If you’re serious about personal branding, don’t just rely on LinkedIn. You need your own website. Why?
1. All your content properly archived and made searchable
I write almost daily on LinkedIn and this means I have hundreds of original posts here. However, it’s difficult to search for my LinkedIn posts on specific topics. And unless you are incredibly patient with scrolling, you’ll never get to read what I wrote last year on LinkedIn.
On my ThinkTan website, you can search for every page and post instantly. I’ve also categorised all the posts so you can browse through them easily.
2. You design the user experience
LinkedIn regulars often structure their posts in the same way: each post always needs to start with one concise sentence as a kicker, due to the way the newsfeed is designed.
That’s good for capturing attention but it starts to feel like a night bazaar as you keep scrolling (aka everyone is shouting one sentence to get you to stop and read). I prefer to write my opening paragraphs in different ways and lengths.
Another issue I have with LinkedIn is that it makes your shared documents so hard to find. On my website, I have a dedicated page for my ebooks and guides.
Most importantly, on my site, I can format my text any way I want. I have never understood why social media doesn’t allow us to format text in bold or italic easily.
3. You are not beholden to any social platform
I believe strongly that LinkedIn will outlast every other social media platform because it is a business network and jobs portal. That’s why this is where I spend most of my time, and not on Facebook or Instagram. However, we also do not know if another better player might come along.
I set up my ThinkTan website last July but did not update it after that as I got really busy when I started teaching at NTU.
Now that the teaching semester has ended, I’m revamping my website and slowly copying over all my LinkedIn posts. It’s tiring and time-consuming, especially since I have to make sure the site content displays properly for different screen formats.
But this is the long game of brand building I’m playing.