Personal branding on LinkedIn: a practical guide for marketers

But this just shows that real life isn't perfect and we have these optimal best practices of posting three to five times maybe even every single day and sharing it goes and carousels and infographics and being and reading lies and everywhere and here and there and everywhere but unreliable just doesn't happen. Let's get introducing our speaker. So today we have the fabulous Phil. Now Phil is someone that I take just so much joy in having as a guest on the marketing meetup and the reason for that is I met Phil I don't know maybe five six seven years ago as a marketing meetup event when he was starting his business out in Manchester and like I'm not going to say he was this sort of on you know raw figure at all there was clearly something special about Phil right from the start but over the past six years watching his personal whending agency grow and just like him as a person grow over the past few years has been a genuine privilege. So I'm thrilled to bits that you can join us as our guest today. Before we get started I just want to say a big thank you to our sponsors. So this week's featured sponsor is Canva. No I don't think I need to tell you what Canva does but they are fabulous and we're thrilled to bits to be working with them. The thing you need to know however with our relationship with Canva is that right now we have a code that gives you three months access to Canva Pro for free which is just lovely. So this applies to new customers but if you are coming to the end of your billing period then you can also apply the code. So it's TMM3 free and found on the QR code on there will also follow up afterwards so you can also get access to that code as well as a big thank you to Canva. Also a huge huge thank you to Westier, to MailChimp, to Prismic, to Frontify, Plannable and Cambridge Marketing College. They're all fabulous organisations who are able us to bring these sessions to you so thank you very very much to all these organisations with all that said let me introduce the absolute legend that is Phil on screen as well as saying a big thank you to all you lovely lovely people in the chat. I just want to say thank you to all of you for doing that as well because that makes such a difference. So Phil let's get started with today's session. I've blabbed on for long enough. Shall I ask the first question which is why do you think the phrase personal brand makes so many people skin just crawl? Thank you so much Joe for that intro you honestly made me sound like a superhero and I appreciate the time and I have one in the chat and I've got up on the sides I can see your your messages. So yes I think personal running all that phrase can meet people skin crawl because long story short I think people don't have an issue with having their credibility their thoughts and opinions out there but it's the performative element of it that people don't like. I think you're the performative side of you know I'm excited to share that phrase just that's the issue that I think people have. The associate person running with a fake version of them needs associate with kind of being like an actor and you're just not being a true self because we all know phrase authenticity gets thrown about a lot but in reality you know authenticity at work is going to be different from authenticity when you're with your kids or your friends and family so it gets fine that balance that people haven't really understood so they just think or cringe personal brand. I love that mate that's absolutely spot on. We've got Rose Marie in the chat already saying I'm thrilled to share and just laughing out loud and I think it's like properly, properly true and I think you've nailed it in an answer. I've almost got no further questions on that answer. I only to ask whether you, it's the obvious follow up but whether you've personally found a way of getting past that cringe and like we're getting right into the depths of their straight away but like acknowledging that performative nature of stuff or also competing against algorithms or competing against like hooks and all that sort of stuff. How do you get past that performative nature for yourself? It's, I'll be honest, and everyone in the chat like it's very difficult because take my person brand or presence for example I kind of have to have a good presence to show for people that I know I'm doing kind of like when you go to the gym and you see the PT's you usually go to the PT that looks at their in the best shape because chances are they'll be able to help you but I think two things to kind of pull it out I guess in my situations I remind myself that I'm not selling my personal brand I'm selling people the transformation of I've taken someone from your position from point A to point B rather than what I look like because it's one thing building my own person brand but then building your personal brand is a completely different skill set. So I kind of remind myself in that so ground yourself in the credibility and the skill set you have rather than how flashy things look you know I'll be honest I'm a circle for a selfie plus reflection type of post on the thing I think it's part of my personality but the parts of it are castled through and I try my best to write how I speak dictations can't be like a big thing for me so I try to avoid doing too many cliches because number one I'm sure I'll get to AI side of things everyone's constantly using AI tools that are learning from ourselves and it's kind of created this weird loop so AI content even writing content is really hard to distinguish so the best distinguish it is just to be your imperfect self you don't have to capitalize every sentence you can use funny slang if necessary and you don't have to write what I call broetry where I'm sure you guys are just getting it where it's just your line space line space so try to just be I know it's actually be you and find what that looks like through experimentation and try not to look over people yeah 100% and I think you've hit on something so strong there straight off the bat which is when you're making the point about in a way you're trying to sell your credibility and your products and services and the transformation that you're taking people on I think it what that speaks to me of is someone who's got their marketing out on when they're doing this which is looking at the customer the potential customer and sort of saying this is this is the journey that I want to take you on rather than sort of feeling like it's all about us in a way and it's such a conflicting platform linked in specifically because you're showing up as yourself but you are also trying to do the product or service thing and and those two things don't always mesh you know in a perfect way no one's born to be a