How to Build Your Authority on LinkedIn, with LinkedIn's Exec Editor

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:58About a decade ago, I was fired. I was working at another magazine at the time, and they decided that I wasn't the right fit anymore, and so I was gone. Just like that. Poof. A new editor hired to replace me. And when that happened, something clicked for me. I realized I was interchangeable. You know, we like to think of ourselves as unique, but the truth is we are often not. Our talents or our products alone do not make us fully unique. We are always just one option among many. So back then, after getting fired, I started to think, what is the opposite of being interchangeable? And the answer is being singular.

2:42Being singular means becoming the specific, unique person that people want and trust. Instead of people saying, hmm, I need someone to do this, I wanted people to say, I need Jason Pfeiffer to do this. Me. How do you do that? Well, I found a way to make it happen. It was personal branding. People sometimes think of personal branding as an ego thing or an influencer thing, but it is not. It's really about building a funnel. You, as an individual, are not scalable. You cannot be everywhere at once, talking to everyone at once, ensuring that everyone understands you and trusts you on an individual level.

3:21No. Content, however, is scalable. A personal brand is simply a way of clarifying your purpose and then articulating that purpose in ever more compelling ways so that you reach exactly the people that you want to reach and they know about you. So I started doing this for myself. I spent years building my personal brand, and the single most effective tool that I found to do this was on LinkedIn. For years, I did not understand LinkedIn, I'll be honest. I thought it was a digital resume or just a place to find a job. But once I leaned into understanding how the place worked and how to build a presence for myself there and how to connect with others there, things changed.

4:04People started to reach out to me with job offers and partnership requests and speaking opportunities and more. Why? Because for the first time, I was showing those people exactly who I was and what my value was to them and why they needed me. But look, I will admit something to you. I also have a secret weapon. It is that I get to talk to the leaders at LinkedIn to understand how the platform works and what's succeeding there. And today, I am giving that access to you, too. Delighted to be here. A topic that is close to my heart. This is Laura Lorenzetti, the executive editor at LinkedIn. I think for a long time, if you built a business, you cared about the business brand, right?

4:48You were like, oh, I need marketing. I need PR. And everybody who started a business did that, right? But we're in a new era where people want to hear from people and that the faces behind the business are the business. And that's what people are looking towards. That's what they care about. They want to hear from. I just need to repeat back what she just said there. The faces behind the business are the business. How powerful is that? There is this new trend towards authenticity where people want to know the truth. They want to know what's behind it. And what we see is that at every level, whether you're Sundar Pete Shai, the CEO of Google, all the way down to an entrepreneur starting their business, is that when they log on, when they start their profile, the amount of engagement they get per post still outweighs what people engage in.

5:34engage with from companies because of that authenticity, because of the person that is behind that business. And I think this is super important for anybody right now, whether you're building a business or just building your career, you are your brand and you need to be able to bring that to the forefront so that people trust you and that they're following you for your expertise. So if you're looking to build a personal brand or just to understand the mechanisms of doing it on LinkedIn better, today's episode is for you. What we're going to do here today on problem solvers, Laura and I are going to talk about how to define your personal brand, how to find things to say, how to reach the right people.

6:11And then I'm going to ask Laura some of the major myths and questions that people have about personal brand building on LinkedIn. Like, for example, can you include a link in your post or will that harm the post's reach? People ask that all the time. Laura, of course, speaks as the ultimate insider at LinkedIn who sees the patterns and understands why things work. From her LinkedIn bio, she leads a team of 150 plus journalists, editors, and community managers that are activating meaningful conversations across LinkedIn. So she is seeing it all. I am speaking from the experience of using the platform for years and having built now a following of about 230 ,000 people.

6:53I actually just took everything I know and put it into a course called LinkedIn Mastery, which I'll link to in the show notes, along with a discount code for 40 % off. But anyway, today we're diving deep on this podcast. Laura brings really great insights, and I am so excited for you to hear what she has to say. All coming up right after the break. All right, we're back. I am talking with Laura Lorenzetti, the executive editor of LinkedIn. And just a moment ago, you heard her say this. You are your brand, and you need to be able to bring that to the forefront so that other people trust you. Trust, emphasize that word trust.

7:31So that's where I wanna start the conversation. Here's what I told Laura. I love that you said that word trust. Here's what I have found to be the most important formula for building a personal brand. It is this, content builds trust, trust builds relationships, and then relationships convert. That's the reason to do this, right? because when you create that content, you are creating a dialogue with people and they feel like they hear you and understand you and then they trust you. And once they trust you, they wanna buy things from you or they wanna partner with you in some ways. 100%, I love that you start with trust because this is where it all is.

