Personal branding on LinkedIn: Phil Ossai on showing up without the cringe

Hello, lovely human beings. It's so fabulous, to have you here today. Thank you all so so much for taking the time. It's a genuine thrill. It's just lovely and the sun is shining for so many of us, which makes a difference. I've seen a few people in their gardens, in the chat feature and I say good on you. I hope you're having a lovely time and, it's bringing all the right vibes for you. Let's get going with introducing today's session, because we have lots of good things to speak about. So first things first. After today's session, if you want to hang out with this amazing community that you can see in the chat feature right now, then we have a private community area. It's called Hive. It's managed by Sarah who works with us and she is phenomenal. It's a friendly welcoming space to meet your community, ask questions, get together and just have a nice time. So if you'd like to head to HIVE either now or after today's session, please do. It's right there for you. It's right there for the community. Second thing second, 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 at a Marketing Meetup event when he was starting his business out in Manchester. And like, I'm not gonna say he was this sort of, 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 branding agency grow and just let him as a person grow over the past few years has been a genuine privilege. So I'm thrilled to bits that he 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 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. We'll 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 Wistia, to Mailchimp, to Prismic, to Frontify, Planable and Cambridge Marketing College. They're all fabulous organisations who enable us to bring these sessions to you. So thank you very, very much towards all these organisations. We'll speak about them more at length over the next few weeks. Last two bits of logistics for me to sort of speak through before we get into today's session on how to use LinkedIn without sort of turning into a quote unquote personal brand. The first is today is going to operate as a q and a type session. So I've got a bunch of questions planned. But if you would like your questions answered, there's a Q and A feature which is found on the right hand side of your screen. Pop your questions in there and we'll make sure to get those answered. 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's skin just crawl? Let's get into it. So thank you so much, Joe, for that intro. You honestly made me sound like a superhero, and I appreciate the time. And hi, everyone, in the chat. I'm I've got it up on the side so I can see your your messages. So, yes, I think person running or that phrase can make people skin crawl because long story short, I think people are don't have a issue with, you know, 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 know, the performative side of, you know, I'm excited to share that phrase just makes me feel sick. You know? And that's the issue that I think people have. They associate person branding with a fake version of them. They associate it with kinda like being, like, an actor and you're just not being your true self. Because we all know this phrase authenticity gets thrown about a lot. But in reality, you know, authenticity at work is gonna be different from authenticity when you're with your kids or your friends and family. So I think it's fine that balance that people haven't really understood so they just think oh cringe personal branding. Love that mate that's absolutely spot on. We've Rosemary 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 need 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 this straight away, but like acknowledging that performative nature of stuff. We're also competing against algorithms. We're competing against like, you know, hooks and all that sort of stuff. How do you how do you get past that performative nature for yourself? It's I'll I'll be honest, Joe, and everyone in the chat, like, it's very difficult because take my personal brand or my personal presence, Craig, you know, as an example. I kind of have to have a good presence to show for people that I know I'm doing. Kinda like when you go to the gym and you you see the PTs, you usually go to the PT that looks like they're in the best shape because chances are they're be able to help you. But I think two things to kind of point out, I guess, in my situation is 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 personal brand, but then building your personal brand's a completely different skill set. So I can't remind myself in that. So ground yourself in the credibility and the and the skill set you have rather than how flashy things look. You know? I'll be honest. I'm a sucker for a selfie plus reflection type of post on LinkedIn. I think it's kinda hard to put part of my personality, but parts of it is canceled through. And I try my best to write how I speak. Dictation has kinda been, like, a a big thing for me. So I try to avoid doing too many cliches, because number one, I'm sure we'll get into the AI side of things. Everyone's constantly using AI tools that are learning from ourselves, and it's kinda creating this weird loop. So AI content even writing content is really hard to distinguish. So the best to 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 in what I call broetry way. I'm sure you guys have seen it where it's just, you know, line, space, line, space. So try to just be I know it sounds cliche, be you and find what that looks like through experimentation and try not to look over people. