There are about 8.55 BILLION searches on the internet every day. To put that into perspective, by the time you’ve read till here: 

 searches would have had happened already!

I’ll let the numbers speak about how important google search is for individual and companies -

You already have organic traffic on your website -

You don’t have organic traffic as of yet -

Learning is tough. It takes effort. Lots of it. It's not easy to pull the brakes on your work or life and sit down to learn when you have the option to spend your time in a million other ways.

But now that you've taken this step for yourself, let's do it right

Don't think of this guide as just another piece of content to read and learn from. Instead, take it as a step-by-step process, which if you follow will help you achieve the above outcomes. If you find yourself dozing off - take a break, stretch and come back. Take notes, read, re-read, process, practice and apply.

Set up your work desk and sit there (I know, the temptation to be on your bed is real)

Put your phone on silent, switch it off for the next hour if possible.

Grab your favourite cup of tea or coffee and settle in.

Overview 

Your personality is split across different platforms on the web. Professional content like company updates, vision, problem statement, industry insights etc generally go on LinkedIn. Twitter is a place for more personal stuff like interests, hobbies, personal opinions etc. It’s important to 

maintain consistency across these platforms

 to build familiarity and trust. You can build consistency by having similar profiles across these platforms. 

Please note that different platforms might have different profile sections, but the aim here is to provide a 

framework to think about how to build the profile section

. We’ll discuss the profile section of LinkedIn here, mainly because the profile section is the most detailed in LinkedIn. For all others, same frameworks apply.

Setting Up Profiles

First Impressions matter! In this module, we’ll learn how to set up your profiles that create a stellar first impression at each touchpoint that a candidate has in the hiring funnel! 

In this section, we’ll discuss how can you setup and standardise your social media profiles.

framework to think about how to build profile sections

Getting your profiles right has 3 parts - 

While scrolling LinkedIn, what is the information available about any profile? 

 for you to stand out and capture attention while someone’s scrolling. Hence, getting these sections right is important.

What the first thing you noticed in the above picture? Well, the picture. Humans register images better and faster than text. Your profile picture significantly 

Would you be inclined to work with someone whose profile picture is overly casual, maybe taken at a party posing with a beer? Probably not. Maybe if they’re building a beer brand! The point I’m trying to make here is that your profile picture should be 

Here are some tips to make sure you have a good first impression -

A clear, well lit photo can significantly improve your imageHas a neutral background, with great lighting

Your profile picture is about you. Choose a minimal background that doesn’t distract from your face and keeps the focus on you!

Ensure that your profile picture is consistent across all professional and social platforms. This uniformity helps in creating a recognisable and reliable personal brand

You can attract attention and build trust by having a solid headline

Cover photo is a prime real estate covering 30% screen fold! It is probably the first thing that catches someone’s attention when they land on your profile. Hence, use it right. Do not keep it empty or have boilerplate LinkedIn cover pictures.

To think of relevant ideas for your cover, think of what defines your company. There are majorly 5 things that do: market, customers, impact, scale, people.

You can have any of these things as your cover. Some cover examples -

You get the point. Your cover image should 

 that is instantly relatable and cool. Do not put random quotes that amount to nothing.

If you don’t have a good cover picture, use AI, or just open canva → 

anything but generic wannabe, and nothing

. This is 30% screen fold we’re talking about, use it wisely.

First Impressions

Learn how to create a scroll-stopping first impression!

​Once you have a good first impression, then get into the finer details. Magic happens in the finer details where people get to know you, what you’ve done in the past, what problems have you solved, the impact created. This helps build trust and conviction in YOU.

Bio is probably the most important part of your profile, especially on linkedIn. Think of this as the 

, where people read about you and get to know you. It should tell your story, your company’s story from your lens and reveal the personality behind the company.

, like an elevator pitch, capturing who you are, what you do, why you do it, and what you’ve accomplished.

Before writing your bio, prepare an outline. It’ll help you come up with a structured bio. A good framework to follow is -

Make sure you have a great hook and a CTA in your bio - 

This is YOUR story. Make sure you write it like on 

. LinkedIn provides an option to write your summary using 

If you find your summary is on the longer side (which isn’t always a problem as long as it’s compelling), try breaking up large blocks of text to make it easier to read. When initially viewing a profile, many people are scanning for high-level context. If you are posting long paragraphs, some of your notable highlights can get lost. Try keeping your text blocks to two or three sentences max, making your summary easier to read and digest.

While most of the roles across industries are similar sounding, companies often have unique roles. DO NOT put confusing/irrelevant job titles. 

