Personal Branding, pt 2

Greg Wyatt • May 6, 2024

In the last edition, I introduced how personal branding can support a job search, and why you should avoid the type of content many people aspire to - going viral.

You can read it here.

Today, we’ll get a bit closer to actually publishing content, with the principles that lead towards it:

Building your content philosophy and plan
Types of content to try
Weight and depth of opinion
Why you should start now, even if you don’t see any benefit for months

Next week, I’ll share some posts and content writers that show an effective approach. and which you can emulate.

Building your content philosophy and plan

Much is made about LinkedIn’s algorithm and how you need to do this that and the other to get engagement.

I think you can look at it differently, and still achieve much the same.

Get your core approach right, then you can tweak what you do to find the right gains. Rather than start with chasing engagement.

If writing content is an idea you’ve been toying with, it’s a good idea to think about the outcomes you want to achieve, and then work back to set a plan.

If the only outcome you are interested in is a job, the next question should be, is content the right area to focus on, or are there better activities to support your goal?

Everyone has different skills and outlooks on life. If it simply isn’t in your wheelhouse, there are other activities you can do that may be more effective.

These are the outcomes I aim for and see when writing content:

start conversations
help others
sharpen and spark ideas
raise awareness and trust
have a laugh and a chat

I’ve gained good friends I’ve never spoken to, and friendly acquaintances I only know through ‘comments’.

As well as paying clients, who’ve benefitted from my service.

And just as importantly, I have more credibility with candidates who place weight on LinkedIn content.

Content makes it easier for me to start conversations.

It’s important for me that I either enjoy the content, and its consequences, or find it fulfilling.

What I don’t do is talk openly about my personal life, family and challenges. Something I agreed with my wife when I started publishing content.

Instead, I show all of myself in my words, quirks and all. So that if we ever speak in real life, there isn’t much of a disconnect.

That’s my philosophy to content and the boundaries I set for myself.

What about the plan?

Writing content isn’t just about publishing LinkedIn posts.

Replying to comments. Commenting on other people’s posts. Continuing conversations in DM. These are all required to get content to work for you.

From a marketing perspective, these all have different places in your lead generation funnel:

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Interest
Evaluation
Purchase

Each post, comment, DM and real-life conversation, can relate to these steps and support your goals, even if you aren’t treating these as a marketing activity.

Indeed you should be aware of how people react to your visible words, in a way you might not be aware of (more on this next).

It goes to follow that if you use LinkedIn for Personal Branding - everything you do should be intentional, even throwaway comments.

And of course, this all takes time to do.

I write six or seven posts a week, typically in the evenings.

For me, it’s a form of journalling, and there is a lot of content I’ll either never post or will revisit at a later date. A post normally takes me 10-15 minutes to write, and somewhat longer to edit.

I post mainly in the mornings, where I have a bit of time to respond to comments.

There’s a lot of investigation into optimal times to post, but I think it’s more important that you are available to foster any engagement by replying attentively in the first hour.

The course of a post is often dictated by the performance during this time.

I find if a post gets 20-30 engagements in 60 minutes, it will typically see 10 times that over its lifetime, which is mainly a week.

I actively reply to comments for around an hour a day, but I use LinkedIn for other parts of my role (research, business development etc), so I’m always online.

How much time can you set aside per week and per day for content?

Even if you only write a couple of posts a week, that will likely take a couple of hours.

You can expect low performance initially, with some exceptions, as it takes time to build inertia.

Set aside a sustainable amount of time each week, and commit to it over time - try for 10-12 weeks and track how things have developed.

You may find it becomes an enjoyable task, just try not to get distracted by engagement for its own sake, and keep your goals in mind.

Types of content to try

Engagement on LinkedIn is built primarily on relevance and relatability.

You can write a 100% relatable post that everyone takes relevance from, and see massive engagement. Though that engagement may not serve your goals.

Or you can write a post that is 100% relevant to the problems you solve in your career, and the people who will find it relevant are from a small niche facing the same problems.

This is why a photo of you with your dog will fly, while a carefully thought out post about the optimisation of widgets in a byzantine setting, will appear to be shouting into a void.

Who doesn’t like a cute dog?

Or you can blend the two, in many ways, through storytelling, pivoting observations into business content, and copywriting formulae like AIDA (attention interest desire action) and PAS (problem agitation solution).

I mix my content up across 5 pillars:

Job search advice
Recruitment advice
Market observations
Things that interest me
Satire

I find these interest different audiences, and their own networks sometimes come across my posts, starting new conversations and awareness in other areas.

Everyone will have different forms of content that will be effective for them.

A good way to think about what might help you is what you want your ideal readers to experience.

Do you want them to see you as a credible expert?

Someone who is authentically vulnerable?

Your warts and all personality?

Why you stand out in a sea of competition?

Someone who is thought-provoking, helpful, altruistic or something else?