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I I think you've 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 hat 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 it's such a conflicting platform, LinkedIn specifically, because you're showing up as yourself, but you are also trying to do the product or service thing. And and and those two things don't always mesh, you know, in a in a perfect way. No one's born to be a marketer in the same way as no one's born to be an insurance salesman or whatever it is, know, and so we're showing parts of our personality, but that's, it's a very, very tricky balance to, to do. So, mate, I love that and thank you for 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, Monseurat, Louise just for being fabulous, already. I did that first question around sort of the personal brand element and making people's skin cruel, because I wanted to sort of get right into the nub of the issue. But I want to take a step back before we sort of progress this conversation to make sure everyone's sort of kept up. And so when we're speaking about a personal brand, what is that to you? Like, what is the definition? Is it a logo? Is it niche? Is it a vibe? You know, like where, when we're starting from scratch, what, where do you sort define personal brand? Yeah. But the challenge here is there is not one definitive definition of personal branding. Certain people have certain definitions, but the way I try to think of personal branding, I explain 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 a 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, broetry, like I said, fakeness. And those are the phrase that can come to mind when I think of you and your content and your whole brand. So that's essentially what it is. It's that mental association. Usually, obviously, we're we're talking LinkedIn today. We're talking 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, you know, corporate talk. And I think all of it's fine. It's the key thing is trying to be consistent with it as well, which is a key thing, but that mental association is definitely the person brand to me. I love that. And and I guess, you know, as as you pointed out, it's it's the association of the face. And James rightly pointed out, in the chat, he added blushing, to your very kind list, mate. I think just to just to build on your ideas and 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 brand. 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 this personal brand context right what the three things that people think about you those three brain cells and it's really interesting that it's, it can be someone's face it can be the logo etcetera, etcetera. 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, in today's session. But folks, if you have your own questions, then please, do drop them into the q and a because, 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? Because I 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 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 the headspace? Such a good question. And, if I waffle on for too long, I'm sure I want to kinda be as honest and transparent with my thinking because I'm going can't think out loud as I speak here. Just 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 twenty seven. I started when I was twenty two, twenty three. The rooms I've been able to enter have been a result of my personal brand. The fact that we're even having this conversation, I think, you know, is the brand. It's the 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 it's the new CV. Nowadays, I don't know about you guys, but when I go to, like, networking events, I tend to ask for LinkedIn before phone numbers or emails. So it's 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 what you're up to, 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, you know, gonna show, you know, the rest of the team how powerful the network effect of LinkedIn actually is. I think there's a stat that shows that, you know, the collective employees, you know, network or personal profiles gets, a twelve x, you know, further reach than the company's followings itself. It's something along those lines. I'm sure someone will will will find you. But, it's just it's evidence that people connect with people, people buy from people, people build with people. So why not think of your personal brand as a way to kind of help you, feature you, you know, now? Nice. I love that. And I I like that the struggle I've delivered a few LinkedIn workshops in my time, and an encouragement I've given the folks in the room is like you are doing this for you. Yeah. Because this to your point really, I'm building rather than making a different point, hope is, this is something which will supersede your time at any individual company. You know, if you if you move on, then this moves with you. And and so, it's such a powerful, resource, in in that way. We've had Ranjini pop into the 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. Yeah. 