Have you been on LinkedIn lately? If you haven’t, you should give it another chance. It’s a terrific tool to build your brand and for building your freelance writing career in B2B writing.
Why? Because it’s full of businesspeople thinking about business. Unlike Meta (aka Facebook) or TikTok, people show up on LinkedIn to network, job hunt, and connect with new clients.
With 310 million active monthly users, LinkedIn is a gold mine of opportunity.
Of course, to get the most out of it, you’ll want to set it up properly:
- Complete your profile
- Optimize your profile
- Interact with your potential clients by “Liking” and making relevant comments on their posts
- Include links to your work
- Think about what you want to be known for (also known as building a brand)
You can find out more about writing a fantastic profile here.
In this article, we’ll focus on…
Your Brand-Building Piece
A lot of people misunderstand this concept. They confuse personal branding with logos and fancy graphics. If this sounds familiar, it’s okay. I was in the same boat for a long time.
But then I realized I was overcomplicating it. Personal branding has more to do with showing up consistently and being yourself than anything else.
More on that in a moment.
First, here are the benefits of building a brand of one.
How does this sound?
- Clients come to you and they’re already “pre-sold” on the benefits of working with you.
- The ability to charge higher rates (and get them!).
- More quality referrals.
If you’re like me, this probably sounds great. So, how do you get there?
I’m glad you asked.
It starts with two things:
- Practice
- Repetition
Build Your Brand with… Practice
By this I mean start publishing some posts. When you open your LinkedIn, you’ll see “start a post” at the top.
What do you write? You can keep it simple and start by sharing other people’s content. For example, Copyblogger and Content Marketing Institute always have great material focused on content marketing. You can read the article and write a line or two about what you learned and tag the author or publisher.
Advanced Hint: Include the link in the first comment rather than in the body of the original post. That will help the algorithm show your post to more people.
Build Your Brand with… Repetition
The key to growing a brand is repetition. For a writer, it means posting about the same topics over and over.
For a famous band, it means playing the crowd favorites.
Here’s an example.
The Steve Miller Band plays 76 dates a year and they haven’t created new music in decades. Steve says people come to hear their favorite songs. They don’t want new material.
The Steve Miller Band gives it to them. They’ve been playing “Fly Like an Eagle” for decades to packed venues across the country. The band’s been together for decades too. It’s a well-oiled machine.
It’s a smart approach. The whole band makes a nice living and still has time to work on other projects.
As a freelance business owner, I want to get to the point where I’m as clear on my message as The Steve Miller Band. It’s tough because I always want to try new things. But I’m working on it.
The marketing lesson is to narrow your focus, put your spin on it, and repeat it over and over.
Everything Is Branding
Whether you think about it or not, you already have a brand. The way you act, talk, and dress are all part of your brand.
Fortunately, you can make choices about how you want others to see you. You can choose to emphasize certain aspects of yourself like using lots of emojis if that feels natural. Right now, I’m experimenting with including photos from my travels around Mexico in my posts. There’s no correlation between my images and my topic, but I’m curious as to if they help me stand out more.
The point is to choose something you can incorporate in your online persona that helps people remember you.
The human brain is an incredible sorter. It needs to “file” things into certain compartments in order to function and it sorts thousands of inputs before lunch. Your job is to make it easy for them to “sort” you too.
That way, it’s easier for people to recommend you.
Your Next Steps
When you’re an established writer, you can wield your impressive portfolio and results when you reach out to potential clients. Additionally, some of them will find you through your bylines and LinkedIn profile.
If you’re newer to freelancing, you get to choose something else to highlight. For example, you might emphasize that you’re easy to work with. Or how your past career in finance makes you ideal for writing in the finance industry. You get to choose.
Here’s an idea.
Set aside an hour and draft three or four posts for the coming week. Don’t know what to write about? Watch a webinar and write a few sentences about it. Or bullet point your takeaways. Share what you learn and ask others to share their thoughts.
It’s a great way to learn.
Stick with it. As you do this week after week, you’ll gain experience writing short posts, connect with potential clients, and discover new things. Plus, you can do it all in 20 minutes a day.
It’s a terrific way to build your brand.
What do you think? Are you already building your brand on LinkedIn? Drop us a comment below and let us know!
