LinkedIn personal branding means making it obvious, to the people you want to reach, what you know and how you help. You build it by choosing one clear focus, making your profile say it, posting about a few related topics in your own voice, and showing up in other people’s conversations. You already have a brand, by the way. The only question is whether it is the one you would pick.
Most advice on this stays abstract. “Be authentic.” “Know your audience.” Fine, but what do you actually write down? So this page is a set of five exercises, each one short enough to finish in a sitting. We work through every exercise with one example person so you can see what a finished answer looks like.
Our example is Dana, a made-up support leader who spent eight years building the customer support team at a software company and now wants to advise early-stage founders on doing the same.
Exercise 1: Write your positioning line
Fill in this sentence. You will not publish it as written. Everything else builds on it.
I help [specific audience] with [specific problem] through [your approach or experience].
Dana’s first attempt:
I help companies with customer experience through my passion for people.
Then the test: could this sentence describe thousands of other people? Dana’s could. “Companies” is everyone. “Customer experience” is a whole industry. “Passion for people” is not an approach.
Second attempt:
I help early-stage SaaS founders build their first support team, based on eight years running support at a growing software company.
Now there is a clear audience (early-stage SaaS founders), a clear problem (their first support team) and a reason to listen (eight years of doing it). A narrow focus is easier to remember, and you can widen it later once people know you for something.
Two more finished examples, for range:
- “I help hospital teams make sense of patient data, as a clinical data analyst.”
- “I help career changers move into UX research, after making that switch myself.”
Exercise 2: Check your profile against the line
Open your profile on your phone. Look at the top for three seconds, then look away. Could a stranger repeat your positioning line from what they saw? For most people the honest answer is “not really”.
Go section by section and write one sentence for each:
| Section | Dana before | Dana after |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | Head of Support at a SaaS company | Helping early-stage SaaS founders build their first support team · 8 years scaling support |
| About, first lines | A summary of past jobs | The positioning line, a short story about the first support hire Dana made, and how to get in touch |
| Banner | Default blue | One line: “Your first support team, built right” |
| Featured | Empty | Two posts on support hiring and a checklist Dana wrote |
The headline matters most because it travels with your name everywhere. The free LinkedIn Headline Generator gives you a few options built from your role and focus. For the banner, keep text away from the edges so it survives on a phone. Our profile guides cover every section in detail.
Exercise 3: Pick three content pillars and fill them
Content pillars are the topics you post about again and again. Three is a good number: enough variety to stay interesting, few enough that people link you with them.
A mix that works for most people:
- Your expertise: the practical know-how behind your positioning line
- Your experience: stories, lessons and mistakes from real work
- Your perspective: where you think your field is heading
Dana’s three:
- Support hiring: who to hire first, what to ask, what the first month looks like
- Lessons from scaling support: what broke at 10 customers, at 100, at 1,000
- Where support is heading: opinions on tools, team structure, what founders get wrong
Now the actual exercise. Write ten post ideas, at least three under each pillar. Do not write the posts, just a one-line idea for each. If you cannot get to ten, the pillar is too narrow or not really yours. Our list of LinkedIn post ideas helps when you get stuck.
A few of Dana’s:
- The three questions I ask every first support hire
- What broke when we hit our first 100 customers
- Why I would not buy a help desk tool before the first hire
Exercise 4: Run the voice test
Your voice is how you sound when you write. The fastest way to find it is to write the way you talk to a colleague you respect.
Take one idea from your list and write a rough draft. Then:
- Read it out loud. Cross out every phrase you would never say in conversation.
- Underline every sentence that only you could have written: a moment, a number from your own work, a name you have permission to use. If nothing is underlined, add one.
- Check the tone. Practical, warm, direct, playful: pick one and keep it across posts. Consistency is what makes a voice recognizable.
Dana’s draft opened with “In today’s fast-paced business environment, customer support is more important than ever.” Out loud, that sounds like nobody. The rewrite opens with “Our first support hire quit after six weeks, and it was my fault.” That one Dana would say.
If you draft with AI, including our free LinkedIn Post Generator, treat the result as a starting point and run this same test on it. A brand built on generic phrasing is hard to tell apart from everyone else’s.
Exercise 5: Do a monthly review
Once a month, spend twenty minutes with your own results, not general benchmarks. Answer three questions in writing:
- Which pillar brought the most useful comments and messages?
- Which format (story, how-to, opinion) did people respond to?
- Are the people engaging the audience in your positioning line?
Question 3 is the one people skip, and it matters most. If Dana’s posts get lots of likes from other support leaders but none from founders, the brand is working on the wrong audience. That is a reason to change topics or wording, not to celebrate.
To compare posts that reached very different numbers of people, use the Engagement Rate Calculator. Then do more of what works, drop what does not, and update your profile if your positioning changes.
The habits that hold it together
The exercises set things up. Two habits keep the brand alive between them.
Post on a rhythm you can keep. Consistency matters more than volume. One post every week or two, kept up for months, does more than a burst followed by silence. Keep your idea list running, rotate through your pillars, and choose a regular posting window. If your audience is in another time zone, the Best Time to Post planner converts their hours into yours.
Show up in other people’s comments. Your brand lives there too. A thoughtful comment on a post in your field puts your name and focus in front of people who do not follow you yet. Comment on posts that match your pillars so your activity tells the same story as your profile, and reply to genuine comments on your own posts. Our LinkedIn commenting strategy has a full routine.
Signs the brand is drifting
- Your last ten posts cover eight unrelated topics
- You are copying another creator’s personality, not just a format
- You post but never comment or reply
- Your headline says one thing and your posts say another
- A claim or number in a post would not survive a follow-up question
- You quit after a handful of posts, when a brand takes months to form
If two or more of these sound familiar, go back to Exercise 1 and check that the line still fits.
Your first sitting
Do Exercise 1 and Exercise 2 today. That is under an hour. Tomorrow, take one idea from your pillar list and draft it in the free LinkedIn Post Generator, then rewrite it in your own words. For the craft of the post itself, see how to write a LinkedIn post.