How to Build Your Brand on LinkedIn w/ Basant Shenouda

UX Marketing

Blake: [00:00:00] today on the podcast I have and we're going to talk a little bit about building your personal brand, which I know is going to be huge for a lot of people listening in. So Basant, how are you doing today?

[00:00:16] Basant: [00:00:16] I'm good. How are you doing?

[00:00:18] Blake: [00:00:18] I am fantastic. Where? I mean, you're in, you're in Berlin, right? So it's completely different time than, than where I'm at.

[00:00:24] It's early

[00:00:25] Basant: [00:00:25] the afternoon.

[00:00:26] Blake: [00:00:26] Yeah. Yeah. So, I just, just woke up, rolled out of bed and, excited to do this. Yeah. cool. Well, let's dive right into it. Usually I, I want to get more context about you first so that people can come to know who you are, why, why they should trust you, where this advice is coming from, and then we can get into actual tips that people can implement for their own brands.

[00:00:49] But just some quick context on you. First and foremost, what's, what's the story of your career so far? How you got started until where you are now.

[00:00:58] Basant: [00:00:58] Right? So I grew up in Saudi Arabia and I'm originally from Egypt, and about five years ago I moved to Germany to pursue my education. And I think that kind of established me as someone who's a bit more resourceful and constantly trying to get out of her comfort zone. And I think that's why I'm always trying to find ways to really.

[00:01:22] Like be out there and like spotlight myself. And since then, a few, like two years ago, I started posting on LinkedIn about my journey, into finding a job specifically. But essentially it's turned into more of me sharing everything I'm learning. And how, How I've gotten so far in my career and since then I was able to get a job at LinkedIn through doing this.

[00:01:49] So I'm going to be starting as a sales associate this summer, and also because of the thought leadership that I've put out as content. I'm recently launched my. career consulting, like side hustle, called Basant blast. And because I put myself out there and established myself and spotlighted myself, I was able to create my career and also like start e-school projects, get to help people every day.

[00:02:18] So I'm really happy with that.

[00:02:20] Blake: [00:02:20] Awesome. Yeah, that's an interesting twist as well on it because usually when we hear about people posting content on LinkedIn, it's, you know, whether it's to build their own business or their personal brand, but you've actually leveraged it to do both of those things, but also get a job at LinkedIn. So that's really cool.

[00:02:35] And we'll dive into that a little bit more, that kind of the process that you took to get there. But I'm curious if, if I were to ask you what you think your professional super power is, what would you say.

[00:02:46] Basant: [00:02:46] Ooh, that's a good question. I think story telling that's so generic, but I think in general, I'm really good at telling stories and really using my story in a way that will help other people. and I think that's why I love sales so much, is that's essentially helping people through telling stories and also recruitments like that.

[00:03:09] I think so many, so much of business is telling stories, to help others. and I think that's my professional superpower.

[00:03:17] Blake: [00:03:17] well, that that's certainly very relevant to building a brand, and we'll talk about that. I guess let's, let's just start in with that because there are a lot of things that we could cover with building a brand, but first and foremost, stories may be at the forefront of, of doing that. How, how have you, and I guess, how can other people use stories to effectively grow a personal brand.

[00:03:38]Basant: [00:03:38] I would say it's really about. Hmm. It's about using your experiences in a way that will help others. I think that's like the best story you can tell. So when I was looking for a job, that's the kind of story I was telling. I was telling people, this is how you can start implementing these strategies.

[00:04:00] This is how you can surpass this specific adversity. So a lot of what I talk about is getting past rejection, which is something I went through. And how people can do the same thing. So I think a big part of telling the story about your brand is looking at what experiences you're having and how you can help others through those experiences.

[00:04:24] So I've had, like, I've had people like telling me that through their rejection and my story, they were able to become stronger people and less fearful of it. So I think creating stories that are more vulnerable and are things that people don't talk about are, is really important because then you're telling a story that isn't being told elsewhere, and that's how he created the kind of community around, what you're going through.

[00:04:53] Blake: [00:04:53] A lot of people that are sharing content out there or trying to tell their story will say, I don't think that my story is that interesting. They, they think, you know, they see themselves as kind of average or just a normal person, which most of us are just normal people. But how do we, how do we make a story compelling and fascinating to another community?

[00:05:15] Basant: [00:05:15] That's a really good question. I think that's something a lot of students and young professionals deal with. It's something I personally have dealt with in a more corporate structure. I said, okay, I'm the small intern. What value or thought leadership do I have to offer to other people? And I think that does something you have to get through, through understanding what makes you special in general.

[00:05:37] And I think I just started small. I started talking about small things I did in high school. So I did a stand up, for example, in high school. So I was telling people that this is just a random thing that I started doing because I just stepped out of my comfort zone. Yeah. I just think it's also about adding value.

[00:05:58] It's not about saying I did these things. It's about really detailing the steps as to how you did something. So it's not me saying, Oh, I, I'm starting to work at LinkedIn. I'm super cool. no, it's about these are the steps. This is what I have to go through. This is the rejection. This is how I brought myself up.

[00:06:18]and I think there's so much power in really saying. This is the, like, this is my superpower. Like you said, kind of this is what I'm doing, this is how cool I am. and this is how you can do it too, is the most important part. I think.

