How To Build Your Personal Brand (using LinkedIn) - w/ Shikhaj

My guest for this episode is Shikhaj Jakhete. Shikhaj is a Technical Account Manager at Adobe. More importantly, he is a trailblazer in the art and science of personal branding online as well as in real life.Focusing keenly on authenticity and through insightful storytelling, Shikhaj has carved out for himself a compelling online presence, most notably on LinkedIn. We discuss how one can get started with curating their own personal brand online and explore some of the many benefits and potential motivations behind doing so. Shikhaj goes over how he started out and the tools he used to post helpful and engaging content consistently, building a follower base that relies on him for his insightful contributions, particularly in the fields of marketing, technology, and more. We also go over how to deal with the daunting aspect of putting ourselves out there, and the importance of curating a peer group that enables beneficial habits. To tie things up, we go over how we can derive synergies from different social media platforms, a personal website, as well as our professional organizations and in person events to build a well-rounded brand. If you're looking to curate your personal brand online, whether starting fresh or making improvements, this discussion is for you. In keeping with the theme of learning from someone just two steps ahead of you instead of an expert, I’d like to emphasize that this discussion focuses on the tools and strategies that proved successful for Shikhaj. My goal is to merely highlight how one can start making progress today towards their own goals of building a personal brand, and some common pitfalls to avoid along the way. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Timestamps:(00:00:00) Intro and background(00:03:56) Making the most of admission deferral because of Covid-19(00:06:26) Launching a marketing agency during Covid-19(00:08:16) Learning the skills to run his marketing agency(00:10:10) First foray into writing on LinkedIn - Intro to personal branding(00:12:59) Evolving content types and target audiences based on life updates(00:15:34) Shikhaj’s process for generating content ideas(00:18:30) Perspective of an international master’s student in the US (00:21:10) Dealing with self-doubt and putting oneself out there(00:24:30) On choosing peers and building a personal website(00:28:57) The right motivations for personal branding (00:30:58) Why should one care about their personal brand? + various avenues of branding(00:36:14) Qualitative and qualitative benefits of personal branding(00:39:52) Shifting landscapes due to proliferation of AI-generated content(00:42:29) Shikhaj’s upcoming endeavors and outro