LinkedIn Personal Branding: What it is, Why You Need it, and How to Make it Easy

I’m what many people would call a service sceptic. I see an ad—whether Nike or no name— and my first instinct? Knee-jerk distrust. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized my feelings weren’t unique to my Southeast European slice of the globe.

As it turns out, others share the same sentiment— many people aren’t comfortable giving their money to logos, no matter how flashy. That’s because businesses aren't tangible. The people who run them, however, are. (Yes CEOs, we know you’re real people!).

It’s certainly part of the reason why the 2020s saw the rise of the personal brand.

Of all the places to build trust and show people you’re real, no channel has seen growth as much as LinkedIn. In fact, 82% of people are more likely to trust a company when its senior executives are active on social media.  It’s no wonder why leaders are continuously flocking to the platform to boost their visibility. 

I’m going to show you how beneficial building a LinkedIn personal brand can really be. Then, I’ll give you the blueprint to do it with a real-life example from our very own Director and CEO, Ray Slater Berry.

Ready to turn that hard-earned industry expertise into brand trust? dslx’s personal brand management builds your LinkedIn profile from scratch, grows your network, and helps you generate leads. Let’s talk!

Building a personal brand on LinkedIn: Is the juice worth the squeeze? 🥤

It depends on: 

• Your fruit
• Your juicer
• The strength of your squeeze

I’ve seen people post on LinkedIn for years on end with not so much as a few AI-generated comments to show for it. 

Others almost seem like algorithm whisperers, hosting parties in their comments, posting paradigm-shifting insights, winning podcast invitations, and generating leads faster than a Google update shakes up domain authority.

Same platform. Entirely different results. All stemming from radically different approaches. Here’s what Ray Slater Berry says about the results he’s seen in building his personal brand on LinkedIn:

I’ve had some posts go viral, reaching hundreds of thousands of impressions and hundreds of engagements. And, that’s been fantastic for reach and follower growth. But, more importantly, it’s enabled me to build a community that I can share with, build with, and often find clients through! It’s a truly supportive environment. I don’t think dslx would be where it is today if I hadn’t invested the time into the channel."

‍If you prefer stats over qualitative insights, 89% of B2B professionals use LinkedIn for professional purposes. There’s undoubtedly plenty of juice to go around. Refreshing juice, too. Let’s go over some of the benefits that come with it.

Why you should build your personal brand on LinkedIn (or get someone to do it for you)

Posting, engaging, and consistently working on your LinkedIn personal brand comes with a bunch of benefits. Here’s a deeper look at the most crucial ones we’ve seen with our clients. 

1. Raise your executive reputation 🍊

Your leadership and expertise have the potential to transverse your (home) office walls and plant right smack dab in the middle of your ICP’s hearts, minds, and feeds. Now, over 64% of B2B buyers prefer digital channels over traditional ones. 

As you deliver value via LinkedIn posts, participate in industry discussions, and document your journey online, more people will hear of you. With a LinkedIn-backed reputation, you can be known far and wide as the go-to person of your industry—both offline and online.

Not only will people discover your business through your personal brand over the internet, but your digital presence could also be a deciding factor if a real-life prospect decides to sign with your organization. 

2. Network and nurture professional relationships 🍎

There’s an old Yugoslav expression I heard from a friend of a friend. It roughly translates to:  “Problems don’t come from not knowing the right people. Problems come from not knowing someone who does know the right people.”  And, dare I say—it’s a maxim that serves many well—especially in business.

There’s no reason your network connections should be limited to that one obscure conference you visited in Atlanta four years ago hosted in the local Sears.

LinkedIn lets you connect with who’s who in your relative industry, join groups, and contribute to industry conversations in your field. Think of it as a digital conference—and everyone’s invited. 

I hear you. “Do I need a personal brand on LinkedIn to be invited some place everyone has a ticket to?”  The short answer is yes. With millions of users worldwide, there’s a lot of content noise on LinkedIn. And, as with almost every human endeavor, the majority of it is well… not that great. 

The platform’s not at fault here (nor are people), it’s just another indication of Sturgeon's law—“90% of things are crap.” If you want to start building connections, you’ll need a planned strategy to grab attention and deliver real value to the people you want to build relationships with. 

3. Generate business leads 🍍

LinkedIn is a platform that aggregates your entire ICP in one place. Not all people of all markets hang around on LinkedIn just waiting to be sold to—but the decision makers are definitely there.

In fact, four out of five people on LinkedIn drive business decisions, and 40% of B2B marketers said that LinkedIn was the most lucrative channel for driving high-quality leads. 

And if they’re active, their posts, comments, and profile data give you a better understanding of their pain points. With the right strategy, you can write content, do community engagement, and jump in on conversations to help solve these problems.