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 I guess I've phrased the question my question a little bit later about, like, minimal viable LinkedIn presence. Like Right. Where folks are like, I'm busy. You know? How do I get around that? What where do you go to in your headspace on that? This is, again, no good 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 branding guy, why would 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. You're doing LinkedIn lives, and you're you're everywhere and here and there and everywhere. But in reality, that just doesn't happen. It's just life won't, you know, allow that. We're we're just talking before this about, you know, little ones and how busy life family life can 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, a bit of a cheeky plug. We have our tool, Persora, that helps people create content. You know, we have the agency. It still takes time to review, to maybe make amendments, to post. And then also on top of that, people want to comment and and share their thoughts. So if you actually do a job at your personal brand, you may get the odd message in the DMs, then, you know, check DMs can also be a whole another full time job. So there's a lot of touch points. I'd 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 wanna build here is a knowledgeable marketer. That could be sharing our two cents on a big creator's post about a a brand new campaign within your industry. That comment might take five minutes to craft versus a fifteen, twenty minute well researched post on the same concept. So I'll probably lean towards getting maybe five comments a day written up, which are, you know, well thought out. They're on they're strategically on the right type of communities and and 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 connect with him. I have no idea. This my job's just gone very weird and washy. And, with him, we sometimes post maybe once a month, once a two weeks, a freak, in terms of frequency. And that's because, number one, he's busy constantly traveling from city to city, country to country. He doesn't really want to think about it. And then number two, he's in this space where if he posts too much, it kind of can feel a bit overbearing. I think as well sometimes, you know, absence doesn't hit their heart grow funder. We can on your LinkedIn, 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. If you have the time to do once a week, then let's let's start with that. But I would be very happy if you guys posting once a month, and it's just a roundup of here's what's happened within the company. It's been the and kinda going from there. I love that. And and out of interest with the example that you gave there, because I think it's interesting to 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 is his objective or her objective in in that moment. Simply keeping it ticking along, you know, how how have they started from that objective place and and then ended up with that cadence? Yeah. So, again, you know, Cristiano Ronaldo is not going to DM this. Hey. Can you manage me? So his game is clearly obviously offline, but he knows the power of, you know, multiplying, I guess, or amplifying himself online. So he kind of 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. You know, if we can try and create content that will lead for us to at a networking event, maybe someone's seen a post you've written or a sales pitch or you're having you know, you're you're pitching for something. If you have a better relationship with, you know, the the agency or the brand because of the fact that they've seen something, that could be a a little win. So in that case, that's more his objective. I know some of us here might be thinking, oh, Phil. Like, I kinda want more. I want, you know, I want brand deals or I want, you know, leads to come in for my business or, you know, I want to have speaking opportunities. That then obviously will mean, ideally, we wanna post more, but the I the reason behind us posting more is we wanna show different sides of us. So, you know, like, you said earlier, Joe, like, one of the parts really connected to is me being me on my end, 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 preferable content to kinda 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 kinda show people that I I do know what 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 in at one go. You can get your personality over in case of the content, for example, which means one case study every week or every two weeks is perfectly fine. And it you know, what's what's fabulous about your answer there, 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 like, you know, 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 in today, it might be worth, you know, and I was getting 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 whys, you know, why am I posting? Well, I want to do brand awareness or whatever it may be. Yeah. But why is that? And like, it may well be that two or three whys 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 for me, 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. Can I, add another point to that just to kinda guess on something a bit more tactical in terms of how much time? So before so I like I said, I started ASAI in March twenty twenty two, and if anyone's their masks and facts, they'll know. ChatGPT dropped November twenty twenty two, so I had, give or take, six, seven ish months of just joy. Yeah. My lungs go off. Sorry. Worries. You're fine. This is life. This is real life. Yeah. Sorry now. Okay. Perfect. And, yeah, I had that, you know, that time. And when we used to write posts with no AI assistance, it would take me around twenty to twenty five minutes to write a post with the idea there. And I don't think AI will drop that number much. It could take me fifteen minutes if unless I really know I've got a very short snappy thing I wanna share. That could be ten 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 studies, then the actual writing piece, then the, editing and kinda, like, making changes, and then scheduling or potentially publishing that, that will probably take you fifteen to twenty minutes. So how much time do you have to write, you know, three posts a week, five posts a week, you can kinda gauge from there. Totally. I love it. That's that's really, really helpful. It it reminds me almost of the, freelance, pricing strategy where you you work out from at the end of the year, you want to earn x amount and then you divide it by forty because that's how many weeks you wanna work. Then you divide