Use LinkedIn to build your career personal brand, not Twitter

“It’s all about who you know” used to mean networking and shaking hands. Now? That friendliness happens on social media, usually starting with a little personal branding. There’s a reason 80% of marketing executives are actively developing their own brands—it can be truly career changing.

I can tell ya from experience that building a personal brand can get you in the room. Tweeting advertising analysis and social media breakdowns grew my Twitter followers to 50,000, followed by many career opportunities. My job conversations at R/GA, Twitch, and even Morning Brew all started from bosses sliding in my DMs. A Spotify PM reached out after reading my threads and hired my agency to work on several product launches. As I start freelancing/consulting for the first time, I’m counting on my social presence to bring in business.

But my focus won’t be on Twitter anymore. I hit LinkedIn hard last year and realized it’s the more effective, healthier, and cleaner way to build a professionally minded personal brand. More importantly, the type of content that wins isn’t all that different.

Twitter/@Jappleby

Let’s talk about why you should show off that brain of yours on LinkedIn.

Build your brand on a site directly tied to your résumé

If you’re making content to benefit your career, posting on a website that’s directly linked to your résumé/portfolio makes a whole lotta sense.

You’ll want it as close to your résumé/portfolio as possible. If I click on your Twitter handle, I’m taken to your profile to see your bio, maybe a link, and more tweets. But if I get curious when your LinkedIn post pops into my feed? Tapping your face takes me directly to your LinkedIn profile, which (hopefully) has your full work experience, a little about you, and a million reasons why you’re a bona fide candidate. It’s the shortest funnel you.

I started taking LinkedIn seriously last year, posting every day. (You can follow along here.) That turned into 25 million impressions on my content in 2022. That’s 25 million chances for someone to click through to my professional profile.

LinkedIn / Jack Appleby

LinkedIn content lasts a heckuva lot longer than tweets

If you’re going to make content, you’ll want to know it won’t get immediately washed away with the tide. Twitter’s a content hurricane—a single tweet’s half-life is 15-18 minutes. That tweet you shaved down to 240 characters washed into the mess before you ever hit send. Meanwhile, LinkedIn posts can regularly earn engagement 24-48 hours after publishing. My top-performing LinkedIn posts, like this take on setting career boundaries, consistently earn extra engagement weeks later.

LinkedIn is a whole lot nicer

Have you been on Twitter? Anonymous accounts run rampant, tweeting whatever they like to you with no consequence. Statistically, it’s a platform that spreads negativity more than positivity, which is even scarier as questions arise about content moderation in the Elon era.

Want to know what makes people act a whole lot nicer on the internet? A website where your entire professional network is alerted to your comments. Unlike most social networks, your LinkedIn comments can be sent to the primary feed. Sure, it’s also why so much LinkedIn commentary leans softer with an egregious amount of exclamation points, but give me that over rando trolls any day of the week.

You can copy/paste your tweets to get started

I started on LinkedIn at the insistence of a smart friend, Brittany Krystle, who worked on Gary Vee’s personal team back in 2016 before moving on to become a personal-branding expert. I asked a few questions about LinkedIn, but she waved me off and gave one simple tip: Just start dropping my tweets on LinkedIn. Word-for-word copy pasta. The same written content would work elsewhere.

I started tossing a tweet a day on LinkedIn at the beginning of 2021 and paid no mind. Never engaged, never scrolled, nothing. Then I looked up a year later and had 11,000 followers.

Those punchy 280 character tweets? Those work on LinkedIn.

You’ve probably seen Twitter threads go viral. They’re a popular way to add nuanced thought on a network that constantly lacks nuance. Good news: Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, and a couple of spacing changes converts a thread to a long-form LinkedIn post.

Twitter/@Jappleby

Okay, you can keep tweeting, too

Written content can go viral on almost any social network. Remember how we talked a few months back about how you can take Insta videos and put them on TikTok? The same is true with the Twitter to LinkedIn flow. Once you write it out, throw it everywhere that accepts content to get that extra mileage.

There are so many social big thinkers out there, writing all kinds of amazing strategies, analysis, and breakdowns. All ships rise with the tide, so here are a few reads from other places I think you could learn from.

“The Instagram Reels Gold Rush” (The New Yorker)

IG is pushing Reels onto creators by any means necessary, including “Reels Play Bonus,” a system that literally pays influencers by the view. That’s certainly getting more content made, but also drastically decreasing the quality of Reels now that quantity = $$$.

“TikTok creators will be able to limit shortform videos to adult-only audiences” (The Verge)

For all of TikTok’s greatness, the lack of clarity behind what subject matter is and isn’t appropriate is always an issue. More tools that allow creators to age-gate their content should help the app widen its interest set and allow more adult-themed conversations without concern.

“Twitter to relax ban on political ads” (the New York Times)

Elon changes Twitter’s rules so often, it’s hard to track when to get fired up. I remember being glad I wouldn’t see political ads on the platform, but it seems they’re back. What’s your take?