You can even share knowledge that leads your ICP off your profile and onto your business LinkedIn page, blog, or website. 

Your knowledge becomes the solution to their problems, and demonstrating your expertise at multiple touchpoints on the channel puts you in the position of the ideal candidate—if and when they need your service or product.

In short, engaging with leads through sustained, strategic effort gets you to “yes” much sooner once you decide to reach out. 

4. Become a thought leader and gain trust with your ICP 🍋

Want to go the extra mile? Tap into dslx’s hub of micro and macro influencers and start a campaign that expands your reach and gets people talking about your business.

LinkedIn personal branding is a long game. If you play it well, prospects will reward you with something even more valuable than money—their trust. 

As you gain followers with your LinkedIn personal brand, people will increasingly gravitate toward your profile for answers to the industry’s biggest questions. More followers also signal to other professionals that you’re worth connecting with.

It becomes a vicious circle, as scaling your influence becomes increasingly easier. Once you’ve established yourself as a reputable source, you won’t just be the person who people turn to for advice.

Instead, you’ll play the role of a thought leader—a recognized authority who can guide others with your innovative ideas and strategies.

I like to think of thought leadership as executive reputation on rocket fuel. It takes time and effort to build that level of influence. But, once acquired, it’s like being able to move entire micro markets with a few lines of copy and a post button.

Your credibility soars and so does your ICP’s trust in your brand—and trust is the essential ingredient for customer loyalty.

It takes a digital village to build a LinkedIn personal brand 

People assume that strong, influence-winning, lead-generating, thought leadership-creating personal brands do it all alone. That’s a fair assumption! After all, personal brands center around one person and their insights, by definition.

However, much in the same way executives and celebs use PR teams to spruce up their rep, LinkedIn thought leaders often have entire teams managing their profiles for them.

From ghostwriters and editors to videographers, community managers, and strategists, it takes experts to get the algorithm, your ICP, and your LinkedIn content working for you. As Ray puts it:

“We have a lot of new client inquiries coming through requesting LinkedIn ghostwriting, and just that very idea is where so many people are going wrong. They end up hiring someone, or worse a bot, that doesn’t have a good understanding of the channel, or them, and doesn’t re-strategize off the back of their efforts. When they finally realize the amount of brains needed for a good PR strategy on LinkedIn to come to light, that’s when they say yes to working with dslx.” 

So many executives give up on posting before they’ve seen the fruits of their labour. They might have the insights, but they don’t necessarily have the time, patience, or social media expertise to leverage them effectively.

In fact, the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to create a personal brand is probably the only downside of the whole game. But that doesn’t mean there’s no solution.

How dslx builds LinkedIn profiles for clients

On one level, you’ve spent your entire career building your skills, sharpening your expertise, and running your business. You’ve worn a few hats around the block on your way to many a rodeo, and you know a thing or two about a thing or two. 

You got where you are by putting your head down and building, not taking your precious time posting on social media.

Yet, you have a wealth of insights from your years in the industry. Sharing them can yield massive returns for your business and reputation. You got the goods. But not the energy to distribute them. 

That’s precisely where we can help. dslx’s LinkedIn profile management services let you hire a team of people to create your personal brand, post on LinkedIn, and build your community for you. You get all of the benefits that come with having an influential brand while using fewer resources. Here’s how we do it at dslx. 

‍A quick tip: You will still need to participate in interviews, workshops, and strategy sessions for your profile management partner to create your strategy and write your content. After all, it’s all about you.

1. Strategy creation

We start off by crafting a a well-thought-out personal brand LinkedIn strategy that:

• lets you show up with a clear message
• Is tailored to a specific audience 
• Is written in your authentic voice

With a strategy, you’re not just posting scattered thoughts and hoping for the best. Instead, it ensures you have all the necessary components for a personal brand while connecting with the right people, attracting the right opportunities, and building credibility. 

Our strategy is designed to set the foundation for everything else. Some of the main components: 

• Audience analysis: To help you figure out who you’re posting for. A good framework is “Professional position struggling with XYZ.”
• Goals and success measurement: Whether you’re looking to spark engagement or add other experts to your network, LinkedIn has plenty of analytics for benchmarking success, like engagements, impressions, and follower growth.
• Content pillars: These are the essential categories or themes on which your content will be based on. They provide the foundation for your content calendar. 
• Values, voice, and tone: Are you bold, empowering, and passionate? Or perhaps you’re detail-oriented, understated, and formal. You can deliver the same message in many ways to differentiate your brand and speak your ICP’s language.

Of course, we can’t do this out of the blue. Which is why we sit down with you with an hour-long workship to help you get to the heart of your ideas and aspirations. 