that by five and you got your day rate almost, you know, similar similar vibes. Thank you, mate. Thank you for speaking to that. I wanna do a quick check with the folks in the chat, because, you know, we've hundreds of people watching here, but I wanna make sure that we're hitting the 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 and 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, etcetera, but I'd 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 and 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 long form video. There's DMing folks, etcetera, etcetera. Where 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 I without being too much of a cop out, yes, it does depend on the objectives, but I also think it depends on your skill set. If you're better on camera, maybe videos will do you more service than, you know, the the text only post or text plus 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, I don't know, a voice actor, probably you should do videos. So Yeah. That's part to connect there is, like, depending on the type of work and your skill set. But, generally speaking, we have focused most of our content using images plus text. And that has been the format eight AM. The major I think ninety five percent of our clients will post eight AM, you know, between Monday to Friday or Monday to Sunday, actually. It'll be an image post with some text. The type of content, which I think will probably be useful to give is, we've seen a lot of lead gen posts work really well. That's where everyone has 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 called AI, LinkedIn's three sixty algorithm, and gone away and kinda summarized it for people to kinda make it a bit more actionable. And if you would like the summary, comment a certain word below. Yep. Yeah. I'm cringing as I'm saying this, but Yeah. Format that has definitely worked really well in that sense. I think that just shows that people want shortcuts. They want things put to them on a platter. So if you can kind of make someone's life easier in a way through content that's image plus 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 will always perform well. Then I would say on the other side sorry, guys. On the other side, there will also be personal reflections like hot takes. So whether or it is a case of, you know, you've seen something online or a documentary's gone live and you've given your hot take on that, that will always perform well. But very specifically, actually, the one that works well for with our marketing clients is just sharing campaigns. So if someone's doing a really like, a brand is in a really innovative campaign, I'm sure you guys have seen this, that will always work well. But, to summarize, it is celebrations. It is contrarian thinking, making people think different about commonly associated things and personal reflections and and thoughts, I'd say, works well. And, of course, the lead gen. Yeah. I I wanna ask a follow on on on the the lead gen because, it 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 brand type of thing. Yeah. And, you know, like this is this is a 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 lead gen things, they kill me. You know? Like, I see them and I'm like, oh, man. That that that hurts. You know? And and I'm 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 gonna do personal branding, you know, results at all costs and sort of that sort of thing. I guess, again, coming to the title of today's session where we're like, we wanna be on LinkedIn, we wanna do well. And it's almost like, where does that start and stop and sort of like, where do you set your lines and so on and so forth. How do you have those conversations with folks? It's it's it's a tough one because, yeah, a lot of people come to us, for example, and say, hey, Phil. Like, I want to be famous or I wanna 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 do I piece 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 post. It's that's a rubbish post. I see them in person. Maybe I won't be as caught you know, kind and warm to them as I would have before they've made that, you know, mistake. So you have to kinda 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 with someone, it can also help that person kinda, you know, destroy them or or push push their reputation back. Very controversial example is, if anyone's heard about wireless festival being canceled as a result of a certain Kanye West not being allowed into the UK and that being due to his views, which he won't go into, that's an example of a personal brand that has been used in the worst way, and his opinion has actually caused a lot of problems. So those LinkedIn posts, as long as the volume actually is there, I would say try to, you know, use them sparingly. I think, personally, kinda like clickbait content and the whole idea of clickbait is you create the promise and a certain standard. And then when the person's, you know, invested time, effort, energy, sometimes money into getting that thing, you are aligned to what you promised it will be. So try and keep those balanced, hopefully, it won't be as cringe worthy. No. You know what? I I can I can follow the logic, you know, and and, like, I I I wouldn't go as far as to say I'm a true believer, but I'm a I'm a I've had a softened viewpoint? So, like, thank you for speaking through that. That's that's really appreciated, mate. I promise that we'll go into the community questions. I can see that there's there's fifteen open questions presently. I'm sure there'll be more that will come in as as we go, but I'd I'd 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 giving 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 pretentious, especially if