5 rules of personal branding, circa 2024

Find Your Superpower newsletter 050

Read time: 7 minutes

Topics covered: Personal branding, LinkedIn coaching, six-week LinkedIn bootcamp

It’s been a busy week for me: three corporate training sessions, cohort 1 of the bootcamp entering week 5, and now enrolling actively for cohort 2.

My bootcampers are doing better week on week, and I am a proud mama.

Just the other day, I asked a bootcamper how they felt about getting 270 likes on their latest post, and they said, “I think it did OK.”

When 270 likes on a post is “OK” you know you’ve changed someone’s view of LinkedIn forever.

Anyway, I am going back to basics today on what you need to know about personal branding, circa 2024. I’ve posted on this topic before, but this post has newer thoughts added to it.

1.    Anyone without a brand is a commodity

I hope you can follow the logic sequence:

• If you don’t have a brand, you are a commodity.

• And if you are a commodity, then you had better be perfect.

• Because the definition of a commodity is someone who can be replaced.

On the other hand, someone with a strong brand doesn’t have to be perfect. 

In fact, someone with a strong brand can be exceedingly flawed.

Why, you may ask?

Let me explain: Taylor Swift isn’t a perfect singer or dancer, but I think it is fair to say that millions of people love her to bits. Taylor has built a powerful brand that endears her to her target audience, one that will stick with her and remain loyal to her through the ups and downs, the good times and the bad times.

In my experience, anyone can tell you their job description (JD), or basically "what" they do for a living, what they do to pay their bills.

But very few people can tell you their mission and their values, "why" they do something.

Do you know what your brand stands for?

Do you know your North Star?

Do you know your "why"?

2.    Your brand should have as little complexity as possible

If you deviate from your brand persona (such as when you post on LinkedIn), it will not only confuse your target audience, your audience will also start re-evaluating their trust in you.

They may even start distancing themselves from you.

Are people being harsh? They aren’t.

All of this behavior is completely instinctive and not within their control.

Which is why if you’re known to be a leader in the automotive industry, and you suddenly discuss cinema, marriage and fashion, you would confuse your target audience who will start to trust you less.

Consistency is associated with trustworthiness.

A brand is an 360-degree experience. Think of every touch point that exists for your personal brand, then audit it!

And if you really have to write about topics outside your brand, ensure that 80% of your content plays to your niche, and 20% to surprise & delight and gently expand your niche.

PS: Never forget who is your paying audience… likes on LinkedIn don’t pay the bills.

3.    The narrower the niche, the more powerful the brand

In every industry, and not just the healthcare industry, specialists with in-depth knowledge are paid much more than generalists.

Rather than big, consider going small.

Rather than mass-market, consider going niche.

Niching down will make you far more money.

PS: Alex Hormozi has a great quote I use frequently, “Don’t make me niche slap you!”

To illustrate my point, these days everyone is a coach on LinkedIn. (Newsflash: I am a coach too.) If everyone is a coach on LinkedIn, then how can we stand out?

If you say you are a leadership coach, I can name 20 equally competent leadership coaches out there.

If you say you are a scaling and performance coach, I can also name 10 equally competent business coaches out there.

But if you tell me you are a leadership coach to …. <insert industry sector or demographic>… then you may be the only one I can think of in that category.

Which means, by default, you would be top of your category.

Which also means that you would be par to none—the best in your category.

Do you understand and see the difference?

4.    Your brand is not static, it has to keep evolving

Many of my trainees ask me if they should stick to a specific brand that they are known for.

This is where I buck the trend.

In 2024, all of us have gone through a rather traumatic COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation. We’ve seen the benefits of remote work and we are jumping off the return-to-office (RTO) bandwagon.

We may join the gig economy as a solopreneur, freelancer, consultant or coach.

As our career interests and goals change over time, and as we mature and develop new passions and interests, our brand has to evolve along with us.

In fact, I would be more concerned if you told me you have been doing the same thing for decades!

While we want to focus on our brand of today, we need to make strategic investments into our brand of tomorrow.

To do that, we must go for executive education courses, and reskill ourselves constantly.

Even an old dog can learn new tricks.