marketer in the same way as no one's born to be in insurance salesman or wherever it is you know and so you're showing part of our personality but that's it's a very very tricky balance to do so I love that and thank you to speaking to that tension straight off the bat you're doing fabulously and and there's so many lovely comments in the chat as well so you know thank you to Eloise to Rashi once or at Eloise just for being fabulous already and I did that first question around sort of the personal brand element and making people skin cruel because I wanted to sort of get right into the the number of the issue but I want to take a step back before we sort of progress this conversation to make sure everyone sort of kept up and so when we're speaking about a personal brand what is that to you right what is the definition is it logo is it niche is it a vibe you know like when we're starting from scratch what where do you sort of define personal brand yeah but the challenge here is there is not one definitive definition of personal running so in people have certain definitions but the way I try to think of personal running like it's going to clients is it's the conscious building of your reputation and it's always or mostly you know referred to in a digital and the professional context so personal branding isn't your LinkedIn it's not your logo it's not necessarily your content it's that mental association of when I see Joe what do I think of what what thoughts come to mind for me I think human I think kind I think authentic I think anti you know like Broadway tree like a fake mess and those are the phrase that can't come to mind when I think of you and your content and your whole brand so that's the essential way it is it's that mental association usually obviously we cover top of LinkedIn today we talk content people will see snippets of that association through the content the way you write it the type of photos you might use even like your profile picture and the style of like you know words you'd use whether it's like more slang like or more like corporate top I think all of it's fine it's the key thing is trying to be consistent with it as well which is not a key thing but that mental association is definitely the person running to me I love that and and I guess you know as you pointed out it's the association of the face and James rightly pointed out in the chat he had a blushing to your very kind list mate I think just to just to build on your ideas and sort of share a thought one of my favorite mental models when it comes to the branding stuff is when Mark Ritzon speaks about, you have three brain cells dedicated to your brain. And so I thought what was interesting there when you started to list off, I think you actually listed four, but there was almost that thing where like, at the moment where someone thinks about you, what are those three things that those three brain cells are dedicated to? And so we can apply the same here in this personal brand context, right? What are three things that people think about you? Those three brain cells and it's really interesting that it can be someone's face, it can be the logo, et cetera, et cetera. It's really, really solid. So thank you very much. Let's head to a third question. And I'm aware that we've got three questions that have already been submitted only in the first couple of minutes from today's session. But folks, if you have your own questions, then please do drop them into the Q&A 'cause we'll make sure to prioritize those. My questions are less interesting than yours. So a lot of people in this audience are gonna be brilliant marketers. And they probably build other people's brands every day. There'll be a mix of freelancers, there'll be some people marketing other people's companies. But they don't necessarily have to do this for themselves and I guess this is again speaking to the personal branding of stuff. Does this matter? Like what headspace do you think folks need to be in? To be able to actually like really commit to LinkedIn? And where do you see folks failing? 'Cause the phrase that comes to mind or phrase that comes to me often is, oh, I know I should do more of this. And then I almost feel like when someone says, oh, I know I should do more, they usually finish it with, but I don't want to. And those are the folks where I'm like, you're not going to because you don't want to. And that's fine, but it's also the truth that I've observed. But how about you, where have you seen people succeed and fail in terms of their headspace? - Such a good question. And if I waffle on for too long, I'm sure. (laughing) I want to kind of be honest and transparent with my thinking, so I'm very, I can't think out loud as I speak here. Partially the fact that, so I've been running this personal branding agency for around four years now. And at my age, so I'm 27, I started it with my 2023. The rooms I've been able to enter have been a result of my personal brand. The fact that we even have this conversation, I think it's the brand, it's a business. And I think we can think of your personal brand if you don't have a business as a form of equity that you're building, you know, it's the new CV. Nowadays, I don't know what you guys, but I go to my network of events, I tend to ask for LinkedIn before phone numbers or emails. So it's that thinking of, you know, try and think of this as, you know, you're building this digital network of people that will keep up with you, learn, drop to you, and then eventually, you know, whether it's now or a few years time, there may be some opportunities that can help you. And that's, I guess, outside of work, but even within work, gonna show the rest of the team how powerful the network effect of LinkedIn actually is. I think there's a step that shows that, you know, the collective employees, network or personal profiles gets like a 12x, you know, further reach than the company's following itself. It's something along those lines, I'm sure, some will, or fashion. (laughs) It's just evidence that people connect with people, people buy from people, people build of people. So why not think of your person, round there's a way to kind of help you feature you, you know, now. - I say, I love that. And I like that the struggle and I've delivered a few LinkedIn workshops in my time. And encouragement I've given the folks in the room is like, you are doing this for you. 