colleagues are going to see it? So that sort of 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 to the organisation you're in. Yeah. That's a great question. I think when there's that sense of, like, nerves or 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 kinda 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 realize 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. I had a really, really young good life. I I was eighteen when I 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 of me being like, oh, you know, my little one's gonna grow up one day and see this content. Do I really want her to see that and think, like, I'm using her name and her literally, her likeness, her brand to kinda support me? I don't know. So I try to kinda create those boundaries of what are things I don't want to kinda, I guess, use for profit per se, and I just kinda keep that in a bucket and I just keep that closed. So maybe that could help. No. I love that, mate. I think, again, you know, that it seems like there's an abundance of folks out in their gardens today, you know, but, you know, just writing down those sort of red lines for folks, you know, on what that may be. I fully agree. 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 safer space. So thank you, mate. That's a really great answer. Let's go to a question which I saw a little bit earlier, 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 wanna sort of really focus in on? We've spoken about the objective earlier, but, you referenced in that answer stuff like content pillars, etcetera. Yep. Yep. Okay. So this is why I said this. It's a skill set to build your own brand, but then to build someone else's brand. It's a it's different thing. So we obviously have a list of questions we ask in our onboarding, and they're all around the idea of what will be the tone of voice and the, I guess, like, the emotion that your content will generally invoke. What type of, 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 kinda goes against the grain. So there's kinda these, I guess, key phrases and buzzwords people would associate their brand with, and you kinda 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, again, has kinda become a buzzword. That usually means key phrases or signature phrases you might use. It may be, literary devices kinda like, you know, I hate to break a tea, but and then you can't give someone that type of thing. Or even that mouse that have been taken by AI, certain phrases that can invoke a 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 you can tell that that person's, like, having a conversation with me versus them talking on stage, for example. Using selfies can help kinda bring that across versus certain, certain clients of ours, we use photos of them on stage a lot. We use photos of them, you know, in the middle of doing their activities or whatever their job is to kinda 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 kinda help with that. But, yeah, that's that without getting too nerdy, you you the phrases of how you want to be associated and then look at what, you know, I guess, levers you can pull in terms of the way you write and the photos you use. And those are, of course, like, the the the positioning statement of the actual brand on your profile in terms of the headline and the about section point in the right direction. That's fabulous, mate. And I think what's really interesting about that answer is that, 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 so had I intuited and and tried to answer the same question, I would have been like, three topics, you know, pick three topics that you wanna 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 you present. It adds detail, which is useful when you got that blank page syndrome and you just sort of like, what do I write about today? But it also informs way more than just the content you're writing. But as you've sort of pointed out so far, you know, stuff like how the profile is the profile photo is taken, etcetera, etcetera. 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 wanna you referenced AI in your your last answer. And this isn't a community question. We'll we'll come back to those after this one. But my feeling about, LinkedIn currently is that it is being filled with AI content that is either recognizably AI or sometimes less recognizably 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, 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, with an awareness that, know, you're part of AI personal branding organization. So, I I think you'll probably advocate for it. Sure. Yeah. So if, if you guys remember, I kinda mentioned, 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 kinda easily be solved by saying AI chat GBT, Claude, what should I write about today? And that, I think, should always be your fail safe, but should be your primarily prime, primary way to kinda create content. I always use this phrase, a lot to my clients where we say, if you're underthinking, you should read or consume, and if you're, thinking, 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 kinda get yourself into a, I guess, a personal brand or or writing, you know, headspace, try and get writing sorry. Try and get reading so you can start thinking about other people's opinions. And, ideally, not from LinkedIn. Try and go, I guess, a step more deep or complex of articles, books, YouTube, videos. Yeah. The Marketing Meetup. So let's go into that and then start making notes and then try and, like, you know, expand in those notes, and those notes can easily become content. So that's kind of how I, I guess, 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 you feel like it's too long or it's too short, and you kinda want a