Create a portfolio of proof for your personal brand online
This is how you get the job before you’ve even applied. How you win the client, before you’ve pitched your proposal. Prove your expertise and skills to stand out in the marketplace.
If you’re avoiding building your professional personal brand online, you could be missing out on your next dream job or client. Recruiters are paying attention to personal brands online as part of their recruitment processes.
LinkedIn generally gets the limelight for all things related to your professional personal brand. Every minute, seven people are hired through LinkedIn. Every year, there are over 3 million hires via the platform. Around 72% of recruiters use LinkedIn when hiring new talent. And 67% of recruiters say that the talent they hired on LinkedIn is of a higher quality.
With over a billion users, LinkedIn is the world’s biggest professional networking platform. But how do you stand out in the increasingly competitive online space? Put in the work to build a portfolio of proof for your personal brand. This is more than having a static, well-optimised LinkedIn profile. It’s about consistently demonstrating your skills, expertise and industry knowledge in real-time.
LinkedIn is merely the obvious choice. Your portfolio of proof should have several homes - more on this later in the blog. First, let’s break down the foundations of your personal brand portfolio of proof.
1. Build your ‘stock and flow’
There is a saying that marketing tells the world you are a rock star, content marketing shows them.
Austin Kleon, in his book Show Your Work, describes the importance of a ‘stock and flow’ strategy.
‘Stock and flow’ is the economic concept adopted by Robin Sloan as a media metaphor. When it comes to your media:
“Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people you exist. Stock is the durable stuff.”
‘Stock’ is what lasts months, even years, into the future. It’s the long-form, evergreen content. The key is to grow your stock in the background while you maintain your flow.
Kleon says:
“Imagine if your next boss didn’t have to read your résumé because he already reads your blog. Imagine being a student and getting your first gig based on a school project you posted online. Imagine losing your job but having a social network of people familiar with your work and ready to help you find a new one.”
A long-form content strategy for your personal brand, such as videos over 5 minutes, podcasts, blogs, and LinkedIn articles, naturally lends itself to building your stock. The key is evergreen content - ideas that age well in your personal brand portfolio.
Think of flow as your steady stream of short-form content for your personal brand. The LinkedIn posts, reels, shorts and other social posts that complement your long-form content. Posts that point people to it while still having stand-alone value.
While most prefer to blend in, you’re using your personal brand to lead your industry from the front. To not just talk about your skills in your resume and in an interview, but actually demonstrate it. This is how personal branding becomes less about self-promotion and more about proof, providing value and evidencing your expertise.
In the book 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer says:
“If people blend in too perfectly, they become unnoticeable, undifferentiated from those around them competing for promotions.”
This strategy for your personal brand isn’t about overnight wins. It’s about building leverage in the long game.
2. Create leverage
In The Almanak of Naval Ravikant, Ravikant, a Silicon Valley icon, is described as highlighting the importance of creating leverage.
Ravikant proposes that the world is no longer about rich and poor, nor blue collar versus white. But rather leverage versus un-leveraged. Your personal brand becomes your leverage. Ravikant says:
“You are waiting for your moment when something emerges in the world; they need a skill set, and you’re uniquely qualified. You build your brand in the meantime on Twitter, on YouTube, and by giving away free work. You make a name for yourself, and you take some risk in the process. When it is time to move on the opportunity, you can do so with leverage—the maximum leverage possible.”
Ravikant’s life formulas include:
Accountability = Personal branding + Personal Platform + Taking Risk
What Ravikant understands is that your personal brand can be used to position you as the problem-solver for a specific need your audience may have or will in the future.
3. Own real estate in your audience’s mind
When your audience becomes aware of the problem, you’re ready with the solution. This can be linked to the awareness ladder in marketing, which describes the decision-making process stages of consumers:
No problem (they don’t know there is a problem)
Problem-aware (become conscious of a problem)
Solutions exist (become aware of possible solutions to the problem)
Your solution (become aware of you as a solution provider)
Benefits of your solution (learn more about the quality of your solution)
Convinced (ready to buy what you’re selling)
Your ‘stock and flow’ strategy increases awareness for your personal brand as a solution provider. The quality of your portfolio of proof demonstrates the benefits of the solution only you can offer the marketplace until your next dream employer or client is convinced you’re their obvious option.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout highlights the Law of the Mind - It’s better to be first in the mind than it is to be first in the marketplace. Another of the laws - The Law of Perception - Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perception.
Occupy the real estate in your audience’s mind of what you want to be known for. If this was one or two words, what would it be? Build your portfolio of proof for your personal brand around those words.
4. Invest in online real estate
Don’t build your personal brand portfolio of proof in one place. Social media is here to stay in the social landscape of building relationships. But it doesn’t mean the one you think will always be popular will have prime positions. Just think about how quickly it feels TikTok has taken over the content and commerce digital realm.
Like any good portfolio, diversify your personal brand portfolio of proof. Produce content in different formats on different platforms. This also increases your chances of meeting your audience where their preferences lie.
Finally, remember that building your personal brand portfolio of proof on social media is building on borrowed land. To truly secure the real estate of your professional brand, build a personal brand website. Platforms such as Squarespace make it easy for the everyday person to make a stunning home for their personal brand. One that holds all the valuable stock - your blogs, videos and podcasts - of your personal brand in a warehouse, waiting for your next dream employer or client to come knocking.