'Cause to your point, really, I'm building rather than making a different point, I hope is, this is something which will supersede your time at any individual company. You know, if you move on, then this moves with you. And so it's such a powerful resource in that way. We've had Ranjini pop into the chat. And I don't usually take questions from the chat, but I will on this occasion because it was one of the questions we were gonna touch on later. But acknowledging the power of these profiles, as you've just said, Ranjini's asking, how much time is realistic to dedicate to maintaining your own personal brand on LinkedIn? And I guess I've phrased the question, my question a little bit later, about like minimal viable LinkedIn presence. Like, refokes you like, I'm busy, you know, how do I get around that? Where do you go to in your head space on that? - This is, again, another question because I, I'm sure you guys have probably seen my LinkedIn or you'll probably check it after this. I've had really big gaps in my LinkedIn activity. And as the person running, I've heard you, you know, off the platforms, but this just shows that real life isn't perfect. And we have these optimal best practices of posting three to five times, maybe even every single day. And you're sharing videos and carousels and infographics and you're doing LinkedIn lies and you're everywhere and here and there and everywhere. But in reality, that just doesn't happen. It's just life won't allow that. We're just talking before this about, you know, little ones and how busy your life, family life can be get. You know, so do you have the time to create a post every single day, probably not even with, you know, AI tools, you know, the cheeky plug. We have our tool, Pasora, that helps people create content, you know, we have the agency. It still takes time to review to maybe make amendments to posts. And then also on top of that, people want to comment and share their thoughts. Or if you actually do a job at your person around, you may get beyond message in the DMs. And then, you know, you can also be a whole level four time job. So there's a lot of touch points. I always like to kind of ground it down to what is the objective. So again, we're consciously trying to build our reputation. Let's say the reputation we all want to build here is a knowledgeable marketer. That could be sharing our two cents on a big creators post about a brand new campaign within your industry. That comment might take five minutes to craft versus a 15, 20-minute well research post on this end concept. So I'll actually lean towards getting maybe five comments they written up, which are, you know, well-foiled out. They're on the strategically on the right type of communities and profiles. And then once you feel like you can get past the commenting side, maybe we can go for one post a week. One post a week, once every two weeks. I'll give an example. I have a client that is a, he's a really, really big football agent for Premier League stars. And don't ask me how I connected it. I have no idea what this is. My job's just gone very weird and washing. And then we sometimes post maybe once a month, once a week. A free, in terms of frequency. And that's because number one, if you're so busy, constantly traveling from city to city, country to country, doesn't really want to think about it. And then number two, he's in this space where if you post too much, it kind of can feel a bit overbearing. No. Because while sometimes, you know, absence doesn't hit the heart grow funder, we have that. That's what I'm dealing with. And that's something a lot of people don't like to talk about. But I don't think you need to be there every single day. You have the time to do once a week. Then let's start with that. But I would be very happy if you guys post in once a month. And it's just a rile of sort of here's what's happened within the company. It's in this and car gone from there. I love that. And out of interest with the example that you gave there, because I think it's interesting to follow that example. With the football agent, has there been like a specific conversation on like, this is the objective I want to achieve. And therefore, posting once a month in your example is absolutely fine to do that. Is his objective or her objective in that moment? Simply keeping it ticking along. How have they started from that objective place and then ended up with that cadence? Yeah. So again, you know, Chris Yonler and all those are not going to DM this. [INAUDIBLE] Hey, can you manage me? So his game is clearly obviously offline. He's the power of multiplying, I guess, or amplifying himself online. So his objective essentially was, can we get offline conversations to be a bit sweeter because of the stuff he's sharing online? And I think that's something that a lot of us can resonate with. If we can try and create content that will lead for us to our network in the event, maybe someone seeing a post you've written or a sales pitch or you're having your pitch in for something, if you have a better relationship with the agency or the brand because of the fact that they've seen something, that a little in. So in that case, that's more his objective. And know some of us hate thinking, oh, feel like I kind of want more. I want brand deals or I want leads to coming from my business. So I want to have speaking opportunities. That then obviously will mean ideally we want to post more. But the reason behind us posting more is we want to show different sides of us. So you know, like you said earlier Joe, like one of the parts you really connected to is me being me on my content. But I also have people that look at my content and want to know does he know what he's talking about. So I have a lot of content to achieve that objective. And then I also have content that's a bit more, you know, I guess. case study and analytical and technical to kind of show people that I do know I'm talking about there. So you can have more pillars in that sense to hit those objectives but try and be as you know strict with that with yourself. You don't have to do everything at one goal. You can get your personal year over in case study content for example which means one case study every week or every two weeks is perfectly fine. What's fabulous about your answer to that Phil as much as going into the example is I think you spoke to such a diversity of objectives and I think coming into this call you know I probably would have gone light you know to traditional funnel I would have gone brand awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, advocacy you know like that's where my head would have gone to first. I think as a thought exercise for folks tuning today it might be worth you know and I was get a bit worried about this because I never want to feel like I'm telling people what to do but like actually sitting down and sort of doing the five wise you know why am I posting? Well I want to do get brand awareness or whatever it may be but why is that and like it may well be that two or three wise you get down to the actual answer and maybe that helps calibrate your objective just a little bit more which then sort of loops back around to the question that sort of says