bit of guidance. Or maybe you you've written something, and you you you feel like, there must be some research to back this up. AI is gonna cost greater being able to do the grunt work of search. So you can probably use it in that sense, but I'll try to minimize my use of AI 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's not where it used to be where the formatting and the certain phrases you used was the reason people paid attention to it nowadays. You know, hooks like that you mentioned before. I think now it's actual the actual contents, and even the algorithm itself, you know, this new LinkedIn three sixty brew algorithm actually reads your content when you post it. So try and, yeah, try and get into just ideation and writing being you, and then you can pay out for the rest if necessary. Fabulous. I I I think that's really solid. And there was a, there's 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 Yeah. Human rights prompt, and then AI takes the rest. And then the second line, it was several blocks, you know, it was like human AI, human AI, etcetera, etcetera as part of the process, particularly when you're writing alone, felt useful, and is largely what you've just explained as well. So, we'll try and find that and you referenced the algorithm changes there with an awareness that we have fourteen minutes left. We probably can't go into depth there, but what we should do as part of our follow-up is is find some explainers on on the algorithm updates for anyone watching in. So so we'll try and make that as part of the newsletter and, hopefully pop it into Hive as well. In in your last answer, Phil, you you spoke about finding inspiration. I I loved that, by the way. You know, if you're underthinking, read. If you're ever thinking, write. I think that's such a lovely quote. You did say as part of that answer, you know, your reading shouldn't just be on LinkedIn. But Alice has asked, nonetheless, she says, hi, Phil, aside from yourself and Joe, which is very kind, Who do you recommend following as exact 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'm loving the chat as well, actually. Folks, if you've got anyone that you'd recommend in the chat, definitely pop them in as well. Yeah. Oh, it's a good one. Sounds weird. I don't actually pay attention to a lot of personal branding focused people on LinkedIn, I think, because I for the same reason why, you know, I guess, a musician won't listen to the same genre they create. They might go to different places. Kinda like I said, I I like to go, you know, I guess, more into write, sorry, authors and maybe even podcasters as my reference points. But, some really good people on LinkedIn, I would say, Shoaib Ahmed. He's a really, really good, friend of mine, 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's very, very tall, it turns out as well. So He's a he's a very tall man. There's Sam Winsbury, he also has a personal branding agency. Laura Costa has quite a big brand now. I'm sure there's plenty of people I'm missing out, but I guess these are people I've recently seen on my feed. But I I would say, probably, I'm sure that people have comments, but try and, maybe, funnily enough, make a post about it and say, hey. Like, I'm trying to get out of my, you know, my bubble. Should I, you know, pay attention to you? And and that that would work well for a post. So I love that. That's fabulous, mate. Thank you. I I think I'd I'd give a shout out to April 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 like, you read her content and it's like, my goodness, you know, 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, it speaks a little bit to your point about reading is, I don't agree with everything Tom says. And actually, there's there's quite a lot of occasions I I quite strongly disagree. But what it does is provide a different perspective. And sometimes that's something to sort of just provoke you and sort of go you know that's curious and I'm curious about that and so that's that's really really strong. Shannon has said Amanda Nattivadad who works with Ranfiskind as well. Both of those two are fabulous follows. Amanda has actually spoken to TMM a little while ago, so would recommend. Rachel has recommended Max Hopkinson who happens to be a friend, 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 either from the perspective of directly answering Jackie's question in a hypothetical sense or in a example sense of how you've taken someone a bit resistant to posting and taken them on that journey to 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 you guys open minded to try more, you know, I guess, against the grain tactics to get the word out there? If that's in place, then the work that we're 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, you know, I guess, open to failing, open to trying things and not trying things, and there not being 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, you know, time to sit down and figure things out? Yes. That usually is the the solution. So whether or not it's in person workshops don't wanna make this sound like I'm trying to plug myself, but find any, you know, person around 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 kinda, like, running the session, whether it's yourself, you you need to kinda read in between the lines. And if you can tell, you know, person a in the group that you're trying to get creating content has very high ambitions to one day, you know, either become, you know, leadership within the company or you have a feeling, hey. They might actually not be here in three to five years. Yeah. Try and cap I guess, present personal branding as their digital CV is the the thing that will outlive them in this current position they're in. And then if the person's a bit more like, you know, 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, who would say no to me, another person to have a really cool conversation with? Chances are they'll be open to it. So you can find everyone's personal, I guess, motivations and then find a way to connect that to the business objective and let it be a win win for everyone. If not, you're going to struggle. But then again, if the culture of, hey. Let's try some crazy stuff. