30 Day LinkedIn Personal Branding Challenge for Software Engineers - Cohort Based Course

Would you like to know how I grew my LinkedIn following from 3,000 To 130,000+ in just 12 months?

And how I generated 40 Million post impressions and grew my newsletter to over 100,000 subscribers on LinkedIn and over 50,000 on Substack? In the process becoming the No. 1 ranked tech influencer on LinkedIn in the UK and No. 34 globally*!

Would you like to work through the exact same process with me? 

In this 30 day cohort challenge I’ll show you that growing your personal brand and following isn't as daunting or hard as you might think!

Welcome to the 30 Day LinkedIn Personal Branding Challenge for Software Engineers! 

Over the 30 days of the challenge, I'll support you through a set of actions that you can take each day to build your personal brand. The same set of actions I used and continue to use to build mine. 

Over the 30 day challenge you can expect to:

• Grow your follower count.
• Define and build your personal brand.
• Create engagement that will lead to potential roles or customers (depending on your goals).

Here's what you need to know:

• The core of the challenge is to write a daily post on LinkedIn - you'll learn how to systemise this so it can take you less than 30 minutes per day allowing you to fit it in alongside your existing commitments without feeling overwhelmed. 
• Everything is asynchronous - you can work when it suits you. No need to rearrange your schedule. And if you miss a day or two, you'll have everything you need to catch up.
• Your fellow students and I will be there to help and support you - we’ll all be supporting each other, sharing the experience and the learning as we go.

When this cohort launches, you will get:

• Access to a dedicated Discord server where you can ask questions, discuss ideas and collaborate with myself and the members of the cohort.
• Course material that walks you through the the process of building a personal brand on LinkedIn, teaching you what to do in bite sized, actionable chunks.

This cohort IS for you if:

• You know you should be trying to grow your personal brand, but without anyone to hold you accountable, you struggle to get motivated and you find it hard to be consistent.
• You know you should be posting and engaging on LinkedIn, but you don't know how or where to start.
• You are prone to overthinking and analysis paralysis, and you get frustrated that you're not taking as much action as you'd like.
• You fear hitting ‘post’!

This cohort IS NOT for you if:

• You just like to lurk - this cohort is about taking action!
• You have unrealistic expectations - yes, sometimes people get lucky and create a following from one or two viral posts, but 99% of the time, success comes from showing up and putting the work in consistently. 
• You aren't willing to engage with other people and help them - this group expects collaboration! We will all learn and progress the most when we share ideas and support each other.

Here are just a few of the topics we'll cover:

Half the challenge in building a personal brand is figuring out what topics resonate with your target audience. The other half is about showing up consistently for that audience. 

To help you do both we will:

• Improve your profile page.
• Pick a niche for you to focus on.
• Establish your credibility.
• Get you over the fear of publishing so you start publishing regularly.
• Get you engaging with your target audience.
• Show you how to find people to engage with.
• Discuss building an owned not rented channel.
• Examine the power of collaborations.
• Build a writing habit.
• Systemise your posting.
• Systemise your commenting.
• Systemise your replies.
• Systemise your content production.

Who am I to talk about personal branding for software engineers?

My name is John and I've worked as a software engineer for 28 years. During that time I’ve been an individual contributor, a manager, an executive and a founder. I've grown one of my own businesses from no revenue whatsoever to 7 figures in annual sales. Over the last 12 months I’ve acquired over 160k followers on social media - mostly on LinkedIn, some on Twitter and Substack.

Here are a few of my personal highlights:

• Grew my LinkedIn follower count from 3k to 130k+ in just 12 months (mid-March 2023 to mid-March 2024).
• Over 179,000 followers on LinkedIn.
• Launched a business and grew it to 7 figures in sales.
• Launched a blog and grew it to 1M unique visitors per month.
• Generated over 40M impressions of my content on LinkedIn over the last 12 months.

Over the years, I've learned a thing or two about software development and marketing and I'd love the opportunity to teach you what I know and how I’ve applied it to growing a personal brand on LinkedIn as a software engineer. 

* According to Favikon in April 2024.