you know how much is the realistic time to dedicate to LinkedIn as a minimum you're probably going to find your answer once you've found that objective but I think what's so strong from you Phil is just like speaking to that diversity of objective like that was really really helpful so thank you for speaking to that mate it's really appreciated. I had another point to that just to kind of guess on it's something a bit more tactical in terms of how much time so before so I like I said I started outside in March 2022 and the film's with a mass and facts they'll know the chatroom to drop November 2020 so I had give or take six seven-inch months so just joy. This is live. This is real live. Okay perfect and yeah I had that you know that time and when we use a right post with no AI assistance it will take me around 20 to 25 minutes to write a post with the idea that and I don't think AI will drop that number much it could take me 15 minutes if unless I really know I've got a very short snappy thing I want to share that could be 10 minutes but talking the different stages of writing which is you know the idea come up with an idea of a post then content research so whether or not that's going online or internally looking for your case of these the natural writing piece then they're editing and kind of making changes and then scheduling or potentially publishing that that will probably take you 15 to 20 minutes so how much time do you have to write you know three posts a week five posts a week you can kind of gauge from there. Certainly I love it that's that's really really helpful it reminds me almost of the freelance pricing strategy where you work out from at the end of the you want to earn X amount and then you divide it by 40 because that's how many weeks you want to work then you divide up by five and you got your day rate almost you know there's similar. Similar vibes. Thank you mate thank you for speaking to them. I want to do a quick check with the folks in the chat because you know we're hundreds of people watching here but I want to make sure that we're hitting a mark for you in terms of like making sure we're nailing in on the things that you want to know about. So whether it's in the chat or the Q&A would love your thoughts folks watching in to to make sure that we deliver exactly what you need because we can we can keep on chatting about tactics and LinkedIn etc but I'd love to make sure that this works for you so I'll do one more question and then I'll dip into the Q&A just to make sure that we're focusing on those things. So let's take a very very tactical question right which I think is usually a popular thing I think the answer is always it depends but let's speak about content format content formats and formats that work on LinkedIn specifically. So what are you seeing that's actually working right now? There are plain text posts, there are photos, there are videos, there are documents, there are a long form video, there's DMing folks etc etc. Where are you seeing the most successful folks in building the LinkedIn personal brand without the sort of cringe associated with it? Yeah, that's true. Okay so that being too much for a crop out yes it does depend on the objectives but I also think it depends on your skill set. If your veteran camera maybe videos will do you more service than you know the the text only posts or text posts image or potentially if your service is something that is portrayed better on let's say for example audio so doing a video if you're like a voice actor probably you should do videos so connect there is like depending on the type of work in your skill set but genuinely speaking we have focused most our content using images plus text. Okay so in the format ATM the majority I think 95% of our clients will post ATM you know between Monday to Friday or Monday to Sunday actually will be an image post with some text. The type of content which I think would probably be useful to give is we've seen a lot of lead gem posts work really well. That's why I kind of given off this you know I guess perception that they have done a lot of research into a field that everyone's interested in or AI, LinkedIn's 360-Brew algorithm and Conway and summarized it for people to can make it a bit more actionable and if you would like the summary comment or certain words hello. I'm cringes as I'm saying this but yeah format that has definitely worked really well and that's okay. I think that just shows that people want shortcuts they want things put them on a platter so if you can kind of make songs life easier in a way through content that's image post text that works well. Another thing that always works well is a celebration of any kind. Promotion you know new client, new job, new company starting, birthday, company birthday, employee employment birthday, those type of things were always performer. And I would say on the other side, on the other side there will also be personal reflections like hot takes. It is a case of you know you've seen something on line or documentaries gone live and you've given your hot take on that that always performed well. But very specifically actually what that works well with our marketing clients is just sharing campaigns. So if someone's done a really like a brand is done a really innovative campaign I'm sure you guys have seen this that will always work well. But to summarize it is celebrations is contrary in thinking, making people think different about commonly associated things and personal reflections and thoughts I'd say works well. And of course the Legion. Yeah I want to ask a follow on the Legion because it's so interesting I think it speaks to the nub of some of the issue that we're speaking about today with the personal how to have a LinkedIn presence without the sort of personal brain type of thing. And you know like this is a you know this is a conversation in a safe space between two people who like each other and so I think I can say it without you know offending you that those Legion things they kill me you know like I see them and I'm like oh man that that hurts you know. And I'm curious about how you reconcile those those sort of things you know with the folks who are posting those kind of things is that because they're so nailed in on ROI and metrics and actually for them it isn't performative or are they just leaning into the sort of saying you know what I'm going to do personal branding you know I'm results at all costs and sort of that sort of thing. I guess again come into the title of today's session where we're like we want to be on LinkedIn we want to do well and it's one where does that start and start and sort of like where do you set your lines and so on and so forth how do you have those conversations for folks. It's a tough one because yeah a lot of people come to us for