Do different things regularly.

Live an exciting life.

Evolve.

5.    You are your own media company in 2024

This is truly a 2024 branding tip: let’s all stop waiting for The New York Times or Wall Street Journal to call us to profile us in a story.

This is written for those of us who were born in the newspaper era where, once upon a time, we could only attain clout and credibility by being quoted in a newspaper article or featured in a magazine.

That ship has sailed, because you can be featured by … yourself.

Don’t outsource your branding to other people.

Start posting on LinkedIn on a consistent schedule (consistency is more important than frequency).

It’s time you took your branding in your own hands.

Stop waiting for the Wall Street Journal to call you.

Choose yourself.

Pick yourself.

PS: Would you like to work with me in April 2024?     

I am actively enrolling for Cohort 2 of my flagship Find Your Superpower bootcamp.

During this six-week bootcamp, which will run from April 13 to May 24, you will receive:

• Weekly on-demand video lectures

• Weekly writing prompts and writing gyms

• Live Q&A sessions with instructors

• Fireside chats with VIP guest speakers

• Access to our community circles for peer feedback and learning

• Accountability and support from peers and two LinkedIn Top Voice instructors

PS: Half the spots have been reserved!

You can still receive a 10% discount on a successful registration if you sign up by 28 March, or before the bootcamp sells out.

This March registration offer ends on 11:59 PM, 28 March 2024 (GMT+8)!

🙏 Cohort 1 Find Your Superpower LinkedIn bootcamp testimonial 🙏

Do you want to up your LinkedIn game? 

I was doing decent on LinkedIn before Juliana’s bootcamp. I had 4,000+ followers, my posts typically averaged 50+ likes, and I would occasionally reach 100 to 380 likes. 

I felt like I was hitting a plateau. I was alright, but I wanted to get better, I wanted to reach a state where 100+ likes per post was the norm and not the exception. 

How do I get there? 

At the end 2023, I signed up for Juliana’s LinkedIn bootcamp. Prior to that, I had read her e-book, watched her videos, and attended her free workshops, so I knew her teaching style resonated with me, but the bootcamp took things to a whole new level. 

In the bootcamp, her clear and direct teaching style filled with numerous real-life examples in LinkedIn made it easy for me to understand what to include and exclude from my posts. 

She covers the technical aspects to optimise your LinkedIn profile and posts, but her true value-add is the science and art of storytelling that transcends all algorithm hacks and makes you immune to all algorithm changes. 

Her bootcamp focuses on practical application of the techniques taught in class through the weekly writing gyms, where participants have to write posts based on specified prompts.

In the Kajabi community platform,  she has created a confidential and psychologically safe space for us to share our posts and receive feedback from her, Amanda Cua (her bootcamp partner for community management and a fellow LinkedIn Top Voice), as well as other bootcamp participants. 

This channel for feedback and iterative improvements is one of the secrets to the bootcamp’s effectiveness. The energy of a community focused on elevating their game is infectious and makes you work harder on improving your posts. Put in the effort to do your homework and you’ll be rewarded multiple times over. 

Juliana’s formula works. Period. The first post where I applied her techniques broke my record for likes (520), is my 2nd best post ever for impressions (45,565) and new followers (+220 in a day). 

Many readers liked the storytelling approach to my post and reached out in the comments and private messages to share how much it resonated with them and inspired them. 

I thought what I shared was rather trivial, but through Juliana’s storytelling technique, I realised I could touch people’s hearts with a simple but compelling story.  

I realised I had gained a new superpower.

Are you ready to take your LinkedIn game to the next level?  

Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn if you want to learn more about my bootcamp experience with Juliana. 

- Wong De Rui

Senior Vice President, GIC

Cohort 1 bootcamp participant

PS: thank you De Rui for the kind testimonial :)

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Thanks for reading issue 050 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.

For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 34,000+ people, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.

🚨 Waitlist for Cohort 2 of my six-week LinkedIn bootcamp here.

Half the spots have been booked. Don’t wait as they will sell out soon.

Sign up for cohort 2 of the bootcamp!

Sign up for cohort 2 of the bootcamp!

Sign up for cohort 2 of the bootcamp!