8:11People wanna get your authenticity. They wanna get who you are. They wanna hear the truth from you. But that comes from your own voice. It comes from who you are. And the more people see you, the more they engage with you, the more they understand what you care about and can connect with you. And that gets your message across. And that stays out there. That circulates for a long time. We often hear from creators that a post that they did three months ago all of a sudden just got new engagement. Because the reality is when people trust you and they trust your expertise, they'll seek that out again and start to share that and use that and reference it.

8:42And knowledge, when you share it, stays consistently there on the platform. And it's a great resource. Also, when you are sharing that kind of stuff and you're sharing it repetitively, it creates signal out of noise. I think people are afraid to be repetitive on LinkedIn, to be sharing the same kinds of ideas, to be returning to the same messages. But I say don't be afraid of being repetitive because the thing is, people aren't focused on your content the way that you're focused on your content. people are seeing lots of stuff in a feed every day. A bunch of it is going to be noise to them. And if you have a meaningful idea and you're able to consistently share versions of it, what you're really doing is you're training people to recognize that you are a valuable voice.

9:31You're creating signal in the noise. And to me, that is the starting point for building a great brand, a personal brand, is that you have to, in some ways, train your audience to expect great things from you. Because once they start to notice you and your name and not all the other names that they're seeing that aren't as meaningful, just flowing through their feed, then they're going to start paying attention and they're going to start building that trust. I love the idea of consistency here. And I think most managers know if you've taken a management training, they'll say you need to repeat the idea back to your employee three times before they pay attention, right?

10:07Like the idea being that the first time you hear an idea, you kind of check it off, but you forget it again. The second time you start to pay attention, the third time you start to click in and remember it. I think this idea of having consistency in what you talk about is a good thing. And people shouldn't be afraid of that because a lot of times it's still it takes a couple of times to stick with people. And the more that you are associated with an idea and expertise, the better. You can go deeper into that. And I wouldn't be afraid of repeating because people don't see every single post. You might be on vacation.

10:38You might come back next week. But people still get value out of that. And they get value out of another way of phrasing it or a new context or a new example that adds on to that expertise. That's actually something I do all the time. I will regularly go back through my top performing posts and find something that did really well nine months ago and then just rework it slightly. I'll read it and I'll say, oh, that actually sparks a slightly different idea. But I'm posting 90 percent the same material. But it was nine months ago. It gets great engagement. never does somebody say, hey, wait a second, you posted that nine months ago.

11:10Instead, people love it. And you know what? I bet some people it's new. And for some people, they saw it nine months ago and they loved it and they forgot it. And now it gets to be reintroduced to them as if for the first time. And that is all valuable. 100%. There's knowledge and examples and learnings that are evergreen. But when they're rephrased, when they're refreshed, when they're new in your feed, people can engage with that again. They can have a new conversation and make new connections and bring that to the forefront of the now because there's learnings that are just really become more resonant over time even.

11:44Okay, so Laura, let's start getting tactical now. I had promised we're gonna talk about where to start on defining your personal brand and then how to find the right things to say and then how to actually reach the right people. So let's start at the beginning of that, which is figuring out where to start For someone who is totally new to this, they've heard us, they've heard other people say this is really important. They say, OK, I get it. But where do I actually start to do this? Where do they start? Yes. So one is I would start with your profile. Make sure it's up to date. Make sure there's a little bit of summary, but also really pay attention to the headline you put for yourself.

12:27Because if you pay attention on LinkedIn, that headline is what follows your content. A lot of people, if people don't know you right now, they'll look at your name, then they'll look at your headline and they'll match that to what you're saying. They're kind of within that context, trying to understand your credibility and your expertise. So the more you are thoughtful about how that headline reflects that credibility and expertise of what you want to speak to, the better. It's going to give that context in real time. Let me just give an example of what you're talking about. So I'll see a lot of people instead of just sharing CEO of blank company or whatever, they'll say, I help people do whatever.

13:01They're almost benefit statements to explain their value. Yeah, exactly. And there's a few ways you can do it, right? Like if you're a CEO of Google, done. Just put that as your headline. You're good. If you're somebody who, you know, you're an AI consultant or a management consultant, being more descriptive about that value and your expertise is helpful because people may not immediately know you. But when they see, when they describe that benefit statement of what you're doing, the value you add and where that expertise is coming from, the more they can say, OK, great, I have the context. Now I want to connect in the context.