example and say hey feel like I want to be famous or I want to have a bunch of leads come through and I always say your personal brand isn't necessarily the best channel for that because of the fact that although yes everyone's very much aware that public figures and creators are getting support and that I think was a big hurdle to get over the first stage but you know it's how how how how how how how how peace this it's like anything that is done at the detriment of your person brand will have bigger consequences than oh that was a rubbish poll it's that's a rubbish poll so I see them in person maybe I won't be as calm in your kind of warmth to them as I would afford it made that you know, mistakes. So you have to kind of just remember that yes, it's your personal brand works so well because of how personal it is and as quick as it can help you connect to someone, it can also help that person kind of destroy them or push their reputation back. Very controversial example is, if anyone has heard about wireless festival being cancelled, there's a result certain Kanye West not being allowed into the UK and that being due to his views, which we won't go into, that's an example of a person brand that has been used in the worst way and his opinion has actually caused a lot of problems. So those Leedlin posts as long as the Leedlin actually is there, I would say, tried to, you know, use them sparingly. I think personally can't click the big content and the whole idea of clickbait is you've created the promise and a certain standard and then when the person is invested time, effort, energy, sometimes money, into getting that thing aligned to what you promised it will be, to try and do those balance and hopefully it won't be as cringeworthy. No, you know what, I can follow the logic, you know, and like, I wouldn't go as far as I say, I'm a true believer but I'm a, I've had a softened viewpoint. So like, thank you for speaking through that, let's really appreciate it. I promise that we'll go into the community questions. I can see that there's, there's 15 open questions presently. I'm sure there'll be more that will come in as we go but I'd love to make sure that we answer the questions that are most important to the folks watching in. So with that thought in mind, let's go through the community questions if that's all right with you Phil. So let's take this first one from Amy because I think we've spoken a lot about showing up authentically but the other side of the argument is given away too much of yourself, you know, and sort of, there was a real sort of thing a couple of years ago on LinkedIn where it felt like everyone was being performatively vulnerable almost which is just as bad as anything else, potentially. So Amy asks, with personal reflections, how do you remain honest and human without giving too much detail and sounding either the potentials, especially if colleagues are going to see it? So that's sort of a balance of like speaking about things but also, you know, sort of being aware that, that, you know, your colleagues are going to see it and it might be embarrassing or damaging the organisation you're in. Yeah, that's a great question. I think when there's that sense of like nerves, worries, I tend to try and ground it into what is the value point or the service I'm trying to give someone. So am I trying to entertain someone, educate them, inspire them, motivate them, try to lean into giving things that is objectively valuable to people rather than go too heavy into the story. Use your story as a way to can't reinforce the point but don't lead with the story. That would probably be my starting point for such a thought process and then over time, you'll start to realise which stories and what things you're comfortable sharing that won't come across to you cringe. Because like for example, I have a daughter who had a really, really young good life. I was 18 and became a dad to my little girl. I don't really lead with that story on LinkedIn. I've talked about here there and everywhere like a few times but I don't always talk about that. So that's a case in me being like, "Oh, my little one's going to grow more, see this content." I really want her to see that and think that I'm using her name and her literally like this her brand to support me. I don't know. So I try to create those boundaries of what are things I don't want to count, I guess use for profit per se and I just kind of keep that in the bucket and I just keep that closed. So maybe that could help. No, I love that, I think again, you know, it seems like there's an abundance of folks at their gardens today, you know, but just writing down those sort of red lines for folks, you know, on what that may be. I fully agree that I've had this conversation with many people about sort of maintaining that privacy but I really appreciate your point about leading with the objectiveness as sort of the main hook and the main sort of thing to speak about rather than just the story. Hopefully that brings it into a safe space. So thank you mate, that's a really great answer. Let's go to a question which I saw a little bit earlier and so I'm going to paraphrase it until I find it perfectly. But the question was, how do you decide what you want your personal brand to be? And again, sort of referencing the title, you know, without the personal brand. But how do you sort of decide the things that you want to sort of really focus in on? We're spoken about the objective earlier but you referenced in that answer, stuff like contemplers, etc. Yeah, yeah, okay. So this is where I said this, it's a skill set to build your own brand but then to build some losses brand. It's different things. So we obviously have a list of questions we ask in our on-bowling and that all around the idea of what will be the tone of voice and I guess like the emotion that your content will generally invoke, what hyper, I guess, factual things do you want your content to kind of portray? So do you want it to be more like, hey, this person really understands a certain subject or this person is very anti-establishment and can goes against the grain. So there's kind of these, I guess, key phrases and buzzwords, people to associate their brand with and you kind of reverse engineer the elements of the brand that can help achieve that. So again, tone of voice is a really good one and then that begins to kind of become a buzzword. That usually means key phrases or signature phrases you might use. It may be literary devices kind of like, you know, I hate to break it to you but and then you can't give someone even that mask that we take away, but certain phrases like in bogus certain type of emotion, then also your imagery can kind of help bring that across as well. If you want to be seen as someone that's really personal and when you see