The answers are much the same if you posed these questions of interviewing.

This is no coincidence, given your message should be consistently delivered no matter where it is received.

With that in mind, here are some content ideas you can try:

How you might solve a problem specific to your industry
Stories from your everyday life
The challenges in your job search
Observations on a news story and how it relates to your work
A flair post highlighting your availability
Asking for thoughts on an idea you are interested in
Sharing insight you find fascinating, whether that’s on films, video games, science, sport
Stories from your career, where you can show growth (everyone loves a good ‘hero’s journey’)
Business frameworks, processes and techniques you find useful - pomodoro technique, scientific method, STAR, what do you use?
Equipment you use for work
Developments in your workplace/culture
Thoughts on content you find inspiring
Memes, humour, satire

Google “content ideas for LinkedIn” (which came up with this article ) or ask ChatGPT, Gemini or others.

I wouldn’t use AI to write articles personally (although I do use them for ideation and to sense check).

However, many people use AI and get a lot of engagement, so there’s little reason not to experiment.

“Write me a post for LinkedIn that shows the link between Tesla cars and how to develop an HR strategy”

Weight and depth of opinion

A couple of years ago, I had a message from an out-of-work Sales Director, asking for some feedback.

He’d shot a video for LinkedIn, where he talked about why he should be snapped up, and received a lot of praise for the post. However he was confused because someone he trusts, a CEO, told him it was poor and made him look boring.

He knew I’d give him unvarnished feedback, which was what he needed, to find some clarity on what had happened.

Truthfully, the CEO was correct.

What had happened?

All of the positive engagement was from fellow job seekers, and people who wanted to support him. That he’d done it was praiseworthy in itself, and was rightly celebrated, rather than the quality of what he had produced.

However, none of them had hiring authority or were in a career similar to someone who would be his line manager.

The video didn’t show him how he comes across in person either.

The lesson I took from this is to establish the weight and depth of opinion, whenever you seek feedback.

While the positive feedback was great for validation, his video actually worked against him. What might happen if a hiring process thought his video was boring when the role being recruited for has persuasion as a key requirement?

I’m pleased to say his redo was excellent, showing off his charisma while delivering the same message.

Let’s say that the CEO in this story was called Steve.

Who is the Steve in your career?

Whenever you do anything, consider “what would Steve say?”

Whose feedback should carry most weight?

This is one problem with critical posts on LinkedIn.

For example, posts that criticise poor recruitment often get a lot of engagement.

But how does that post support the career goals of the author?

Could it backfire, if someone in a hiring process sees that?

A good analogy here is that LinkedIn is like an open-plan office. You may think you are having a private conversation, but what if the wrong person is listening on the other side of a partition wall?

You may never know the decisions they make, from the words they come across.

Is that fair? Probably not.

Does it happen? I’m afraid so.

Why you should start now, even if you don’t see any benefit for months

Starting cold on LinkedIn can take many months to get traction.

That’s not always the case, but when your first post bombs, you might never think to do a second.

Going in with the expectation of little impact for the first three to six months is healthy in making a sustainable habit.

If you’re out of work though, three to six months may seem too far off to be worthwhile, especially if you need a job within a couple of months, and there are many activities that offer a quick turnaround, such as applying for jobs.

I’m sorry to say that I’ve spoken to many job seekers who’ve been out of work for more than six months, and have decided not to write content at the outset of their search.

But if they had, they might now be seeing the benefit of their work.

While negative visualisation is a helpful way to see why you might start a long-term activity now, here’s another one that relates to the philosophy section at the top.

Personal branding for me isn’t about getting a job - it’s about starting and continuing conversations with the right people.

It can be helpful in work when you aren’t looking for work. For idea sharing, networking, and keeping in touch. Even to promote your business.

And should the worst happen in future, when you find yourself out of work again, you’ll have that continued inertia from consistent posting.

So yes, it might not pay off in the short term, from a cold start, but if this is something you can sustainably do long-term, it can be an investment in your future.

As well as, if you are lucky, something that does pay off in the short term, such as if the right person sees your flair post.

I’ll give you an example of a good flair post, as well as other content and content writers to emulate, in the next post.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. this post is a day early, as I have a challenging work week ahead, so have written all my content early

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Jump the shark. A Recruitment AiDE, pt 13