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't isn't there, then all that would be a waste of time. I love that, mate. And I think that's really, really strong. I'd I'd offer a a slight build just because I've seen it be done well in a agency environment in the past where they specifically built a team of people who put their hands up and said, 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 say, for example, the team was a team of fifty. They had a team of eight people who are saying, yes, I want to be part of this. Then they gave them the the resources and the time to sort of 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 then that could be useful as well. Allowing you to not be banging your head against the wall with the people who just never ever do it, which, could definitely be the case. There are fourteen open questions. I hope, everyone in the community feels like we're doing our best to answer 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 gonna widen out a touch. So Pauline says, I'm speaking at an employability 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 meta because I kind of mentioned it earlier before. The idea of trying to understand the person's personal motivation if they were a student or, let's say, as, first know, this is their first role, graduate program scheme, that type of thing, and try and connect it to the 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 junior 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 was that was my first job. That would be, you know, a a way to kinda excite them and kinda 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 have either funny enough, AI can actually work well with this here because it's not ideation for post, but it's creating questions that will help you create answers that could become ideas for post. 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 in in in your work? Or what is another company or a brand that you really love the 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 twenty twenty six? 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. It's always a follow-up questions where people start to give the real gems and gold. So that exercise, if you could do it with someone else, it'll 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, I saw someone talk about three reasons why, you know, AI is gonna change the marketing industry, and I'm gonna do the exact same thing. You know, that's, too close. So try and be uniquely your thinking by actually having the opportunity to think differently. Nice. I love that, mate. Let's take two questions, to to finish off. So this this one from Lauren is interesting because we haven't touched on connecting, so far. And by the way, the last question I'm gonna ask is someone leaves today and makes one change. How are they use LinkedIn? Just one. What is it? So that would be the last question. Okay. 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 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 peer stuff versus that objective of maybe lead gen or bringing people into the business. But when it comes to connecting, how have 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 may bring referrals or kinship or connections in that sense. And let's say in the world of marketing, there's always a a slot for someone to speak on stage about the stuff you do. Chances are the person that's gonna, you know, bring you in will be a marketing coordinator of some form or event coordinator. So that can be if those objectives are what you're aligning with, that will kinda lean into that way. But if, again, we're talking to director, in finance, I'm sure he prop you know, 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. Right. It's just a it's just a leap. So, yeah, break out those bubbles. They definitely help. Love that, man. Thank you very much. The second question now, or would you Well, I mean, you must I'll I'll I'll just remind folks of because I sort of, mumbled through it. So the last one is, you know, we're we're coming to the end of today's session, you've been so great, mate. I 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 to you earlier. I would like people to 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're curious about something you've seen them post or you're curious about a certain topic and you share a post and ask for advice. You know? My top performing posts have always been around, hey. I want to learn in a certain area. Would someone be care enough to share an you know, their thoughts or to direct me in a certain direction? I think people love to kind of, you know, feel like they they know a thing. So if you wanna kinda come in without humility, you'll always do well, LinkedIn. I love that, mate. Thinking of it like a party is sounds a lot funner as well, frankly speaking, which, always goes a long, long way. Phil you've been such a legend mate 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 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 last shout out to all of our sponsors, but particularly Canva for today, just to say if you want that free three months on Canva Pro, then the QR code is there and you'll need to input the code that's on screen. We'll 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.