someone's content, it's really, you know, you can tell that that person's like having a conversation with me versus them talking on stage, for example, using selfies can help kind of bring that across versus certain clients of ours. We use foes of them on stage a lot. We use foes of them, you know, in the middle of doing their activities or whatever their job is to kind of show them this is just me documenting a piece of my life versus the selfie which will be a bit more of a reflection. So images and creators can kind of help with that. But yeah, that's without getting too nerdy, you know, the phrases of how you want to be associated and then look at what, you know, I guess, levels you can pull in terms of the way you write and the foes you use and those, of course, like the positioning statement of your actual brand on your profile in terms of the headline and about section point in the right direction. That's fabulous, mate. And I think what's really interesting about that answer is that again, you know, it's a joy coming into these sessions because I get to learn from people which is, you know, and so I'm learning from you here and say, how do I intuitive and try to answer the same question? I would have been like, pick three topics, you know, pick three topics that you want to be known for. And where I love the nuance of your answer is that you started off there going into the emotions and what do I want people to feel when they see my content, which I think adds such a lovely nuance to how you present it adds detail which is useful when you got that blank page syndrome and you're just sort of like, what do I write about today? But it also informs way more than just the content you're writing that as you've sort of pointed out so far, you know, stuff like how the profile is, the profile photo is taken, etc, etc. It all sort of builds into both yes topics, but then also emotions. I think that's lovely. So solid answer, thank you, mate. That's really fabulous. I want to, you referenced AI in your last answer. And this isn't a community question and we'll come back to those after this one, but my feeling about LinkedIn currently is that is being filled with AI content that is either recognisably AI or sometimes less recognisably AI. But if I'm being honest, the enjoyment factor when it comes to sort of scrolling down my feed is reducing because I'm like, you know, it just feels bland. So with that thought in mind, like, how would you encourage the folks watching in today to start thinking about using AI as part of their efforts if they would like to, where they should, where they shouldn't, and you know, sort of that part of the building of the personal brand within awareness that, you know, you're part of AI personal branding organization. So I think you'll probably advocate for it. Yeah, so if you guys remember I can mention like the main five sections of what it's like to build, sorry, to create a post and that's, you know, the ideation, the research, the writing, the refinement and then, I guess like the scheduling slash posting, the ideation part is where a lot of people love to use AI, you know, like you mentioned, the blank page syndrome can can easily be solved by saying AI or chatgb tea, Claude, what should I write about today? And that I think should always be your failsafe, but shouldn't be your primary way to create content. I always use this phrase a lot to my clients where we say if you're under thinking you should read or consume, and if you're all, you should write. And that's kind of a good balance point of how or where you should seek your information. So if you ever want to get yourself into, I guess, a personal brand or writing headspace, try and get writing. Sorry, try and get reading. So you're thinking about other people's opinions. And ideally, not from LinkedIn, try and go, I guess, a step more deep or complex, or articles, books, YouTube, YouTube. Yeah, the more to meet up. So let's go into that and then start making notes and then try and like, you know, expand those notes and those notes can easily become content. So that's kind of how I, I guess, I approach it in that sense. And then you can use AI with, you know, you can inject those ideas into AI to kind of flesh that out or maybe refine it in the way it's written. So that helps with that part. But then also, the good thing that AI is really good at is if you might have written something initially by yourself, and it's too long, goes too short, and you kind of want a bit of guidance. So maybe you've written something and you feel like, there must be some research to back this up. AI is of course great at being able to do the grunt work of searching. So you can probably use it in that sense. But try to minimize my survey if necessary around the ideation and the writing side. Ideation, because I want you to think for yourself. And then the writing side, you don't have to overcomplicate it. LinkedIn is not where it used to be, where the formatting and the certain phrases you used was the reason people paid attention to it nowadays. Hope's like that you mentioned before. I think now it's actual, the actual contents. And even algorithm itself, you know, this new LinkedIn 360 brew algorithm actually reads your content when you post it. So trying, yeah, trying to just ideation and writing being you, and then you can pay out for the rest of the necessary. I think that's really solid. And there was a graphic I saw quite recently, which sort of it was two different lines. And on these two different lines, the first one was describing the wrong AI process, which was half and half human rights prompt. And then AI takes the rest. And then the second line, it was several blocks. It was like human AI, human AI, et cetera, et cetera, as part of the process, particularly when you're writing alone. Felt useful. And it's largely what you've just explained as well. So we'll try and find out. And your reference, the algorithm changes there with an awareness that we have 14 minutes left. We probably can't go into depth there, but what we should do as part of our follow-up is find some explainers on the algorithm updates for anyone watching it. So we'll try and make that as part of the newsletter. Hopefully pop it into hive as well. In your last answer, Phil, you spoke about finding inspiration. I love that, by the way. If you're under thinking, read. If you're over thinking, right, I think that's such a lovely quote. You did say, as part of that answer, your reading shouldn't just be on LinkedIn. But Alice has asked, nonetheless, which is high fill, aside from yourself and Joe, which is very kind. Who do you recommend following as excellent examples of personal branding on LinkedIn at the moment? Looking for some inspiration as I've been away from the platform for a little while. And