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What Are Personal Branding and PR?

What comes to your mind when you hear the term ‘Personal Branding’? Self-promotion? A person talking on and on about themselves on social media? As the name suggests, personal branding does involve talking about yourself—not in a self-absorbed way, though. Personal branding is an intentional and deliberate process. We will explore more about it in the coming sections.

Perhaps the term ‘Public Relations’ is more familiar. PR involves thinking a little more strategically than personal branding. It is about how you share information about yourself or your brand with the media and the public. Think press conferences, news releases, events, etc.

Do you find yourself wondering, ‘What’s the difference?’ There might be instances where the line between the two approaches blurs.

It helps to think of Personal Branding and PR as different means to the same goal: building trust and making an impression. With Personal Branding, the approach is to show who you are, communicate your values and strengths, and tell your story to your audience. PR is generally managed by an external agency, and several approaches can be followed. Personal branding feels more authentic and genuine than PR, which tends to be more strategic and ROI-driven.

The rest of the article delves deeper into both approaches and compares the two to see if one is indeed better than the other.

Personal Branding: What, Why and How

The What: As far as definitions go, personal branding is the process of intentionally defining and expressing your values, skills, and experiences to differentiate yourself from others.

With personal branding, the brand you are selling is you. Think about yourself as a brand. What makes you unique? Who is your target audience? What is your story? This gives you the basic structure for the brand image you want to create.

The Why: Personal branding builds trust by showcasing your authentic self, values, and expertise. It opens doors to better career opportunities, stronger professional relationships, and thought leadership in your industry. A strong personal brand helps you stand out in a competitive market, control your narrative, and align your story with your aspirations. By consistently delivering value and engaging with your audience, you drive growth, build a loyal network, and enhance visibility on platforms like LinkedIn, connecting with key industry leaders and creating meaningful opportunities.

The How: Let us take a look at how you can build your personal brand.

• Purpose: Before starting, you need to have a clear vision and mission. Think about the value you are offering to your target audience and how they can connect with your vision and mission. How do your offerings differ from your competitors? Having these details will help set you apart from the competition.
  
  
• Target Audience: Determining your target audience is crucial for effective communication. Start by identifying your niche and expertise, and consider who would benefit from your knowledge or skills. Analyze demographics such as age, gender, location, and profession. Next, consider psychographics—understanding interests, values, and behaviors helps tailor your message. Engage with potential audience members through surveys or social media to gain insights. Lastly, create personas representing different segments of your audience to guide your content and outreach strategies. By clearly defining your target audience, you can build a more authentic and impactful personal brand.
  
  
• Tell Your Story: Many users treat LinkedIn as a mere broadcasting tool to announce courses they’ve completed or job changes. Share these achievements by all means, but also let your audience see the person behind them. A business venture that didn’t take off? An interview you tanked spectacularly? A course you’re currently taking that makes you want to pull your hair out? What did you learn from them? Stories make you human for your audience and add authenticity.
  
  
• Deliver Value: Delivering value through personal branding involves sharing your unique skills, insights, and experiences to benefit your audience. Start by identifying your strengths and areas of expertise, then create content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. This can include informative blog posts, engaging videos, or interactive social media content. Consistently provide actionable advice, industry insights, or inspiration to establish trust and credibility. Engage with your audience by responding to comments and questions, fostering a community around your brand. By prioritizing value in your messaging, you not only enhance your personal brand but also build lasting relationships.
  
  
• Consistent Engagement: Consistent engagement is vital in personal branding as it helps build trust and loyalty with your audience. Regularly share valuable content, respond promptly to comments and messages, and answer questions with expert insight. Utilize storytelling to share personal experiences and insights, making your brand relatable. Participate in relevant conversations and industry events to stay visible and relevant. By engaging consistently, you reinforce your brand identity and create a strong, lasting impression, ensuring your audience feels valued and connected to your journey.