13:33I believe this person. I trust this person. So take that seriously. Craft it. Be very thoughtful about that headline that's going to follow you around. So then you were going to say what the next step was. I was going to talk about content and how to think about, OK, people get afraid, right? They're like, I'm not an expert or anything. What would I even say? I think about it a little bit of create three pillars. And one pillar is what you do. You're probably an expert in. I think, Jason, you're a journalist, you're in media, you're an expert in that. But second is what the subject matter that you're an expertise in, right?

14:06Entrepreneurship, media, trends in media, trends in entrepreneurship. But there's also a third piece that everybody has, which is the softer side of things. Whether it's you're a manager or you're a parent and how do you do the work-life balance. I think this idea of from what you do, what you're an expert in to how you do the work, all three of these things matter. And all of your content should be a mix of these pieces because they are both your expertise, your hard knowledge, but also who you are. And it helps people feel connected to you over time. I think balancing that is really important as you grow your content calendar, if you will.

14:39I agree. Here's how I've come to think of what you just said there. When people build a personal brand, they often are emphasizing the wrong word. They think about personal. But it's not about being personal. It's actually about being a brand. If you think about what a brand is, a brand is three things. A brand is simple, a brand is repeatable, and a brand is scalable. And if you were to try to be a human version of that, then what you're really thinking about is, who am I to my professional audience? That's being simple. And then repeatable is like, what do I have to say that I can say over and over again?

15:19And then scalable is how do I reach the most correct people with my content? And if you start to think of it like that, then it shoves out all of this stuff that people often associate with personal brands. Nobody cares what you had for breakfast. Nobody cares about your vacation. What they care about is what you have to say that's super relevant to them. And so that focusing exercise of making yourself simple, repeatable and scalable turns you into a brand that's just as resonant as Coca-Cola. People understand what Coca-Cola is. They need to understand what you are just as fast. Definitely. And I think this idea of making sure you bring your authenticity into that, right?

16:02Nobody wants to hear a marketing advertisement, but the more you bring your authentic voice into that of like, OK, here's where my brand is, but here's what it means coming from me. And how that sounds different, how that how you share it is different than what you would from a company page. You're bringing yourself into that brand. And I think that's where you really hit that sweet spot. I often point people towards a specific person these days. I want to tell you about this person, Laura, so that you can tell me how much this is representative of the kinds of people on LinkedIn or the way in which to do this.

16:36I feel like I'm not actually a good representative person to look to about how to build a person. You don't want to do it like me because I have a public platform to stand on as the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur. And I'm also playing something of a numbers game. I have 230 ,000 followers on LinkedIn right now. I'm very happy about that. But the thing is that most people don't need to play like a big public performance kind of role in order to make their personal brand meaningful and also to succeed on LinkedIn. So I like to point to my friend Matt Adelman. So Matt Adelman is a guy who he works for a company called the Genesis Company.

17:15He helps brands get onto retail shelves at Target, like a hyper specific thing that he does. And he's got, I don't know, 4000 followers, right? Like he's not trying to be an influencer. Most people should not try to be influencers. But instead, he's got a very focused audience of people who run brands who want to understand retail better. And all of his posts are just about that. They're just him walking around Target, taking photos of shelves at Target, and then breaking down what he's seeing. And he's told me that post on LinkedIn drove this new client. And that post got me two new inquiries.

17:52that stuff I think is really meaningful and important for people to understand that like you don't have to do the thing that I'm doing where I'm like trying to reach the maximum number of people and turn myself into this like thing you instead just need to think I'm a professional I need to reach my target client or my target future boss or whatever and so then what content is going to communicate my knowledge and value to them is that about right Yes, I love that you bring this up because value is not in virality. And I think people sometimes just want the likes because it does feel good. There's a little bit of an ego.

18:32But the reality is, and what I talk about a lot on LinkedIn is that pay attention to the who. Who do you really care about? Because you might not care about the third 300 likes. You probably only care about those 100 or 10 or 20. Because if you reach the right people, that's transformative for your business. And that's why a lot of creators are here, right? Because they want to make sure that they're getting the right business prospects. They're getting the right career opportunities. And I tell people a lot, look at your analytics. Are you reaching the job titles you want? Are you reaching the industries you want?