By Greg Wyatt • January 29, 2026

May 2023 You’ve heard the phrase, I take it – “jump the shark”? It’s the moment when one surprising or absurd experience can indicate a rapid descent into rubbishness and obscurity. When it’s time to get off the bus. Typically in media. Jumping the Shark comes from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz does a water ski jump over a shark. 👈 Aaaaay. 👉 A sign creators have run out of ideas, or can’t be bothered to come up with fresh ones. In movies, sequelitis is a good example of this – an unnecessary sequel done to make some cash, in the hope the audience doesn’t care about its quality. Sometimes they become dead horses to flog, such as the missteps that are any Terminator film after 2. It’s an issue that can lead to consumers abandoning what they were doing, with such a precipitous drop in engagement that the thing itself is then cancelled. Partly because of breaking trust in what was expected to happen next. And because it’s a sign that the disbelief that was temporarily suspended has come crashing down. If you don’t believe that your current poor experience will lead to further, better experiences, why would you bother? Once you’ve had your fingers burnt, how hard is it to find that trust in similar experiences? It doesn’t have to be a single vein of experience for all to be affected. Watch one dodgy superhero movie and how does it whet your appetite for the next? You didn’t see The Eternals? Lucky you. Or how about that time we had really bad service at Café Rouge, a sign of new management that didn’t care, and we never went again? Just me? Did they sauter par-dessus le requin? Here’s the rub – it matters less that these experiences have jumped the shark. It matters more what the experience means for expectation. So it is in candidate experience. It’s not just the experience you provide that tempers expectations – it’s the cumulated experience of other processes that creates an assumption of what might be expected of yours. If you’re starting from a low trust point, what will it take for your process to ‘jump the shark’ and lose, not just an engaged audience, but those brilliant candidates that might only have considered talking to you if their experience hadn’t been off-putting? Not fair, is it, that the experience provided by other poor recruitment processes might affect what people expect of yours? Their experiences aren’t in your control, the experience you provide is. Of my 700 or so calls with exec job seekers, since The Pandemic: Lockdown Pt 1, many described the candidate experience touchpoints that led to them deciding not to proceed with an application. These were calls that were purely about job search strategy, and not people I could place. However, one benefit for me is that they are the Gemba , and I get to hear their direct experiences outside of my recruitment processes. Experiences such as - ‘£Competitive salary’ in an advert or DM, which they know full well means a lowball offer every time, because it happened to them once or twice, or perhaps it was just a LinkedIn post they read. Maybe it isn’t your problem at all, maybe your £competitive is upper 1% - how does their experience inform their assumptions? Or when adverts lend ambiguity to generic words, what meaning do they find, no matter how far from the truth? How the arrogance of a one-sided interview process affects their interest. The apparent narcissism in many outreaches in recruitment (unamazing, isn’t it, that bad outreach can close doors, rather than open them). Those ATS ‘duplicate your CV’ data entry beasts? Fool me once… Instances that are the catalysts for them withdrawing. I’d find myself telling them to look past these experiences, because a poor process can hide a good job. It’s a common theme in my jobseeker posts, such as a recent one offering a counterpoint to the virality that is “COVER LETTERS DON’T M4TT£R agree?” Experiences that may not be meant by the employer, or even thought of as necessarily bad, yet are drivers for decisions and behaviour. I can only appeal to these job seekers through my posts and calls. What about those other jobseekers who I’m not aware of, who’ve only experienced nonsense advice? What about those people who aren’t jobseekers? What about those people who think they love their roles? What about all those great candidates who won’t put up with bad experiences? The more sceptical they are, and the further they are from the need for a new role, the less bullshit they’ll put up with. What happens when an otherwise acceptable process presents something unpalatable? Might this jumping the shark mean they go no further? Every time the experience you provide doesn’t put their needs front and centre or if it’s correlated to their bad experiences…. these can prevent otherwise willing candidates from progressing with your process, whether that’s an advert they don’t apply to, a job they don’t start, or everything in between. Decisions that may stem from false assumptions of what a bad experience will mean. Instead, look to these ‘bad experience’ touchpoints as opportunities to do better: instead of £competitive, either state a salary or a legitimate reason why you can’t disclose salary (e.g. “see below” if limited by a job board field and “we negotiate a fair salary based on the contribution of the successful candidate, and don’t want to limit compensation by a band”) instead of a 1-way interrogation… an interview instead of radio silence when there’s no news - an update to say there’s no update, and ‘How are things with you by the way?’ instead of Apply Now via our Applicant Torture Sadistificator, ‘drop me a line if you have any questions’ or ‘don’t worry if you don’t have an updated CV - we’ll sort that later’. Opportunity from adversity. And why you can look at bad experiences other processes provide as a chance to do better. With the benefit that, if you eliminate poor experience, you'll lose fewer candidates unnecessarily, including those ideal ones you never knew about. Bad experiences are the yin to good experience’s yang and both are key parts of the E that is Experience in the AIDE framework. The good is for next time. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg

