You can build a personal brand on virtually any social media platform. But, if you want to grow a personal brand as your business, you’ve got to make the most of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is arguably one of the most powerful business networking tools at your disposal. Knowing how to optimize your visibility on the platform and shape your messages around your personal brand plays a key role in building an influential personal brand on LinkedIn.

Many people shy away from LinkedIn because it was once heavily associated with being a very serious platform made up of very serious business people. However, LinkedIn has evolved into so much more than that.

Forbes Featured and TEDx keynote speaker, Mark Metry, suffered from severe social anxiety to the point where he couldn’t make direct eye contact with anyone. Now, he is a socially free person and speaks on stage to thousands of people worldwide.

Mark joined me for an eye-opening and inspiring discussion about how you can build an incredible personal brand on LinkedIn. We also dive into Mark’s experience with severe social anxiety and uncover a few of the key teachings from his book, Screw Being Shy

How to increase visibility on LinkedIn

Before Mark really grasped the concept of LinkedIn, he saw it as nothing more than an online resume. It wasn’t until he started to take it seriously that he learned the fundamentals of what works, and what doesn’t.

Obviously, you want your personal brand to exist and thrive beyond the confines of LinkedIn. Mark has never viewed LinkedIn as a destination. Instead, he sees it as a vehicle, not the end goal.

You can use LinkedIn as a vehicle in the same way you’d use the gym as a vehicle. The gym is a vehicle to test your stresses every day, to test your body every day. It’s a path to get you physically stronger, mentally stronger, or more resilient to stress.”

Your success on LinkedIn (or in general) should not be measured by numbers. It doesn’t matter how many likes, comments, or shares your posts get. One post might get two or three likes while your next post could take off and go viral on the platform. Mark reminds us that things don’t happen overnight. You can’t go to the gym once and leave expecting to have a six-pack or toned abs. It doesn’t work like that. You need to put the work in and keep showing up.

A post might get very few likes or engagement overall compared to a previous post you published that got thousands of likes. But that post with barely any likes could be the one that converts viewers and connections into real customers.

Consistency is key. If you want someone to trust you enough to want to work with you and they want to pay you for your services, they need to know, like, and trust you. This is why consistency is so important. Keep showing up because you never know who might be watching.

Become a student of the platform

To master LinkedIn, you’ve got to be an active member of the platform and you’ve got to keep learning. Understanding the inner workings of the platform and the algorithm is so important. If you look closely, you’ll begin to notice a pattern. Maybe certain posts perform better than others. Perhaps people engage more when you post a video rather than a block of text. Pay attention to the patterns and what seems to be working.

Mark talked about these changing patterns and how every social media platform change constantly. Sometimes it rises, sometimes it goes down. Nothing stays the same for long and you need to be on top of these changes so that you’re ready for anything. You’ve got to be a student of the platform.

If you want to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn, you also need to make sure you don’t get stuck in a bubble. Every industry has its own jargon and people tend to regurgitate the same jargon over and over again. It gets a little dull. While there’s nothing wrong with speaking to your audience in their language, you also need to think about how you can be different than the rest. How can you change the world?

Overcoming anxiety and shyness

Building a personal brand is something that many of us want to accomplish, but there’s something holding us back. For you, it might be a lack of confidence in yourself or your message. Or, if you’re like Mark, you might suffer from intense anxiety and shyness.

There’s nothing wrong with being an introvert. But there is a difference between being introverted and being shy. If you’re shy, you likely struggle to make your thoughts and opinions known to others. You’re quiet. You probably prefer to sit at the back of the room, away from glaring eyes and judgemental stares. If this sounds like you, then you’ll love Mark’s book, Screw Being Shy: Learn How to Manage Social Anxiety and Be Yourself in Front of Anyone.

In his book, Mark walks you through a step-by-step guide to help you overcome shyness for good. Mark went from having severe social anxiety, unable to speak to anyone or even make eye contact, to becoming a socially free person and speaking on stage to thousands of people worldwide. It’s quite an achievement and one that is possible for you too.

Social anxiety can be a dangerous path

If you’re shy, it tends to show up as a pattern in every single situation in your life. Your body reacts nervously to social situations and although you’re not consciously aware of it, you’re afraid to talk to people. If you have severe social anxiety, it can lead to other problems and mental health issues that you might not even be aware of.

Social anxiety is often correlated with substance abuse and social isolation. Substance Abuse and social isolation are heavily correlated with suicide.”

When Mark was 18, he fell down a slippery slope and gained a tremendous amount of weight. He began abusing substances and reached a point where he was suicidal. He felt like he was trapped. Identifying the root cause of the issue and developing a holistic, sustainable, and functional plan to help get you out is what Mark teaches in his book.

Your mental health and your gut

There’s a chapter in Mark’s book called, “My Gut Broke,” in which he talks about how he began to abuse food as an emotional coping mechanism. He became obese and gained over 70 pounds.

As humans, we have created a symbiotic relationship with our gut for thousands of years that has made us the number one species on this planet. By that same virtue, if two organisms are cooperating together to be in symbiosis, the dysfunction of that is dysbiosis.”

If you look at the studies, they take people’s gut microbiomes, who are in dysbiosis, and it is correlated to not just social anxiety, but countless other mental health issues and also other chronic illnesses.”

Most people are so focused on having a positive attitude, working harder, and so on, while very few people are addressing the root cause of the issue. Your gut health has a massive role to play in your mental and physical health. There’s no such thing as a universal healthy diet. But there are things you can do to improve your diet, which in turn, will help improve your mental health.

Humans shouldn’t be eating artificial chemicals or preservatives. If you turn a packet of food around and you can barely pronounce any of the words in the long list of ingredients, you probably shouldn’t be eating it.

There is a real problem with what is going on today, specifically in terms of people’s emotional health, and how they use food as a drug to cope with that to make them less anxious.”

So many people overlook the relationship between food and mental health. If changing your diet completely is too difficult for you, start small. Introduce a healthy meal in your diet every day and that will be a great start because you’re making at least one positive change in your lifestyle.

If you want to build a personal brand on LinkedIn, or anywhere really, but social anxiety is getting in your way, make sure that you check out Mark’s book, Screw Being Shy: Learn How to Manage Social Anxiety and Be Yourself in Front of Anyone and listen to his podcast,Humans 2.0, a Global Top 100 Show for entrepreneurs about the modern technological context of our world and provides anyone with the full tools they need to develop themselves on a regular basis.

Show Notes for YouTube / Podcast Host

TEDx keynote speaker, Mark Metry, suffered from severe social anxiety to the point where he couldn’t make direct eye contact with anyone. He went from having severe social anxiety, unable to speak to anyone or even make eye contact, to becoming a socially free person and speaking on stage to thousands of people worldwide.

In this episode, Mark joins me for an eye-opening and inspiring discussion about how you can build an incredible personal brand on LinkedIn. We also dive into Mark’s experience with severe social anxiety and uncover a few of the key teachings from his book, Screw Being Shy

Find out about:

  • How to build a personal brand on LinkedIn
  • How to overcome social anxiety and shyness
  • Understanding the relationship between mental health and gut health

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