19:05Are you reaching the areas of the country or world that you want? And I always say, look a little bit further than just the raw numbers, because the who and making sure that you're getting the benefit that you want from your content is super important. And there's some different ways that you can continue to kind of hone in on that as you continue to develop your content strategy. Well, I think that transitions us nicely into the next subject, which is how to find the right things to say, to look at who is consuming your content, who's looking at your profile. Are they in the right industries?

19:36Are they holding the right titles? That is controllable in a way, right? You can control who you're reaching. And the way that you're going to do that is by writing relevant content that's going to reach the people who you want to reach. Unpack for me what strategies people should be thinking about as they craft content that's actually going to hit their target. It's a great question. I think there's a few ways to, a few buckets to think about. I think is one is a lot of what we talked about earlier, which is these repeatable things. So like having the insights that you know are relevant to your company, your work, your career that you can reshape, share new examples around, expand on.

20:15So what is that? What is your expertise and those kind of that nugget that you always want to build around? I think that's something that you can consistently know that you can turn back to. I think secondly, there is always an area of news and the ability to put news in context for people, the ability to add your layer within the news of, hey, here's what it means. Here's how to stop and think about this. I think Terrace has been one of the biggest one that we've seen creators and business people say, like, here's how I'm thinking about it. Here's how I'm weighing in. Because when you're helping other leaders put that news in context, you are helping them, right?

20:52You're helping other leaders to say like, oh, that's really I didn't think about that. Maybe I should consider that aspect of the tariff or maybe I should consider doing this with my business as I try to adapt. That really puts that real time nature in there for people to turn to you. And then the third is the ability to also share behind the scenes. Let people in to what it's like to do your work or build your business. And I think having that personal bit within the mix helps people to say, remind who you are. Keep it in the professional space. But this idea of giving like a glimpse behind the scenes is really helpful for people.

21:29I think that distinction is really important. Who you are, but within the professional space. That reminds me of a concept that has been really transformative to me, which is this. if you're worried about how to present yourself on social media, then don't put yourself on social media. Instead, create a 5 % character of yourself and put that on social media instead. That is how I think everybody should frame themselves. When you put all of you out on social media, it is big and messy. You're a whole complex person and there's a lot to share and say, but there's 5 % of you that's super relevant to your audience.

22:115 % of you that is just extremely confident about the insights into what professionals who you want to reach need to know. And once you think, okay, what 5 % of me and my knowledge is most relevant to that audience, then you can start to also think, well, okay, if I'm going to play a character that is hyper-focused and relevant to my audience, then what does that character sound like? What does that character have to say? How does that character present? Is that character always enthusiastic? Is that character a real talker? Is that character long-winded? Is that character short and punchy and funny?

22:50I have spent a long time thinking about how I present as a version of myself that isn't all of me, but is the relevant part of me that an audience of professionals can connect to and rely upon. And once I figured that out for myself, I realized how scalable it was because that 5 % character is now the person who also shows up on videos like this one, or the 5 % character is also the one who shows up on stage when I give keynotes. And once you define your 5 % character, it also helps you make decisions. So for example, my 5 % character I've decided is always optimistic and useful. And that means that sometimes I see things that I might want to complain about on LinkedIn or something that someone did wrong that I would like to call out.

23:37But I say, wait a second, that's not what the 5 % character would do. The 5 % character would instead find something that someone did that went right and explain why it was so smart. And that creates this consistency that also then builds the relationships because people know that you're going to be steady and reliable, that ultimately helps create the bonds that turn into business. I love that. I think there's a term, right? Trust is consistency over time. So when people know what Jason is, they know what I'm going to get from Jason. I'm going to get a straight talking, enthusiastic, great advice.

24:14They trust you and they continue to look for you in their feed, right? Make sure that they get the latest thing. They're following your newsletter. They're opening your newsletter. It's that idea of when they know what they're going to get from you, there's that trust and there's the consistency of them turning to you for that expertise over time. Yeah. Another thing that I do a lot, which I want to share with you and see what you think, is when people are building their personal brands, they often ask, where do ideas come from? And I have found for me, the most valuable source of ideas is real life in the moment.

24:51It is conversations that I'm having with people where maybe somebody asks me for advice, or maybe I'm just talking with another entrepreneur and we're spitballing ideas and I will say something or they will say something and both of us go, oh, that's a great idea. And I think too many people just let those ideas pass and they forget them. And I have trained myself to always write them down. So the second that something pops out of my mouth that's useful to someone else or the second that someone says something to me that makes me think, I grab my phone, I open up my notes app and I just jot it down really fast.