First glance at the job title should tell someone 2 things - 

But be careful, don’t write a title that oversells the work you’ve done. For eg, if you have worked as an Engineering Manager across different pods, you can have a title like "Engineering Leader".

Think from a applicant’s perspective. What do they look for in work section? 

They probably are looking for answers to questions like -

Your work experience section should answer these questions for potential hires.

 to follow is STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Impact) framework:

Ensure this section is completed, especially with details about your professional degree. This won’t create as much impact, but it’s better to have this filled than not.

Write a simple one liner highlighting key projects, achievements or wins for each school you add in this section.

Adding skills to your profile enhances trust and builds credibility, especially when accompanied by endorsements. The skills section should highlight both your hard and soft skills, showcasing a comprehensive skill set -

 List your technical abilities and expertise, such as programming languages, data analysis, project management, or any specialized tools you use in your field.

 This is where you demonstrate your leadership qualities and make candidates believe that you’re it

Endorsements are a great place for social proofing. People want to be associated with someone who’s ahead of them. Endorsements help you re-inforce this trust and build conviction.

Trust compounds. A trustable source can talk shit and still believed upon. Not saying you should do the same, but borrowing external trust makes you more credible.

If you don’t have any endorsements on your profile, make a list of people who

and reach out to them for endorsements. You can also reach out to your former colleagues, employers, friends etc for endorsements. You should aim to have atleast 10 endorsements on your profile.

Featured section enables you to highlight your top posts. LinkedIn displays the top 3 posts in your featured section, choose them wisely. Some ideas on how to choose -

That’s all. This is how you setup your social media profile. This can now be 

tweaked a little depending on the platform

. Most platforms won’t have such extensive profiles, just the profile picture, name, description.

I keep mentioning platforms here, but what are these platforms? Let’s understand.

Finer Details

Write how to portray yourself in a way that attracts great talent to work with you.

​Think of a famous food chain. Say Starbucks. Why do you think it’s so famous and liked? One of the many reasons is 

 across all branches. Coffee tastes the same in Delhi, Bangalore, Beijing and Melbourne. 

Consistency brings a sense of comfort & trust

 because you know what to expect. That loop grows stronger when that expectation is fulfilled. 

While applying, applicants have various touchpoints like like company website, company’s LinkedIn, careers page, founder’s socials, employees socials, PR articles etc. A candidate could land at any of these and navigate their way through others to find any and all relevant information about you and your company. 

A consistent experience across all these touchpoints helps build comfort and trust. They are 

more likely to take an action when there’s consistency

Let’s see how do you build consistency across these platforms -

Think of every social profile you have. LinkedIn, X, Google, Quora, Truecaller to name a few. Your founder brand across these platforms should be similar. Similarity can be bought in 2 ways -

Keep you basic collaterals like name, profile picture, headline, cover (if applicable) same across these profiles. This helps in building resemblance across platforms. It helps people create a mental image of you and your entire personality. Resemblance should be strong enough that helps people form sentences like, “The design lead of Cred, Harish also has a band”.

We’ll talk about how to build resemblance using content later.

Earlier in this guide, we spoke about the factors that define a company - market, customers, impact, scale, people.

Apart from this, we spoke about other collaterals like vision, mission, culture etc. These factors should be similar across all company profiles. What you have in your careers page should be very similar your “About company” section on linkedin, should be similar in your traxcn profile, should be similar in your company twitter profile. You get the point.

A major part of your brand are the employees. A good way to think about this is the army. They have a different aura, behave a similar way, talk about similar things. They take a lot of pride wearing that uniform, which makes other people yearn for it. Your employee's socials should have a similar vibe. Now this doesn’t mean controlling the entire social media narrative of your employees. This means having some 

It’s common for a startup to have a direct reflection of the founders at the beginning. As the company grows, it becomes a composite of others speaking or writing on your behalf: employees, managers, customers, investors etc. Anyone you hire must reflect your voice and style the way you want. Employee branding for companies is a very broad topic, but one part of it is 

For eg. checkout GrowthX’s employees, majority of them have a GrowthX style profile picture. Your team should have some brand resemblance on their profiles, atleast LinkedIn. This helps build trust, gives a vibe of stronger work force/connection, makes it a part of your culture.

This is probably the most important consistency to build. Everything that your company stand for needs to be backed by you as a founder. Bottom line, knowing your 

 is as important as knowing your own. You must 

Your core beliefs, values and motivations are what convert into your company’s vision & mission statements. Having a resemblance between these is very important for people to understand what you're building, why you're building and what are you passionate about. But this is not something that can be forced or something you can be mindful of. If you truly believe in what you're doing, this will happen on it's own!