Best Practices for Personal Branding on LinkedIn

1. Optimize Your Profile: Use a high-quality profile picture, and craft a clear and impactful headline that reflects your expertise and value. Write a summary that tells your story, highlighting your skills and experiences.
   
   
2. Showcase Your Skills: Regularly update your skills section and seek endorsements from colleagues. Request recommendations from peers or clients to add credibility.
   
   
3. Create Valuable Content: Post articles, insights, and updates relevant to your industry. Comment on and share posts from your network to build connections.
   
   
4. Build Your Network: Connect with professionals and leaders in your industry by actively engaging with their posts, sharing insights, and starting meaningful conversations.
   
   
5. Engage with Professionals: Actively engage with posts, share insights, and start meaningful conversations with industry professionals. Comment on relevant topics, share your expertise, and build genuine relationships through thoughtful interactions.
   
   
6. Be Consistent: Post consistently to stay top-of-mind with your connections. Maintain a consistent tone and messaging across all interactions.
   
   
7. Use Visuals and Features: Incorporate images, videos, and presentations to make your profile visually appealing. Highlight significant projects or achievements through LinkedIn’s featured section.
   
   
8. Monitor Your Analytics: Regularly check who’s viewed your profile to identify potential connections. Analyze which types of posts resonate most with your audience.

By implementing these best practices, you can effectively build and maintain a strong personal brand on LinkedIn, enhancing your presence.

Public Relations: What, Why, and How

The What: Public Relations (PR) is the practice of managing a person, brand, or company's reputation and public perception. It is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and the public. PR encompasses a variety of activities, including media relations, crisis management, event planning, and content creation. By crafting compelling narratives and engaging with stakeholders, PR professionals aim to shape public perception, enhance reputation, and connect with target audiences. Effective PR helps build trust, navigate challenges, and drive brand loyalty, making it an integral part of any communication strategy.

The Why: PR strategies help you effectively communicate your expertise, achievements, and personal brand, ensuring you stand out in a competitive environment. It supports reputation management, aligning your online narrative with your career goals. Additionally, PR enhances visibility, connects you with ndustry leaders, and positions you as a thought leader. Leveraging PR on LinkedIn can drive professional growth, expand your network, and open up opportunities by strengthening your personal and professional reputation.

The How:

Here’s how you can manage PR for your LinkedIn page:

1. Building a Brand Foundation:
   Start by defining your unique value proposition—what sets you apart in your industry. Create a professional profile with a compelling headline, an engaging summary, and relevant experiences that reflect your expertise. Regularly share valuable content that resonates with your target audience to establish thought leadership. Actively engage with your network by commenting and sharing insights. A strong foundation fosters trust, enhances credibility, and positions you for opportunities on LinkedIn.
   
   
2. Crafting Your Story:
   Craft your professional story to connect authentically with your audience. Highlight key milestones in your career—experiences, challenges overcome, and lessons learned. Frame these elements into a narrative that showcases your skills, values, and motivations. Use a conversational tone to make your story relatable and incorporate examples that illustrate your expertise. Sharing your unique journey creates an emotional connection, builds credibility, and engages your audience, enhancing your personal brand.
   
   
3. Launching Your PR Strategy:
   Identify relevant media outlets and influencers within your industry. Build relationships by engaging with their content on LinkedIn and attending industry events. Create shareable, high-quality content that highlights your expertise and aligns with your goals. Monitor engagement metrics and gather feedback to refine your strategy, ensuring continuous improvement.
   
   
4. Mastering Media Relationships:
   Cultivate strategic connections with journalists and influencers in your industry. Engage with their content and share meaningful insights. Develop a media kit showcasing your expertise, achievements, and contact details to make collaboration easy. Use LinkedIn’s publishing platform to share original articles that demonstrate thought leadership. Proactively pitch story ideas and updates to relevant media contacts. By fostering these relationships and providing value, you can significantly boost your visibility and credibility.

By adopting a strategic approach to PR, you can effectively shape your professional image, enhance your LinkedIn presence, and achieve your career goals.

