically on the LinkedIn platform with the how, how frequently do you recommend people post? How often should they really look at creating content? Is there like a split of how much they should engage with other people's content versus publishing their own? What's your approach there?

Don Barnett (07:17)
The best LinkedIn hack I heard when I first started was to treat it like a mini job. So that's what I've done. I'm fortunate that I worked downtown, so I have a train ride. So every morning it takes me a half an hour on the train and another 15 minutes on a bus to get to work. And I use that time strategically to engage with people on LinkedIn. So I'll spend 30 minutes to an hour each day just commenting on posts. And the more you do it, the faster you'll get at it.

And it's not enough to just say, great post. You you want to try to leave something thoughtful and you're trying to start conversations. You have to approach it the way you would networking. One of my biggest arguments for building your personal brand on LinkedIn is a lot of companies will spend thousands and thousands of dollars to go to conferences and they might go to three, four conferences, spend $10,000 and you're going to see a thousand people. How many of those people did you really

connect with, you know, during that time. Maybe a hundred of those, if you're lucky. Whereas LinkedIn, I can get online and I can get a thousand impressions a day. So I'm getting in front of all of these people on a daily basis. Now, when I go to a conference, I've got a number of people who already know me and I may not know them, but that's kind of the old saying, right? It's not who you know, it's who knows you.

a number of times where I'll have somebody email me with a lead for a piece of business and they'll mention LinkedIn and they've never liked any of my posts. They've never commented any of my posts, but they're seeing my posts. They're one of those thousand or 10,000 impressions, whatever the case. So, that's the crux of it right there.

Benjamin Ard (08:53)
I love it. So one of the things you mentioned earlier that I want to double click on that I really think is insightful. You talked about when it comes to content and everything that you're doing, find what you're passionate about. Find what you can keep on posting about time and time again, whether that's a variety of content types or content subjects, whether that's just honing in and focusing exclusively on one piece of content. I think

One of the messages there, and I'm curious if you agree and I have a follow up question with it. A part of the reason you do what you're passionate about is because you can do it over and over and over again and you don't burn out. You know, if you're inauthentic, you're going to burn out and you're going to quit before you see results. How long does it take? Realistically to kind of build a little bit on momentum on these platforms, what should be proper expectations?

for someone coming into this thing and, I wanna see the results. It's not gonna be overnight success. How can you level set some people's expectations?

Don Barnett (09:49)
Great question. And I think that might be why a lot of people stop and start or give up, because it does take a lot of consistency and it does take time. would say I didn't start to see any type of inbound leads or anything like that where I was actually starting to monetize my personal brand till about nine months in. So you have to go in with the expectation that it's probably going to take nine to 12 months before you're going to get some real traction to build up your following.

To that point, also be very mindful of who you're connecting with. There's pods where, you have a group of people that are commenting and liking on each other on purpose. It's not happening organically. It's something that a lot of people buy into, don't ever buy into those. Because what are you really accomplishing? You really want to connect with people in your why.

you know, if you're looking to generate business for your, know, for your company, then connect with those people, connect with the vendors in that industry, connect with people that are all within that's that sphere, as opposed to just trying to build up, you know, 10,000 connections of people that you're not going to share any win-wins with these people, you know, ultimately. So.

Also, to get back to your question about how often you should post as well. Honestly, I think you should probably post like five times a week, but I understand that's probably daunting if you don't if you don't have a content mindset. So I would say at the very least, I would post three times a week, you know, look, do a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or something along those lines. And I found the most success in the morning.

know, somewhere between seven and nine a.m. But I would recommend people post at least three times a week to get any type of traction.

Benjamin Ard (11:29)
I love that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. it's interesting in like a business podcast to bring this up, but there's Mr. Beast who's on YouTube, you know, has the most followers in the world and all that kind of stuff. In some of his interviews, he talks about a hundred videos. It's going to take a hundred videos. Nobody's going to listen to them or watch them. And it's going to take a really long time. You just got to build this muscle memory. Love it.

And then after like video 100, your first person might kind of view it. It's a very true concept with LinkedIn as well. Something I think often dissuades people and they get upset about is even if they built up a decent follower and let's say like my Tuesday post has 50 likes on it. Wednesday comes around, I post something and it gets to how often does this occur and can you set some expectations that

Some posts might be duds. How often do you see it? How do you approach that as well?

Don Barnett (12:23)
just have to have a thick skin. just got to move on. I would recommend not going back and editing a post or deleting it. You know, just own it. know, just own it. And you just have to have a thick skin because I still have that. I'll post something and it'll be a dud and then I'll have stuff that truly, sometimes it's unexpected, the things that really pop off. I noticed that in

LinkedIn there weren't many people posting like memes and not memes just going straight for humor but what I did is I created a meme that hits what was specifically speaking to the hospitality industry and it was David from Schitt's Creek and he's coming out of a room and he's closing the door behind him and my post was every hotel sales manager ever when

the front desk gives away your showroom, meaning that somebody checked into that room, you were supposed to show a customer. Everybody can relate to that. That one did like 40,000 impressions and like, you know, 500 likes. I mean, it was insane. And that's like probably my best post of all time. And here I've created, you know, I've created content where I'm trying to be thoughtful and helpful and things like that. And then it was me making a relatable joke that, that took off the most. So.

It can be very unexpected what does well and things that you do expect well are duds and you just got to roll with it and learn from it.

Benjamin Ard (13:40)
love it. So we're coming close to the end. Don, one final question. What analytics do you look at and what are the numbers that you pay attention to to kind of make sure that you're still on track?

Don Barnett (13:40)
Yeah.

I use a third party, but LinkedIn does have its own metrics. But I use something called AuthorGov, which ties in nicely. It integrates with LinkedIn and allows me to schedule posts and things like that. It gives me a little bit more in terms of metrics. But I do look engagement, you know, how many people are actually engaging with my posts, because that's really probably the most important thing is

That communication. Impressions are great. So like the meme post got 40,000 impressions and it got me in front of a lot of eyeballs, but it didn't spark up a lot of conversations. And I'd rather spark up lot of conversations. So engagement is probably the most important to me. People that are actually leaving comments. So that way I can have that two-way conversation and invite other people to join in and ask questions or share their insight.

Benjamin Ard (14:35)
I love that. And I love the conversation piece too, because, you know, let's say you only have three likes on a post, but for some reason you've got half a dozen, you know, people commenting and having a conversation and you're learning. That's where you're building the relationship is in the comment section. So I think that that's a really powerful metric. love that. Dawn, thank you for the time and insights today. This has been amazing. If anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?

Don Barnett (15:01)
with me on LinkedIn. We connected on LinkedIn. So you can find me there. There's probably a couple of Don Barnett's on there. I'm the guy that's at London House Chicago. So connect with me there. I'm always happy to meet new people and I'm sure people in your audience would be great which by the way is another great thing about LinkedIn. It's not only the sales networking and all that.

can't tell you how much I've learned from being on LinkedIn and just, again, those quality content creators that are putting out things that are really There's a guy I met on LinkedIn about a year ago named Chris Shao, and he puts out this amazing content that really talks about analytics and social media and content, and it's amazing. So shout out to him.

Benjamin Ard (15:43)
I love it. love it. And for anyone listening to this episode, we will link to Don's information and all of the show notes so you can click on the link and find them on LinkedIn right away. Don, thank you so much for the time and the insights today. I really appreciate it.

Don Barnett (15:56)
Likewise, I really appreciate you asking me to be on. totally

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