Personal Branding on LinkedIn: How to Build Authority and Influence in 2025

In 2025, personal branding is essential for professionals and entrepreneurs, especially on LinkedIn—the world’s largest professional network with over 1 billion members (LinkedIn, 2024). Whether you’re aiming to grow your business, attract career opportunities, or establish thought leadership, your personal brand on LinkedIn defines how others perceive your value, expertise, and credibility.

This article provides a comprehensive strategy to help you build authority and influence on LinkedIn through profile optimisation, content creation, audience engagement, and performance tracking—based on the most current data and best practices.

1. Why LinkedIn Personal Branding Matters in 2025

LinkedIn is not just a networking site; it’s a platform for building trust at scale. A strong personal brand:

• Drives visibility in your industry
  
• Builds credibility with clients, peers, and employers
  
• Attracts inbound leads for jobs, partnerships, or sales
  

LinkedIn’s own research shows that content shared by individuals gets 7x more engagement than content shared by company pages (LinkedIn, 2024). Additionally, 84% of buyers are more likely to trust a company whose leadership is active on social media (Content Marketing Institute, 2024).

2. Optimise Your LinkedIn Profile for Authority

Your LinkedIn profile is your personal website in the professional world. It should clearly communicate who you are, what you do, and why you matter.

Optimisation tips:

• Headline: Use a value-driven headline (e.g., “Helping EdTech Startups Scale with Data-Driven Marketing”).
  
• Profile picture: Use a high-resolution, professional headshot. Profiles with photos get 21x more profile views (LinkedIn, 2024).
  
• Banner image: Use a branded image that reflects your niche or offers.
  
• About section: Write in the first person. Tell your story, highlight your expertise, and mention who you serve.
  
• Featured section: Add links to podcasts, case studies, lead magnets, or your website.
  
• Creator Mode: Activate to unlock newsletters, audio events, and the “Follow” button.
  

HubSpot (2025) notes that fully optimised profiles receive 56% more connection requests and 32% more DMs compared to incomplete profiles.

3. Define Your Personal Brand Pillars

Your personal brand should be built around a few consistent themes. These content pillars will shape how people remember and associate your expertise.

Examples of personal brand pillars:

1. Industry expertise (e.g., Cybersecurity, UX design)
   
2. Leadership insights (e.g., team building, scaling startups)
   
3. Tools and frameworks (e.g., productivity systems)
   
4. Career lessons (e.g., failures, pivots, successes)
   
5. Values and beliefs (e.g., diversity, sustainability)
   

Keep your topics narrow enough to build authority, but broad enough to remain engaging over time. This also helps the LinkedIn algorithm associate your profile with specific professional topics (LinkedIn Engineering, 2023).

4. Create High-Value Content Consistently

Posting regularly is key to building trust. According to Socialinsider (2024), users who post three times per week see 5x higher visibility and better engagement metrics.

Top-performing content formats in 2025:

• Text posts: Best for personal stories, lessons, and thought pieces.
  
• Carousel PDFs: Effective for how-to guides, tips, and frameworks.
  
• Native videos: Short (under 60 seconds) videos with subtitles increase authenticity.
  
• Polls: Great for engagement and market validation.
  
• Newsletters: Excellent for long-form content and direct follower engagement.
  

Every post should offer one of the following: education, inspiration, or conversation.

Use tools like Taplio for AI-assisted post planning and Shield Analytics to track content performance over time.

5. Engage with Your Network Proactively

LinkedIn is a social platform—engagement matters as much as posting. The algorithm favours two-way interaction, and thoughtful commenting can significantly expand your reach.

Engagement strategies:

• Leave meaningful comments on relevant posts (3+ words)
  
• Respond to every comment on your own posts
  
• Send personalised messages when connecting
  
• Tag users only when contextually relevant
  
• Collaborate with others via LinkedIn Lives or co-authored posts
  

LinkedIn Engineering (2023) confirms that posts with early engagement within the first hour get 2x broader distribution, reinforcing the importance of initiating and sustaining conversations.

6. Launch a LinkedIn Newsletter

LinkedIn Newsletters are growing rapidly. Once you have Creator Mode enabled, you can start your own and send updates directly to subscribers’ inboxes.

Why use newsletters?

• Average open rates are 35–45%, outperforming typical email newsletters (LinkedIn, 2024)
  
• Your audience receives a notification for each issue
  
• Builds ongoing, long-form authority
  

Keep newsletter content concise, visual, and actionable. Popular formats include:

• Monthly industry roundups
  
• Mini case studies
  
• Step-by-step tutorials
  
• Professional Q&A sessions
  

7. Leverage the LinkedIn Algorithm

To maximise reach in 2025, align your activity with LinkedIn’s algorithm signals:

Algorithm rewards:

• Original content (not reposts or links alone)
  
• High dwell time (people reading longer)
  
• Meaningful comment threads
  
• Early post engagement (within 60 minutes)
  
• Posting 3–5 times per week
  

Algorithm penalises:

• Clickbait or link-heavy posts
  
• Inconsistent posting patterns
  
• Copying viral content without adding original value
  

Use RiteTag to find relevant hashtags, and limit use to 3–5 per post for optimal visibility.

8. Use Social Proof to Build Trust

Social proof increases perceived credibility and validates your expertise.

Ways to show social proof:

• Request LinkedIn recommendations
  
• Share screenshots (with permission) of positive feedback or client wins
  
• Feature media mentions, podcasts, or event speaker slots
  
• Post case studies or mini-testimonials in carousel format
  

Content Marketing Institute (2024) highlights that content with social proof—especially testimonials—converts 38% more effectively than content without.

9. Grow Your Network Strategically

The more relevant your audience, the higher your engagement and influence.

Grow your network by:

• Sending personalised connection requests
  
• Engaging with niche hashtags to find like-minded professionals
  
• Joining industry-specific LinkedIn Groups
  
• Hosting or attending LinkedIn Audio Events or Webinars
  

Avoid spammy mass invites. A smaller, more engaged network often leads to better reach and business results than a large but passive one.

10. Track Performance and Adjust Your Strategy

Finally, measure your results to see what’s working and refine your personal branding strategy accordingly.

Metrics to monitor:

• Profile views and search appearances
  
• Follower and connection growth
  
• Post engagement (likes, comments, shares)
  
• Newsletter subscriber growth
  
• DMs and inbound opportunities (leads, invites, jobs)
  

Use Shield Analytics or [LinkedIn Creator Analytics] to measure weekly trends and content performance.

Remember: personal branding is not a campaign—it’s a career-long asset.

References

Content Marketing Institute. (2024). B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America. https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/

HubSpot. (2025). State of Marketing Report 2025. https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing

LinkedIn. (2024). LinkedIn Pages and Personal Branding Best Practices. https://business.linkedin.com/

LinkedIn Engineering. (2023). How the LinkedIn Algorithm Works: Engagement & Dwell Time. https://engineering.linkedin.com/

Socialinsider. (2024). LinkedIn Engagement Report by Industry. https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/linkedin-benchmarks/

Shield Analytics. (2025). Measure LinkedIn Content Performance. https://www.shieldapp.ai/

Taplio. (2025). LinkedIn Content Planning Tool. https://www.taplio.com/