Comparative Analysis: Is There a Clear Winner?

So far, we have taken a detailed look at Personal Branding and PR. While there are some overlapping factors, there are also distinct differences between the two. Below is a table comparing various aspects of these approaches to provide a more in-depth understanding:

1. Definition and Purpose:
Personal branding and PR share the goal of enhancing reputation, but they differ in scope and focus. Personal branding is about developing an individual’s identity, reputation, and image. It emphasizes showcasing personal values, skills, and traits to build trust and establish a unique identity. PR, on the other hand, is the management of information between an organization or entity and the public. Its purpose is broader, aiming to maintain and enhance reputation, manage communications, and foster positive relationships with the public and stakeholders.

2. Target Audience and Strategies:
Personal branding primarily targets employers, clients, and followers. It relies on strategies like maintaining an active social media presence, creating valuable content, and networking. PR targets a wider audience, including media, customers, stakeholders, and the general public. It employs strategic tools such as press releases, media pitches, and event planning to shape public perception and influence public sentiment.

3. Tools and Ownership:
The tools used in personal branding include platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, personal blogs, and podcasts, which give individuals direct control over their narratives. In contrast, PR relies on traditional media outlets, digital platforms, and press kits, with messaging often managed by PR professionals or dedicated teams. This distinction highlights the personal ownership inherent in personal branding versus the collaborative and organizational approach of PR.

4. Metrics and Challenges:
The success of personal branding is measured through engagement metrics, job offers, and the individual’s brand recognition. However, maintaining authenticity and managing negative feedback can pose challenges. For PR, effectiveness is gauged by media coverage, public sentiment, and the ability to manage crises. PR faces the challenges of ensuring consistent messaging and navigating crisis situations, often under public scrutiny.

5. Focus and Time Frame:
Personal branding focuses on personal stories, values, and unique traits, aiming for long-term visibility and personal development. PR, by contrast, often focuses on organizational achievements, newsworthy events, and community relations, with efforts sometimes concentrated on immediate events or crises. This difference reflects the enduring, relationship-driven nature of personal branding versus the event-driven and outcome-focused nature of PR.

6. Emotional Appeal:
Personal branding relies heavily on emotional connections and relatability. It thrives on storytelling that resonates on a personal level, making it ideal for influencers, thought leaders, and freelancers. PR, however, aims to create a broader positive sentiment, using campaigns, corporate announcements, and nonprofit initiatives to influence public perception and enhance organizational reputation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, personal branding and PR play distinct yet complementary roles in professional development and communication. Personal branding emphasizes establishing an individual's identity, fostering authenticity, and building meaningful connections to advance career opportunities. On the other hand, PR focuses on managing public perception, engaging with media, and addressing crises, making it particularly vital for organizations. The choice between the two depends on specific goals—whether to promote a personal narrative or enhance an organizational reputation. By integrating both approaches, individuals and brands can create a powerful strategy to effectively communicate their values and achieve greater visibility in their fields.

More than 11 million users are posting on LinkedIn in 2024, but only about 1% will reach the topmost positions in terms of reach, engagement, branding, and leads generated. This is because social media platforms like LinkedIn highly depend on 1 factor that is difficult to maintain – consistency.

Consistency in the world of LinkedIn posting can be defined as sticking to the same time and same days of the week every time you post. That is primary; whether you post every other day or only twice a week is secondary.

But how do you choose that “time”? Before we answer this question, there are 2 more important questions to be asked.

Is The “Best Time To Post On LinkedIn” A Myth?

A lot of LinkedIn users ask if there really are “best times” to post on LinkedIn, or if this is merely a myth.

Simply put, it is not. LinkedIn, just like any other social media platform, runs on an algorithm. And algorithms love repetition.

If you perform the same act regularly enough around the same time, then over a few weeks, the algorithm will become trained enough to support your posts at that time. Now, imagine thousands of users posting at some common time during the day. This would imply that the LinkedIn algorithm is going to be most effective and supportive at that time.

