Episode Summary
With over 700 million users, Linkedin has become a powerful social media network that attracts professionals worldwide. It’s a platform where you can boost your career through networking, connections, and content creation.
But how many of us actually do it? Despite the massive potential of the digital world and the endless social media possibilities, do we have what it takes to build a personal brand online effectively?
In this episode of the Rep Your Brand podcast, our host Nick Bennett welcomes Devin Reed, the Head of Content Strategy at Gong and a respected thought leader in the space. We get into why building a personal brand is a smart career move, how to create content that will resonate with your audience and earn you the spot of an influential thought leader, and the differences between memorable and forgettable content.
Guest Profile
- Name: Devin Reed
- What he does: He's the Head of Content Strategy at Gong, a company that enables revenue teams to realize their fullest potential by unveiling their customer reality.
- Company: Gong
- Key Quote: "Just go for it! Think of what's the worst that can happen. That never happens! The worst almost never actually happens. And there's so much upside."
Key Insights
- Having a personal brand is more important than ever, even as a full-time employee. The benefits of having a personal brand are endless. From being a respected thought leader in your space to maximizing your future job opportunities, you can leverage your online presence in so many different ways. Devin says even as a full-time employee, you're able to use your digital brand to promote both yourself and your company. He says managers should encourage their employees to grow their personal reputation, not hold them down. "The more your employees are out there being visible and being seen in a positive light, the better your company is being seen and viewed in a positive light."
- Align your brand with your core values. When building a brand, start by defining your WHY. Devin talks about ways to craft a content strategy that will get you where you want to be. The key to success? Provide value. "What message do you want people to leave with? What do they want? And here's a quick way to put it in there. What do you want to be synonymous with? For me, I want it to be content strategy; that's what I'm doing. That's what I built. That's where I'm going. I still talk about sales because people know me for that. I have expertise that I can provide value there, so I split it."
- Know your audience. You can't build a brand if you don't know who your brand is serving. Get to know your target audience, learn about their pain points, and create content that resonates with them. "To truly have content that breaks through the noise and that builds trust and credibility, you have to understand your audience intimately. [...] And when you can really get to that level, then you can create content that speaks to them directly. It's in the language that they use. It's the timing that they're feeling, feeling these things, and thinking about these problems. So that's going to capture attention immediately."
“Lost potential is worse than lost money.”
Devin Reed
Head of Content Strategy
Gong
Episode Highlights
Putting yourself out there creates opportunities
“No one’s going to give me an opportunity. I’m not going to, no matter how successful I am at sales at Gong, I’m not going to call Nick at Alyce and be like, ‘Hey man, I know I don’t have any marketing background, but give me a shot to be a content marketer at whatever role.’
As cool as I may be like that just isn’t happening ’cause no one’s going to take a chance on that. And so I was like, I need to build some, some momentum and some experience there. […] So let me just go all out there, see what happens, and I know we’ll talk about momentum a little bit, but I just believe that putting yourself out there and doing your best always opens up more doors and better things.”
The importance of having a cohesive and intentional content strategy
”I view the content strategy, or building a personal brand, and when we say building a personal brand, we usually mean building a digital personal brand. And I view that as building a relationship. So, if folks in my personal life, and I’m pretty much the same dude personally and professionally, I’m going to talk about a few key things. We’re going to talk about things I’m wearing; I’m going to talk about basketball or sports. I’m gonna talk about sneakers. And people that know me know there’s a few key things I like to talk about.
So topics; things that I know, things I like. They also know there’s a way that I talk. The tone I use, how animated I am, how funny, maybe not how funny I am, but how many jokes I try to tell, whether they’re funny or not, is up to them. And so, when you think about building a personal digital brand, it’s the same concept.
[…] So, for example, I talked about sales, sales emails, and cadences, copywriting type stuff, and content strategy. Well, a few weeks later, what happens? People are hitting me up, asking for advice, consulting, and those specific things. So you have to think what’s your end goal. What action do you want your audience to take, or what do you want to be known for. And then you backfill the content to lead you to that.”
Your audience is your priority
“The other part is prioritizing your audience over yourself, which means providing value before you promote yourself or anything that you have to offer.
Everyone out here is either marketing themselves in a service or product. And so what irks me and what I think a lot of people do mostly, I don’t know if it’s intentionally or not, to be honest. But you know how many times Nick, you see a listicle, and it’s like ten ways to increase revenue with ABM. It’s like number one – send personal gifts – a totally good tip. Number two, buy our software. That’s not value. That’s promotion.”
Why you should build a newsletter
“If you think your LinkedIn following is yours, you’re wrong because at any time LinkedIn can change the algorithm, kick you off the platform, whatever.
And those 30,000 followers you have – gone. So I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’m building on LinkedIn.’ I’m putting a lot of effort into it, but it’s not really mine at the end of the day. And God forbid any of those examples should happen. I don’t want to lose all that. So I thought, and it was also in the post, to build a newsletter.
Then you have their email addresses. You can take them with you from job to job or throughout your career or whatever, and you can build something that’s kind of truly yours.”
Lost potential is worse than lost money
”There’s always that “what if?” game. What if I do it and it fails? What if I do it and my boss emails me and hates it? Or what if whatever? And it’s easy to let all those negative thoughts prevent you from even going for it in the first place.
So if you’re having these doubts, I say, just play the rest of the “what if?” game. Like, ‘What if it’s a hit? What if it opens up doors to your next biggest opportunity? What if, you know, dot dot, dot?’ And just do the positive reflection of that negative thought. That should get you excited. If you get that juice full and you’re like, ‘Yeah, maybe this is for me.’ And you get excited about doing the project, and that’s what you should do and follow it. It’s better to have done it and failed than to never do it at all because then you never know.”