[00:06:33] Blake: [00:06:33] In one of the big reasons why I even started this podcast and the reason why it's called the micro-influencer podcast is because I'm trying to help people understand that you don't need a massive following to have a massive impact. You can do really great things with a small following. So for transparency, looking at your LinkedIn profile right now, you've got about 6,500 followers, but.

[00:06:55] You know, and any other platform you would say, okay, yeah, that's, that's fine. But on LinkedIn, if you have 6,500 engaged followers, you've been able to turn that into a place where you can share great content, get good engagement, build a community, even get a job out of it. So. Having a massive following isn't necessary anymore if you're trying to build it the right way.

[00:07:17] If you're trying to just build a smaller community that is really hyper focused on one common goal, that's way more effective than having 100,000 followers that you just bought from Facebook ads that have nothing to do with you right.

[00:07:32] Basant: [00:07:32] Yeah, I really think so. And I think the beautiful thing about LinkedIn and building your personal brand on that is the followership is just a number. The amount of views you can get from that is so much higher. So even though I have just . Say 6,000 followers in the last year, I've gotten more than 1 million views.

[00:07:53]and I think through just the platform is so powerful because it's so niche still and the amount of networks you can go through is so high. It's so, it's so incredible what you can do with LinkedIn if you use it properly.

[00:08:08] Blake: [00:08:08] so let's dive into it. Let's, let's try to figure out how people can use this properly. I think we'll probably go specific here under LinkedIn a little bit, just because you're, you're, you're really in depth there, but if I'm just, just pretend that I am starting out brand new. I have no followers, I have nothing, and I want to get on LinkedIn.

[00:08:26] Let's say I'm a marketer and I have some skills, but I've never created content. Well, how would you consult me on, on getting started? What would you recommend? I do first.

[00:08:36] Basant: [00:08:36] great. So I always recommend people to not think about it too much, and it's top in into what value you can start providing people. And start providing it very consistently. So what I see with a lot of people is their start posting like every two weeks or once a month or something like that. What I really recommend people to always start is to just hop in, in what general knowledge or what particular experience they're good at providing, and then just experiment as you go.

[00:09:06]so I start, I put a certain rule on myself that I need to post twice a week. And at the beginning I didn't really quite know what to start posting about, right? So I started talking to people. I bought LinkedIn, I started talking about experiences I've had in the past when I was a bit younger, and then I turned it into sharing my journey at the present because that's what really resonated with people.

[00:09:30] So I always just recommend people to just hop right into it and just experiment as they go. And I mean, that's something I'm doing with my consulting at the moment, is I just started. And then you kind of cater everything to the feedback you're getting and to the certain, like how people are engaging with it.

[00:09:50] So I always tell people that likes and comments are not important, but it's a very good way of understanding what works and what doesn't. So if you're noticing that people are resonating with a specific part of your journey, then go full on with that. Right.

[00:10:06] Blake: [00:10:06] Well, I would love to dive into your engagement specifically and how, how you feel like you've built that up over time because your profile, you get really good engagement compared to the followership that you currently have. I'm curious like how can people replicate that? What tips would you have on.

[00:10:21] What kind of content to create, how to do it so that people can actually resonate with their audience.

[00:10:27] Basant: [00:10:27] Well, I think people tend to really put up general content. So these are the basic things. For example, from a career perspective, if that's what you're going for, these are the general tips you should be implementing to get a good resume. Or I see with a lot of marketers. Get on tic-tac, but it's not any like value driven content.

[00:10:51] So it's not saying how, what kind of content should you be creating on tick-tock? Why should you then on take talk? All these kinds of content. I personally think like go very heavy with value that isn't really found elsewhere. So really find your niche and how you can give that to other people. So I noticed that people weren't speaking about rejection, and this was kind of like a taboo topic on LinkedIn because people just try to talk about like their success and not really how they got it.

[00:11:23] So that's what I focused on and I started creating this experience that couldn't really be found elsewhere. So people would come to me when they're struggling to find me, also struggling and we would kind of just bond over this mutual, I don't know what to do, kind of thing. And we were just figuring it out together.

[00:11:41]and I think I also noticed that a lot of people have this one sided relationship with LinkedIn. Like, I'll just put this content out and just see how it goes. But I think it's a very two-sided community building experience where you're just bonding with other people and like sharing your story. And one thing I always try to do is I have people share their stories.

[00:12:04] Opposite to mine in the comments, for example. That's something I really try to push and that creates a really big discussion and people come just to be in the comments sometimes, not just even about my content because I just created this safe space where people can speak out and like talk about how they feel and what they're struggling with, and it's become like this two sided community that I really love being a part of.

[00:12:28] Blake: [00:12:28] So that's, that's like the first, that's the interface of it going into it. You see the content, you create that content, but then. Another side of the equation is what you actually do based on the engagement that you get. So if I, if I take one of your posts, I see you get several hundred likes and a, and a couple of hundred comments.

[00:12:44] What do you actually do with that once you've earned that.

[00:12:49] Basant: [00:12:49] do you mean like how do I engage with it? Or.

[00:12:52]