From Bland to Brilliant: Transform Your LinkedIn?? Content with Personal Flair

This week I chatted with personal branding specialist Ella Orr about the tricky topic of putting your personality into your LinkedIn?? content.

In my experience, this is a big challenge for many people and they tend to either be;

• Full on (loud) but not authentic
• Bland, steering away from revealing any personality.

Both of the above are driven by the same thing, a reluctance to reveal their real character and personality. It should be easy but it's really not!

So I sat down with Ella for an hour or so and chatted about this fascinating topic.

What follows is not a transcript of our interview, merely a summary. I strongly recommend you click below to listen to our chat in full below, or simply search for 'Informed by Mark Williams' on your podcast player of choice.

In summary we covered the following

• Ella's answer a question I recently received during a training session : "If I showed my personality on LinkedIn?? I wouldn't be authentic because my true character is to be private. So what should I do?"
• How online networking is different in that you can't wait for others to coax your character out of you.
• How your personality becomes a filter allowing you attract the right sort of customers
• LinkedIn?? users are interested in understanding more about who you are.
• The first step is self awareness. Understand who you are first.
• There isn't one way to be on LinkedIn??, there is only your way.
• Why 'performing or wearing a mask' leads to the wrong outcomes
• Introverts are just as interesting as extroverts...arguably more interesting!
• Extroverts or introverts who put on a 'performance' that is not authentic might appear to attract lots of attention but
• People who are introspective with their content are often more interesting but they typically find it hard to see that themselves.
• It helps to start with 2-3 topics that you want to become known for but try to approach these topics from a personal perspective.
• Example: You want to do a post about an event you recently attended. Instead of just sticking to the topics covered and the information provided, post about your observations and how you felt.
• Avoid getting too carried away with writing 'correctly' and using tools to correct your grammar. Develop your own style of writing that feels authentic.
• The benefits of persistence - keep being you, despite initial results, give your audience time to get to know you.
• Be prepared to be opinionated and use humour. Using a 'chatty' style rather than formal
• The benefits of storytelling from a personal perspective.
• Using empathy to focus on content that deeply appeals to your target audience.
• Why large corporates should encourage their employees to be themselves on LinkedIn?? and why it's worth pushing back and start to show how being authentic really benefits the visibility of the organisation on LinkedIn??.
• The dangers of taking a 'sales mentality' to producing content. Don't 'sell' yourself, just be real and let the audience decide if they like you or not.

We also talked about the following posts which represent great examples of putting personality into content.

I really enjoyed this discussion. It's a tricky subject and bringing your personality to your content is difficult for many of us but we both want to encourage you to lean into it. It takes a bit of courage but it's well worth the effort.

We would love to hear your views and perspectives on this subject. Either comment below or send me a LinkedIn voice message (via mobile app).

That's all for this week. Next week I have a very very special edition of 'Interesting people' so stay tuned for that.

Until then...