I love in the chat as well, actually. So if you've got anyone that you'd recommend in the chat, definitely pop them in as well. Yeah. That's a good one. Sounds where they don't actually pay attention to a lot of personal branding, focus people on LinkedIn, I think, because for the same reason why, I guess, a musician won't listen to the same genre they create, they might go to different places. I like to go, I guess, more into the right authors and maybe even podcasts as my reference point. But some really good people on LinkedIn, I would say, Shwab Ahmed. It's a really, really good friend of mine that he's really good with his approach to writing. There's Matt Barker. He's really cool as well. There is, you know, trying to think of other people. Matt Barker, very, very tall. It turns out as well, so. [LAUGHTER] He's a very tall man. [LAUGHTER] There is Sam Winsbury, who also has a personal branding agency. Laura Costo has quite a big brand now. I'm sure there's plenty of people missing out. I guess these are people I've recently seen on my feed. But I would say, probably I'm sure the people have comments, but trying to maybe be funny enough to make a post about it and say, hey, I'm trying to get out of my bubble. Should I pay attention to you? And that one worked well for a post, so. I love that. Thank you. I think I'd give a shout out to A. Poole Dunford as someone who's fabulous. And the reason why she's fabulous is she's just a sheer expert in what she does. And so she shows up and you read her content. And it's like, my goodness. This is someone who really, really knows her stuff. And so she's always a fantastic read. And then Tom Goodwin is the other one. And the reason I like Tom is, speaks a little bit to your point about reading. I don't agree with everything Tom says. And actually, there's quite a lot of occasions. I quite strongly disagree that what it does is provide a different perspective. And sometimes that's something to sort of just provoke you and sort of go, oh, that's curious. I'm curious about that. And so that's really strong. Shannon has said Amanda, Nati Dad, who works with Rand Fishkin as well, both of those two are fabulous follows. Amanda has actually spoken to the TMM a little while ago, so I would recommend Rachel has recommended Max Hopkins and who happens to be a friend, so you definitely shouldn't follow him. But the rest are all fabulous. So thank you, everyone, for popping in the chat. Your recommendations too. Let's take a challenge, I think, a lot of folks will face when it comes to personal profiles. And more from the perspective, probably a little bit closer to your world, Phil, where you're trying to get other people to post, rather than just yourself. So Jackie asks, I look after the company page, but how can I encourage my team to use their personal profiles to have a voice or brand, not just a like or a repost of the company page, but like sort of actually engaging and sort of looking to do it themselves. And I'll be interested in your answer and either from the perspective of directly answering Jackie's question in a hypothetical sense or in an example sense of how you've taken someone a bit resistant to posting and taking one that journey to posting. Good question. If I had to summarize it, I'd say it's culture. The culture of your team, the company, are they innovative in their thinking? Are they-- are you guys open-minded to try more, I guess, against the grain tactics to get the word out of there? If that's in place, then the work that we'll-- about to do will be much easier. So if there's, I guess, if you're in a position of leadership, can you do stuff that will help encourage people to be more, I guess, open to failing, open to trying things and not trying things, and there not been any penalty to that? Because the second thing I'd definitely say is, I think it mentioned confidence training and the idea of should we give people time to sit down and figure things out? Yes, that usually is the solution. So whether or not it's in-person workshops, don't want to make the sound like I'm trying to plug myself. But-- Oh, got-- find any person-brand expert or communications person that can help sit down with everyone and understand, again, what is their individual objectives? And I don't think this is a question that is explicitly answered. But the person that's running the session, whether it's yourself, you need to read in between the lines. If you can tell, person A-- and they try to get Korean content-- has very high ambitions to one day either become-- leadership within the company, or you have a feeling, hey, they might actually not be here in three to five years-- trying to, I guess, present person-branding is their digital CV is the thing that will outlive them in this current position they're in. And then if the person's a bit more like, I'm happy where I am, I don't actually have any ambitions to grow. It could be a case of helping them build a bit of a community of like-minded individuals. I mean, he would say no to me, another person, to have a really cool conversation with chances are they'll be open to it. He's a lot of kind of find everyone's personal, I guess, motivations, and then find a way to connect that to the business objective and let your win win for everyone. If not, you're going to struggle. But then again, if the culture of a less tried some crazy stuff, if it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't, isn't that, then all of that will be always the time. I love that way and I think that's really really strong. I'd offer a slight build just because I've seen it be done well in an agency environment in the past where they specifically built a team of people who put their hands up and said, "I want to do this." I think it's one of those things sometimes where like if folks don't want to do it, they're never going to do it. But like, and so I think they had to, if, say for example, the team was a team of 50, they had a team of eight people who were saying, "Yes, I want to be part of this." And then they gave them the resources and the time to really develop those things. So I don't know the company size, but if you're able to identify those people who really want to engage, then that could be useful as well, allowing you to sort of not be banging your head against the wall with the people you just never ever do it, which could definitely be the case. There are 14 open questions. I hope everyone in the community feels like we're doing our best to, and as many as we can for you because ultimately you're the most important people here. So I'm sure we won't get to all of them, but I'll start to theme them as we come towards the end. We've got one here from Pauline, which I'm going to widen out to touch. So Pauline says, "I'm speaking at an employee ability roadshow for