How To Network For A Job - Jobseeker Basics XIV

By Greg Wyatt • January 26, 2026

The following is Chapter 42 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . In a sense it's a microcosm of how any commercial activity can see a better return - which is to put the needs of the person you are appealing to above your own. It feels counterintuitive, especially when you have a burning need, but you can see the problem of NOT doing this simply by looking at 99% of job adverts: We are. We need. We want. What you'll do for us. What you might get in return. Capped off by the classic "don't call us, we'll call you." If you didn't need a job, how would you respond to that kind of advert? In the same vein, if you want networking to pay off, how will your contact's life improve by your contact? What's in it for them? 42 - How to network for a job Who are the two types of people you remember at networking events? For me two types stand out. One will be the instant pitch networker. This might work if you happen to be in need right now of what they have to offer or if mutual selling is your goal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this but it’s a selling activity pretending to be networking. If you want to sell, go and overtly sell rather than disguise it with subterfuge. Lest we mark your face and avoid you where possible in future. The second is the one who gets to know you, shows interest and tries to add to your experience. You share ideas, and there’s no push to buy something. They believe that through building the relationship when you have a problem they can solve, you’ll think to go to them. It’s a relationship built on reciprocity. One where if you always build something together there is reason to keep in touch. And where the outcome is what you need if the right elements come together: right person, right time, right message, right place, right offering, right price. Job search networking is no different. The purpose of networking in a job search is to build a network where you are seen as a go-to solution should a suitable problem come up. In this case the problem you solve is a vacancy. Either because your active network is recruiting, or because they advocate for you when someone they know is recruiting. It is always a two-way conversation you both benefit from. Knowledge sharing, sounding board, see how you’re doing - because of what the relationship brings to you both. It is not contacting someone only to ask for a job or a recommendation. A one-way conversation that relies on lucky timing. That second approach can be effective as a type of direct sales rather than networking. If you get it wrong it may even work against you. How would you feel if someone asked to network with you, when it became clear they want you to do something for them? You might get lucky and network with someone who is recruiting now - more likely is that you nurture that relationship over time. If your goal is only to ask for help each networking opportunity will have a low chance of success. While if your goal is to nurture a relationship that may produce a lead, you’ll only have constructive outcomes. This makes it sensible to start by building a network with people that already know you: Former direct colleagues and company colleagues Industry leaders and peers Recruiters you have employed or applied through Don’t forget the friends you aren’t in regular touch with - there is no shame in being out of work and it would be a shame if they didn’t think of you when aware of a suitable opening. These people are a priority because they know you, your capability and your approach and trust has already been built. Whereas networking with people you don't know requires helping them come to know and trust you. Networking with people you know is the most overlooked tactic by the exec job seekers I talk to (followed by personal branding). These are the same people who see the hidden jobs market as where their next role is, yet overlook what’s in front of them. If you are looking for a new role on the quiet - networking is a go-to approach that invites proactive contact to you. Networking with people who know people you know, then people in a similar domain, then people outside of this domain - these are in decreasing order of priority. Let's not forget the other type of networking. Talking to fellow job seekers is a great way to share your pain, take a load off your shoulders, bounce ideas off each other, and hold each other accountable. LinkedIn is the perfect platform to find the right people if you haven't kept in touch directly. Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a conduit to conversation. It isn’t the conversation itself. Speaking in real life is where networking shines because while you might build a facsimile of a relationship in text, it's no replacement for a fluid conversation. Whether by phone and video calls, real life meetups, business events, seminars, conferences, expos, or in my case - on dog walks and waiting outside of the school gates. Both these last two have led to friends and business for me though the latter hasn’t been available since 2021. Networking isn’t 'What can I get out of it?' Instead, ‘What’s in it for them?’ The difference is the same as those ransom list job adverts compared to the rare one that speaks to you personally. How can you build on this relationship by keeping in touch? Networking is systematic, periodic and iterative: Map out your real life career network. Revisit anyone you’ve ever worked with and where Find them on LinkedIn Get in touch ‘I was thinking about our time at xxx. Perhaps we could reconnect - would be great to catch up’ If they don’t reply, because life can be busy, diarise a follow up What could be of interest to them? A LinkedIn post might be a reason to catch up When you look up your contact’s profile look at the companies they’ve worked at. They worked there for a reason, which may be because of a common capability to you Research these companies. Are there people in relevant roles worth introducing yourself to? Maybe the company looks a fit with your aspirations - worth getting in touch with someone who may be a hiring manager or relevant recruiter? Maybe they aren’t recruiting now. Someone to keep in touch with because of mutual interests. Click on Job on their company page, then "I'm interested" - this helps for many reasons, including flagging your interest as a potential employee Keep iterating your network and find new companies as you look at new contacts. This is one way we map the market in recruitment to headhunt candidates - you can mirror this with your networking The more proactive networking you build into your job search, the luckier you might get. While you might need to nurture a sizeable network and there are no guarantees, think about the other virtues of networking - how does that compare to endless unreplied applications? I often hear from job seekers who found their next role through networking. This includes those who got the job because of their network even though hundreds of applicants were vying for it. While this may be unfair on the applicants sometimes you can make unfair work for you. It can be effective at any level.