LinkedIn Personal Branding Strategy: How to Become a Thought Leader in 2025
I Hate LinkedIn
It feels like being invited to a Black & White Ball only to be served warm shrimp cocktail and sold timeshares.
And I’m sure others share my sentiment as the average LinkedIn user spends 17 minutes per month on the platform—compared to: 23 hours on TikTok, 12 hours on Instagram, 28 hours on YouTube, and 19 hours on Facebook, respectively. (Source: Statista, 2024)
But here’s the kicker: LinkedIn has over 1 billion members, and nearly every Fortune 500 executive, decision-maker, and corporate climber has a profile.
Can you target C-suite leaders on Instagram? Not really. But on LinkedIn, you can laser-focus your ads to VP-level professionals at specific companies. Even if they aren’t scrolling daily, their subordinates are—and it can be a goldmine.
And yes, the platform is full of cringe-worthy clout chasers with inauthentic business lessons tied to mundane life updates.
But that’s why it’s a prime place to build your brand. Authenticity rises above bullshit. Even on social media. Sometimes.
As a professional, LinkedIn is the safest platform to build authority without oversharing your personal life (Instagram) or risking an ad promoting toxic discourse showing up in your comments (Twitter/X) or by being related to that guy who’s always talking about his sinus infections (Facebook).
Why LinkedIn Personal Branding Matters
Just as cockroaches are critical to our ecosystem regardless of how awful they are, LinkedIn is critically important when it comes to building a personal brand in the professional world.
A well-crafted LinkedIn personal brand:
Opens doors to speaking gigs, press, and partnerships
Shortens sales cycles
Attract high-value leads
Attracts qualified talent
Strengthens sentiment with stakeholders while (possibly) attracting new investors
Can improve employee morale (when done right)
Enough with the sizzle. Here’s the steak.
Creating Content for LinkedIn as a Personal Brand
Content is King. As all the sayers say. And it’s the foundational approach to any social media or marketing strategy.
Anchor Your Content With Podcasting*
Podcasting is the most efficient way to create high-value, repurposable content for LinkedIn.
From one 60-minute podcast episode, you can extract:
10–20 short-form video clips
1–2 long-form LinkedIn articles
Dozens of text posts or pull quotes
A full blog post (from transcript)
Multiple carousels (5–8 slide breakdowns)
If you’re a guest or a host, these numbers may be split between you and your collaborator. Keep in mind that collaboration is a critical element in social media and in reaching new audiences.
Don’t want to launch a podcast?
I don’t blame you.
Try these alternatives:
Create a “mockcast”. It’s the setup and production of a podcast without the full distribution. Set the stage with seeded questions in a less formal environment, which will appear more natural on social media.
Guest on other podcasts (there are resources out there that offer this specific service)
Answer FAQ’s via video (this is probably the most boring one, but can be done in a pinch*
Hire a videographer for a day. You can find a good one for $1500 - and they can also take photos, shoot b-roll and come up with great ideas
Podcast or not, the foundation of any social media marketing strategy should be laid with video.
Repurpose Your Podcast (Longform) Content
Ok, now you have the long video. It can be a lot to get through. I’ve transcribed a fintech podcast into a 40-page doc, only to go line by line and highlight the best clips for my editors to optimize for social media.
Fortunately, you can use AI to do much of the heavy lifting.
Start By Finding the Best Short-Form Video Clips
Repurpose 30–120 sec clips from your podcast
Add bold captions & clean audio
Hook viewers in the first 2 seconds—skip intros and logos.
If you find any medium-form clips (3-10 min) - transcribe them for blogs and post the trimmed videos to YouTube
The 5x Asset Strategy
A true hunter utilizes all components of their kill, hooves and all. A prudent and wise brand manager will use more from the video than the video itself.
Start with a core idea from your podcast clip, an answered FAQ selfie video, a “man on the street” video, etc.
From one video clip, you can break the content down into multiple assets (see the 5 below).
If you have 8 good clips from a podcast, that’s 40x assets. If you’re posting 3x per week, that’s over 3 months of content.
Some social strategists may accuse me of stealing this strategy from them. No.
Example Topic from Video Clip: “Losing my biggest client”
Asset 1 – Video Clip or Reel
Edited clip that covers the selected topic “Losing my biggest client” (15-120 seconds)
If you don’t have long-form content to pull from, film this on your phone.
*If you’re doing this DIY and need fancy edits, Captions is a great app that will use AI to caption, edit, and optimize your videos for social media.