That would be the ideal posting time.

How does this work, though?

The “best” days and time to post on LinkedIn aren’t the same for everyone, but this data does remain constant across industries or niches. This is because as humans, we often think in a like-minded manner to our peers belonging to the same line of work. Most doctors might consider the early morning window of around 7:00 am for LinkedIn. Professionals in the education domain might prefer 10:00 am as a better choice.

The best times to post on LinkedIn reflect those parts of the day when your target audience or preferred engagers are active. These windows of time are when you can attract the most eyeballs and ensure that your content gets the attention it deserves, organically. In fact, it’s not just humans that justify this data point of “best” and “worst” times to post on LinkedIn in 2024 - it’s the LinkedIn algorithm itself. The algorithm boosts your content in these hyperactive time slots.

That’s double the strength of LinkedIn for promoting your post.

Should I Post Every Single Day On LinkedIn?

Posting regularly on LinkedIn will prove to be a good habit to follow. But posting regularly does not mean posting every single day. It means posting often, at equal intervals. For example, if you have a LinkedIn management team handling your account, you can try reaching a mark of about 20-22 posts in a month, excluding weekends. Such regularity will keep you reputationally relevant on the platform.

However, posting every day on LinkedIn is not a good strategy if you are doing all the work yourself.

If you’re a CEO, there are a million other high-value tasks that you can give your time and attention to that will generate 10x higher direct returns than LinkedIn will, with a higher rate of guarantee. 

As an executive, posting at the best time on LinkedIn about 3 times a week works well. You stay active enough on the platform and stay visible to your ICP.

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Best Time To Post On LinkedIn [Updated As Of March 2024] - Weekly Analysis

Remember that these times are with respect to your local time assuming that your business and your ICP belong to the same timezone. If there is an exception, for example, if you are a business operating in Australia but catering to clients in the US, then it’s best you consider these below timings to be US local time zones. This way, you will be able to reach out to your target audience when they are most active.

Monday:

11:00 am

Mondays start fresh yet hectic. Business has been waiting since Friday, and when the clock strikes 9 on Monday, it all comes pouring in.

That’s why most businesses prefer to check their LinkedIn feeds a bit later during the morning.

This is why data also shows that 11:00 am is the best time to post on LinkedIn on Monday. It is the most effective time for your post to reach a large audience. More importantly, the right audience.

‍Tuesday:

7:00 am

Because the week’s already begun and the pipeline’s already flowing, professional minds are going to be attacking their workloads on Tuesday. This means that social media can take a back seat. That’s why, it’s best to choose a time early in the morning to complete your posting and let LinkedIn take it up.

As per reports, 7:00 am is the best time to post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, while on a commute to work, if that makes the scenario convenient for you.

Wednesday:

12:00 pm

Just got off your back-to-back brainstorming sessions in the morning? You’re not the only one. Most companies say that Wednesday is their tightest day, packed with meetings. It all falls into place with LinkedIn also reflecting that most users come to social media to take a breather from work.

That’s why the best time to post on LinkedIn on Wednesday is 12:00 pm, when your ICP is likely to check what’s up just before they break for lunch. This isn’t just for entrepreneurs or C-class leadership roles. Even those wanting to grab the attention of recruiters can make the most of this minute to reach far and wide.

Thursday:

12:00 pm

Work tasks take up most of a Thursday, leaving post-noon sessions open for LinkedIn regulars to catch up. This is the best day to make the most of corporate stories that emotionally engage and educate. That’s why, the best time to post on LinkedIn on Thursday is 12:00 pm, just before you dive into the second half of the day.

CEOs, talk about your worst mistake, your best deal ever, your favorite mentor to date, and your secret recipe for sealing deals in 5 minutes. Post about your resilience. Talk about the future of FinTech. Make Thursdays thought-provoking.