uni students." So the timing of this webinar is perfect. What advice would you give them for setting up their LinkedIn page for the first time? And I'm going to widen it out just for the folks watching in and sort of say in terms of building your profile, what are the things that are either like the absolutely most effective things, or the things that people are missing when it comes to building their LinkedIn profile? Okay, so I will kind of make this a bit matter because I can't mention that earlier before. The idea of trying to understand the person's personal motivation if there is student, oh let's say first, you know, this is their first role, graduate program scheme, that type of thing, and trying to connect to the business. So those individuals usually want to find some form of expression outside of the actual, probably, I guess, lower end work that they may be doing in a more geneal role. So if you give them something fun and exciting to be talking about, I don't know, AI marketing, even though all they're doing is just scheduling social media posts. That's not my first term. That, you know, a way to kind of excite them and kind of keep them stimulated in that sense. But then also, I guess if we're talking more general, I guess some like exercises you can do is help either, full enough AI can actually work well with this here because it's not ideation for hosts, but it's creating questions that will help you create answers that could become ideas, suppose. You can ask it or have a person ask you, you know, certain questions about yourself. What would you say is a strength of yours that has saved you quite a few times in your work or what is another company or brand that you really love the campaigns that they're doing where you look at anything, oh, I wish I'd made this. Or what is something you can't stand in the world of marketing that needs to be eradicated in 2026? And all these are very blasey questions I've heard these things before. Hopefully within the answer, there might be a thread that you can pull on and then go into a different direction, which is why I think I'm, I guess, why I like what I do so much. And I've been around for so long is I don't actually find the magic in the initial answer. So it's always the follow questions where people start to give the real gems and gold. So that exercise, if you could do it with someone else, it would always be better, but you can also ask yourself those questions. And then hopefully that will give you really unique concepts and ideas to talk on versus sauce on talk about three reasons why AI is going to change the marketing industry and I'm going to do the exact same thing. That's a close. So try and be unique with your thinking by actually having the opportunity to think differently. I love that way. Let's take two questions to finish off. So this one from Lauren is interesting because we haven't touched on connecting so far. And by the way, the last question I'm going to ask is someone leaves today and makes one change. How are they usually linked in just one? Why is it? So that would be the last question. But we'll take this question from Lauren first. So Lauren says I'm building a personal brand for a director. He's ex-Army turned a financial advisor. I noticed his dormant profile was connected with multiple other financial advisors, but that's not our target market. Should we be connecting with other people in the same field? And like I guess this speaks to a balance of like speaking to your people and providing that kinship and that sort of pierce that versus that objective of maybe lead gen or bringing people into the business. But when it comes to connecting how you sort of reconciled it with your own clients. So I would say when you talk to your own people that won't bring leads business opportunities usually. It will make bring referrals or kinship or connections in that sense. And let's say in the while of marketing there's always a slot for someone to speak on stage about the stuff you do chances are the person that's going to bring you in will be a marketing coordinator of some former event coordinator. So that can be if those objects are what you're aligned with that will kindly and into that way. But if again we're talking to a director in finance and surely you guys have your certain key industries connect to those people and talk to them so you can bring business. Because yeah one thing that I did for a long time is I made personal branding content for other personal branders. Yeah. It's just a leap. So yeah, break out those bubbles. They definitely help. Love that man. Thank you very much. Let's second question now. Well, I mean you most said I'll just remind folks because I sort of mumbled through it. So the last one is you know we're coming to the end of today's session and you've been so great mate. Thank you very much. But someone leaves today's session and you want them to make one change on how they use LinkedIn and it's only just one. What would that change be? I think I said this year earlier. I would like because I think of LinkedIn as a party or a networking event. Think of this as a place where you're not here to get business. You're not here to make money from people. You're here to just help people give them a helping hand whether it's you know asking them a question because you are curious about something you've seen in post or you're curious about a certain topic and you share a post and ask for advice. You know my top performing post have always been around. Hey, I want to learn in a certain area would something kind of to share and to pit you know their thoughts or to direct me in a certain direction. I think people love to kind of you know feel like they may know a thing. So if you want to come in without humility you'll always do well. I don't know. Thinking of it like a party sounds a lot funner as well frankly speaking which always goes a long long way. Phil you've been such a legitimate thank you you know I've taken a bunch of joy from just sharing the hour with you and everyone watching in today as much as learning new things as well. So thank you for for teaching and thank you for being the lovely lovely human that you are. Thank you everyone for your fantastic comments throughout as well. You're just really really fabulous and it makes these sessions absolutely brilliant. I will give one quick lash out out to all of our sponsors but particularly Canva for today just to say if you want that three three months on Canva Pro and the QR code that's there and you'll need to input the code that's on screen will of course be distributing that as time goes by. Phil you've got a bunch of people saying thank you in the chat so well done you thank you everyone for being completely fabulous and we'll see you next week. Take care everyone thanks everyone.