Asset 2 – Motivation or Quote Graphic
Create a standalone quote graphic that was said in your video
Example: “I didn’t need another motivational quote. I needed a kick in the ass.”
Overlay the quote with a clean graphic - and even better, over a picture of you.
You can add additional context to the primary caption of the post
Asset 3 – Carousel Post
Turn your main takeaways into a swipe-through format.
Example: “5 Lessons I Learned After Getting Fired by My Biggest Client”
Each slide = one lesson. Keep it real. Keep it useful. End with a CTA or short reflection.
Asset 4 – Long-Form Article or LinkedIn Post
Use the the clip transcription to write a full blog post
Post directly on LinkedIn - or post to your website and share to LinkedIn
Add any CTA buttons that offer something relevant to your service and story, like this:
Asset 5 – Behind-the-Scenes
Raw image/photo - like a photo of you working with/for the client
The post caption will be a cleaned up and optimized version of your podcast clip transcription (like a much shorter blog post)
Posting Cadence: You don’t need to post 5 days a week. In fact, I advise that you don’t when starting. Once or twice per week should be fine, and you can tailor your strategy based on the results. The important thing is consistency.
Pro Tip: Think in themes. i.e., Motivation Monday, Topic Tuesday, Flashback Friday. You don’t need to actually say that or hashtag it, but think in terms of themes for the sake of segmenting and optimizing your content strategy and workflow.
Hacking the LinkedIn Algorithm
Congratulations. You have content. You posted. Maybe even got a few likes. But since you’re spending all this energy (and money?) on these efforts, how do we get people to see it and, dare we say, go viral?
Build an Engagement Pod
LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards early engagement and conversation depth. Having an internal group that can immediately like, comment, and share your content will be a very quick and efficient way to game the algorithm.
The easiest way for most businesses is to have a dedicated Slack channel (or whatever your company uses) to post the shareable link.
Encourage others to share their posts as well so this can be a team/company-wide collaboration instead of just a boss asking for likes (which can appear awkward and desperate).
You can also have the company page share your posts. Do this selectively.
Pay to Play: Thought Leader Ads on LinkedIn
Yes, you can run ads now from your personal account…kind of. You will need to be an employee of your business and your business will need to have an ad account set up.
Create an ad in the ad account with either an Awareness or Engagement objective.*
Select your targeting and budget.
Instead of creating a new ad, browse from Existing Account
You have the option to choose an Image or Video from your existing posts.
Select Employee and find yourself as an employee
Submit Request on the post you want (image or video only - as the time of writing)
Approve from your personal account (I’m writing this assuming that you’re doing this yourself. If you need help, book a call with me).
*If you want leads/sales, you can edit the context of your post with links in the caption or test Conversation ads
Other Ad Types on LinkedIn:
Video Ads (Promote podcast clips)
Lead Gen Ads (Free PDF/checklist download)
Conversation Ads (Book strategy calls) - these can be interpreted as spammy messages but can work well when done with tact
Sponsored Articles (Boost thought leadership)
Start with $10–$20/day tests, then scale winners. (If you’re seeing traction, you may want to use it as an ad on other social media platforms as well).
Influencer Marketing on LinkedIn
Before you tell me I’ve been smoking too much TikTok, let me tell you that there are thought leaders and influencers on LinkedIn willing to collaborate with you. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
The easiest way is by collaborating with them.
Remember the podcast strategy? Have them as a guest. Create content with both of you in it. Share the content with them and tag them when posting.
If you don’t have time for that nonsense, there are pay-to-play thought leaders who will share your posts, engage with your content, and help you go viral through their networks.
Want This Done for You?
(with the guy who wrote this)
Final Thought
Honestly, I probably hate LinkedIn because I can’t get more than 8 likes on a post to save my life.
To be fair, I don’t create valuable content, I don’t distribute that content, and it’s not tailored for a professional audience.
That said, I’ve worked with numerous clients who’ve had immense success on LinkedIn. They tend to be business executives and high-impact leaders.
They have something to say, and LinkedIn is the right place to say it.
So, is LinkedIn the right place for you? If you got this far, it probably is.
It’s also the only platform where decision-makers publicly list their job titles and emails.
If you made it this far…
I just want to thank you. What started as a simple “SEO-optimized” ChatGPT prompt turned into me reworking and rewriting a post into something authentic, non-generic, and based on real experience and expertise, albeit unhinged.
GPT said it may offend people. I told GPT to go fuck itself.
~ Dan Raaf
