Building your online brand (without hiring a brand agency)

If you run a business, someone has almost certainly told you to "get on LinkedIn". It's good advice — but it's incomplete. Being on LinkedIn does nothing. Being recognisable on LinkedIn — for the thing you want to be known for, by the people you want to reach — is what moves the needle. That's your brand, and you can build it deliberately.

This matters more than most owners think, because your brand is doing sales work whether you manage it or not. Prospects look you up before they reply to you. What they find either starts the conversation warm or leaves you cold-calling for the rest of your life.

What a brand actually is

A brand is not a logo. It's the collection of things that make you identifiable and trusted: what you stand for, how you speak, what you consistently show up talking about, and the promise people learn to associate with your name. Apple, Lamborghini, the All Blacks — you can describe what each stands for without seeing a logo. That's the standard to aim at, scaled to your world.

A recognisable brand opens doors that would otherwise stay shut, shortens sales conversations because people already understand your value, and lets you charge more. In our services work this sits squarely in Marketing & Storytelling: the story the business tells, and how it reaches the right people.

Why I'd start with LinkedIn

There are over a billion users on LinkedIn, and it remains the one social platform where business decision-makers actively expect to be sold to — eventually, politely. When I left the Army in 2019 I thought LinkedIn was a job-hunting site. It took a rough first year in business to realise it was actually where my customers were, and that showing up there consistently was the cheapest marketing I could do. Years on, it's still the channel that's generated more of my client conversations than any other — including people who recognised me at trade shows from posts I'd made months earlier.

The mechanics have changed since then. The principles haven't:

LinkedIn rewards engagement, consistency and persistence — not volume. Two or three good posts a week beats daily noise, and commenting usefully on other people's posts is worth as much as posting yourself.

Build it deliberately: the plan

You can build a brand without a plan, but you'll struggle to stay consistent — and consistency is the whole game. Write down:

• What do you want to be known for?
• What do you believe about your industry that your competitors don't say out loud?
• How do you want to come across — and does that match how you actually speak?
• What will you talk about? Pick three or four content pillars — categories your posts fall into — and stay inside them. A leadership consultant might pick: leadership styles, lessons from historical leaders, commentary on current events, practical tips. Everything they post fits one of those, so their audience learns what to expect from them.

Your profile is your shop window

This is where the thin end of brand-building gets practical. Most LinkedIn profiles are CVs. Yours should be a landing page. Working down the page:

1. Banner image. Use the space: brand colours, what you do, and how to contact you — visible without anyone having to search for it.
2. Headshot. Get a professional one taken. It separates you from the 90-odd per cent who won't make the investment, and your face is the single most-seen asset in your brand — it appears beside every post and comment you ever make.
3. Headline. Not your job title — the benefit you deliver and who you deliver it to. This line travels with you across every post, comment and application on the platform. Make it say what you do for people.
4. Featured section. Pin the things you most want a prospect to see: your best posts, a case study, your booking link.
5. About section. Start with your call to action — the first three lines are all anyone sees before clicking "more", so don't spend them on your life story. Then what you do and who for, in plain English, with your contact details and the call to action repeated at the end.
6. Plain English throughout. Nobody outside your old workplace knows what your acronyms mean. If you can't translate your experience into normal words, have someone do it with you.
7. Recommendations. Ask for them from people you've worked with — they're testimonials attached to your profile forever. Give them freely too.

Then show up

A finished profile with no activity is a shop with the lights off. The routine that works:

1. Check who's viewed your profile and explore their networks. Respond to every connection request — but only accept people who fit the network you're building. Less is more.
2. Connect with a handful of right-fit people each day, always with a personalised message — and do not pitch them. Build the relationship first. Nobody buys from the person who sells in message one.
3. Comment usefully on five posts a day written by — or engaged with by — people you want to know.
4. Post within your pillars, as a helper rather than a self-promoter. Save-worthy beats applause-worthy: teach people something that makes their week easier and they'll come back.
5. Use the search. Find your ideal clients, learn what they're talking about, and when the relationship is warm enough — pick up the phone. Cold outreach isn't dead; lazy outreach is.

One warning as you scale this up: the platform is now flooded with A.I.-written posts, and audiences have become very good at smelling them. Use whatever tools you like for research and drafting — but the voice, the opinions and the stories have to be yours. A brand built on generic content is a brand for nothing in particular.

Worth following

Three people whose free material has taught me more than most paid courses:

• Richard van der Blom — publishes regular LinkedIn algorithm research; practical and data-led.
• Michael Stelzner — Social Media Examiner and the Social Media Marketing Podcast; broad, reliable coverage of what's working.
• Louise Brogan — LinkedIn-focused consultancy with generous free tutorials.

The bigger picture

Your personal brand is one strand of a wider question: what story does your business tell, and does it reach the people you actually want as clients? That's one of the four things we work on with every client — alongside strategy, process and the right-sized use of automation and A.I.

If your marketing feels like effort going out and nothing coming back, the problem usually isn't the posting schedule — it's the story and the positioning underneath it. That's a conversation worth having.

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