2. Profile optimization

Think of your LinkedIn profile as your personal brand’s landing page. You have a limited amount of space to communicate your identity and even demonstrate your value. Our LinkedIn profile management services sharpen your presence by:

• Designing a nifty banner with an irresistible value proposition 
• Putting together an attention-grabbing headline so people can quickly gauge who you are and the value you bring
• Adjusting your about section to better match with your ICP’s pain points while introducing your services as the solution
• Winning you top LinkedIn voice badges, which verify your profile as credible 
• Updating and maintaining your experience section so people can see your professional journey 

3. Content ghostwriting 

Now, we get into the fun stuff. After establishing your strategy, we’ll set up a recurring meeting to pick your brain and turn your insights into sharable, value-packed posts written in your voice.

Depending on your pillars, this content can take the form of anything between your journey as a founder or your innovative take on <insert brand now industry trend here>.

Content is the engine of your LinkedIn personal brand strategy. Your posts (when written right) will facilitate engagement, help you grow your followers, and showcase your expertise to your ICP.

Since content will make up a good deal of your personal brand activities, it pays dividends to be extra careful here. You’re not just looking for an expert copy, ghost, or content writer specializing in social media but someone with rock-solid interview skills, too.

Our people aren’t just writers, we’re seasoned interviews who know how to ask the right questions and unearth the unique insights you bring to the table. 

4. Community and inbox management

The post and ghost method might get you a few likes from old college pals and current colleagues, but it's an ineffective method for all else. 

That’s why we aim to engage with your community and spark conversations in the comment section of your and others’ posts.

This is one potential way to build your community, share your thoughts with others, and build engagement around your brand. Plus, it gets your thoughts and expertise to other people faster. Likewise, nobody I know likes going through their LinkedIn inbox when DMs pile up. It's like digging for buried treasure.

Sure, there might be some diamonds of authentic connections and podcast invitations, but there’s also plenty of dirt (mostly in the form of automated, generic sales pitches). 

That’s exactly why we’ll keep a close eye on your inbox for you, pass the message along, or even reply to potential opportunities in your voice.

You can even use the messages you get in your inbox as a way to benchmark your LinkedIn journey’s success. More on that below. 

5. Success tracking

‍“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” These words were uttered by famous Austrian-American management consultant and author Peter Drucker.

And boy, is it true for LinkedIn.

There are plenty of ways to measure your growth on the platform. It’s precisely why we offer reporting so you know exactly how far along you are on your LinkedIn journey and what needs adjusting so you can reach your goals faster.

Examples include: 

• Engagements or the number of times somebody interacted with your post
• Impressions or the number of times your post appeared on somebody’s feed
• Follower growth or the number of people who followed you over a certain period.

Here's what Ray has to show and say about his LinkedIn growth: 

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“The above is a screenshot of my follower growth in Q1 of 2025. Guess what happened in Feb? I took the month off! Either way, follower growth isn’t linear; there are ups and downs going on the type of content you’re posting, alongside the type of engagement you’re doing off your own LinkedIn profile. ‍I still received daily followers throughout the month of February because the dslx brand and our team members were referencing and directing to my profile! It’s not just posting that gets you wins.” 

LinkedIn also allows you to check out the profiles of people and companies looking at your profile, AKA admiring that last post you wrote about AI. There are other metrics, in fact, too many to count.

It’s also worth mentioning that a LinkedIn profile management company worth its salt will know which metrics to capture based on your goal and overall strategy.  

When should I outsource my LinkedIn profile management? 

The main scenario to outsource your LinkedIn profile management and content is when you want to build a personal brand but don’t have the time, expertise, or bandwidth to do so.

‍In fact, most of our clients are highly-seasoned professionals who have vast amounts of industry expertise. 

But they’re too busy running their businesses to be running their personal brands too. And since personal branding is becoming increasingly popular, you’re leaving connections, opportunities, and leads on the table if you don’t have one.  

Go from lurking in feeds to converting leads with dslx’s LinkedIn profile management

I can only imagine the roller coaster ride of thoughts, feelings, and musings you’ve had just now. You probably clicked (or tapped) on this article wondering if creating your personal brand on LinkedIn yields worthwhile benefits.

You discovered that it does—but the whole ordeal often takes a team of experts to pull off. Relief and disappointment, all in the same breath?

That’s not where I’m leaving you.

If you’re an executive who loves the idea of building a personal brand but can’t find the time between your meetings to do so, dslx’s LinkedIn management services are for you.

We’ll find what your audience cares and craft a strategy and posts to solve their biggest pain points. We’ll engage and monitor your community, growth, and inbox to go the whole nine yards. 

Grow your connections. Build brand buzz. Generate leads. Rinse. Repeat.

dslx’s Linkedin services help you create your personal brand, raise your executive presence, and build long-term trust with your ICP. 

Let’s talk.

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