The late legendary motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar once said, “If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” 

To gain trust with people you haven’t worked with before, so that they want to buy your products and work for or hire you, allow them to get to know you better. 

For example, people can better get to know you through what you post on LinkedIn. Enter personal branding! Here are 10 tips to super charge your brand:

1. Update your LinkedIn profile and include a current, bright-eyed new profile photo.
2. Engage generously with others on LinkedIn by sharing their posts. 
3. Adjust privacy settings so that others can message and tag you.
4. Engage on a second platform like Facebook: There are different people there!
5. Post your advice, like, “Use Zoom for its nicely laid out AI notes summaries,” or convey it via a video you shot with your phone.
6. Unless you are a celebrity or running from the law, don’t lock your profile so people cannot even submit a friend request. To me it just seems over dramatic or mean.
7. Post photos of places or conferences, like Maui’s Road to Hana or AI Infra.
8. Reshare your company news (which arguably is the most obvious thing to do.)
9. Volunteer helping your favorite cause, like walking unhoused dogs, and post about it.
10. Say, “Yes,” to press interviews, then proudly post the story.

My final advice is to identify a person online who is excellent at personal branding like Becca Chambers  and start emulating the one thing that they do that you admire most. She does many things for personal branding like public speaking as an influencer. She defines cool words she likes, defends use of a particular comma and helps raise money for cancer research.

If you don’t have the time for all of that, no worries. Just make sure your profile is up to date and reshare a few posts once in a while. People will get to know you better that way. 

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Michelle McIntyre is the president of Michelle McIntyre Communications, an IBM vet and editor in chief of PRSA Silicon Valley. She has 3.5 million views on Quora for college admissions advice and thriving in the Silicon Valley. Thank you Copilot AI for the image.