Friday:

8:00 am

Fun Fridays start with people checking their LinkedIn feeds before their workdays start. Actually, Fridays are known to be great timestamps for clients to close those deals that have been on their radar for quite some time now.

Strange, but definitely strategic.

That’s why, the best time to post on LinkedIn on Friday is 8:00 am. It maximizes your chances of getting leads generated since your clients are probably out there looking for you. You can also utilize this time to send people connection requests because many people might be in the mood to focus on expanding their networks.

Disclaimer: The above time windows are purely based on data. However, the most important practice is to choose any time convenient for you and stick to it every time you post. You can choose to post at 10:00 am every single time, and as long as you prove to be active at that time on the platform, it is the best time to post on LinkedIn for you.

Should You Post On LinkedIn On Weekends?

Ideally, no.

LinkedIn on the weekends is lazy.

Posts reach fewer accounts, people don’t actively engage as much, and technical thought-inducing content dies soon.

Weekends must be reserved for slow, engaging, emotional, soft-launch stories. Rewinding from the stressful corporate week that just passed, employees might take their weekends easy. People usually look for no-brainer, non-educational content during these days.

That’s why a picture of your dog at the park might rank higher than a bulletin on why digital transformation is the way ahead.

You can post on weekends occasionally, but it’s best to keep it independent of your content strategy.

The best time to post on LinkedIn during the weekends can be considered from about 10:00 am to 11:30 am.

‍Disclaimer: It is worth mentioning again that these timings are the averaged-out data points. Ultimately what matters is whether you are consistent with whatever time you choose.

The Worst Times To Post On LinkedIn In 2024

Simply put, the worst times to post on LinkedIn are those when your ICP is most likely to ignore your activity.

The worst time to post is typically during non-business hours, like from 10 pm to 5 am (bedtime). In fact, data will show that any posting time beyond 8-9 pm should not be preferred since your post will remain on active feeds only till an hour after posting. This means that the lifetime of your post will decrease.

The lifetime of a LinkedIn post is the countdown to its expiry. After being published, engagement on a post stays active for about an hour. As time passes, the chances of the post topping on your connections’ feed lowers exponentially. By the 12th hour, your post is almost forgotten. This holds true for most content, except hiring posts, since they remain active through constant sharing from connection to connection.

That’s why, the worst times to post on LinkedIn to post are:

• After 10:00 pm
• Before 5:00 am
• Between 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm

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Bonus: Top 3 LinkedIn Scheduling Tools

To maintain your posting consistency on LinkedIn, it’s best to take the help of an automated scheduling tool for publishing your posts. You can address the comments and requests at your own convenience any other time during the day.

Here are our top 3 choices:

1. Publer: With Publer, you don’t need to worry about missing the publication of your post at the time you have chosen. If you decide that 10:30 am is the best time to post on LinkedIn for you, put up your posts on Publer and set that time. Plus, it also helps you schedule the first comment on your LinkedIn post in advance.
   
   In fact at GrowedIn, Publer has proven to be the best scheduling and comment-originating tool that can also kickstart comments.

2. Buffer: Buffer is the simpler version of Publer in many senses. It is a basic, easy-to-use tool that helps you maintain your posting time, but doesn’t allow intiating engagement through the first comment.

3. Taplio: Taplio is a level ahead – it also lets you generate content for your posts through AI. However, if you really want your posts to make a difference in your marketing strategy, we suggest you have them written and not generated.

Conclusion

While there are best and worst times to post on LinkedIn in 2024, it is essential to remember that at the end of the day, consistency matters more than punctuality to the times mentioned above. Pick a time of the morning that suits your work schedule best and constantly show up on LinkedIn. That will make a huge difference in post visibility and reach of content. The “best” time to post on LinkedIn can only be a suggestion, not a rule. Experiment around to figure out what works best for you and your profile.

We partner with executives to help them leverage LinkedIn’s potential and build it as a channel for reputation-driven business growth. If you’d like to discuss LinkedIn branding for your profile, you can schedule a call with us.