For eg. If your company is solving for helping college students apply abraod, you cannot go around talking about benefits of studying in India

this section. Consider this a V1 and if you have any recommendations, resources, or information you’d like to contribute, 

Alternatively, you could also email us on learn@growthx.club

In the next section we will understand how to come up with interesting content for your founder brand!

Discovery Channels

Build consistency across all discovery channels in the hiring funnel

Content Writing

Understand how to write content that attracts top talent

Consider Shreyas Doshi. What comes to mind when you hear his name? Most likely, product management. Even if you haven't worked with him personally, you associate his name with expertise in that field. This is due to his consistent and impactful social media presence, where he shares insights and knowledge about product management. If you don’t know who he is, that’s fine. Think of someone famous in your field—the underlying concept is the same.

, making you known for something unique and valuable. 

Imagine a businessperson. Someone who is the CEO of a multi-national company.

Probably a suit. A suit is synonymous with the the professionalism in the industry, and that is why you directly associate a businessperson. That’s their personality. That personality comes from associating themselves with the suit, by wearing it everyday.

. You can not talk about 100 random things when you’re trying to make a brand. You need to be very focused with that content themes are you posting. The key to having similar themes with your content is 

To build a compelling content personality, you need an umbrella thought. This is the 

 that defines who you are and what you want to be known for. It’s the guiding principle and ultimate truth for all your content.

Before understanding how to think about your umbrella thought, let’s try to understand umbrella thoughts using examples to get a feel of it.

How to think about your Umbrella Thought?

What similarities could you notice from the above examples?

For you, you’re trying to target people who can be potential hires. Early hires mostly.

They often join because of their belief in the founder, not just the company. When crafting your umbrella thought, set your company aside. Let your personal brand lead, and tie your company to your umbrella thought, not the other way around.

 look like before deciding to work for a company?

Now based on this, what does a candidate expect from you as a founder while joining your organisation?

That’s it. That should be your umbrella thought. Umbrella thought is nothing but an amalgamation of portraying yourself as a leader and displaying your unique USP, i.e build in public! 

Every piece of content you create should stem from your umbrella thought, either directly or indirectly. Let’s now look at how to create content around your umbrella thought.

The Umbrella Thought

Learn how to think of your umbrella thought that helps you build content personality

Think of the last time you looked upto someone, why did you do so?

That’s about it. You can portray yourself as a leader by capturing these 2 things - 

adding value to their lives, and playing on the 4 factors of influence

The way to create content personality is to write valuable, and not knowledge-able content

To create valuable content, you can follow this framework - 

The bottom two layers is just data and information, which is widely available and can easily be copy pasted. That type of content is not value providing.

A very good litmus test to see if your content is providing any value to the reader is the “

. After drafting each sentence, ask yourself, "So what does this mean for my audience?" If your content fails to provide a meaningful answer or impact, it’s likely not adding value.

The point of this pyramid is to help you write content in the top 2 layers. Writing in the top 2 layers ensures that the content you’re putting out is not copy pasted, and 

. It involves synthesising data and information to provide deeper 

insights and perspectives that are uniquely valuable

Data is meaningful only if you have context

To start off, follow industry leaders in their respective spaces, see what type of content they're posting, see what kind of value they're providing and try to make a parallel in your industry. 

Let's take a look at some content ideas that can help you create valuable content. Please note that these are just some ideas you could think of, this list is not exhaustive

People want to be associated with / take advice from / follow someone who is ahead of them -

Now this doesn’t mean that you start posting pictures of that cruise vacation, or your expensive car. Figure out which advantage do you have, and try to write anecdotes about it. You need to be careful here. It should not feel like you’re bragging. Some tips to follow while doing this are -

Share experiences that illustrate key lessons or pivotal moments in your journey. For example, instead of simply highlighting a milestone, discuss the strategic decisions or challenges you faced and the insights gained from those experiences

Frame your anecdotes around personal or professional growth. Discuss how specific experiences have shaped your leadership style, decision-making process, or approach to overcoming adversity

Tie your anecdotes back to your core values and beliefs

How to portray yourself as a leader?

Learn how to portray yourself as a leader by providing value and building influence

The only unique thing about your company is your 

. Everyone is solving problems, looking to hire better, raise funding etc. What make each one different is the process they follow, problems they face during the process, and how they solve these problems. Building in public is essentially a fancy name for 

I won't get into much detail of what Build in Public and it's advantage, but let's get into the topics you can talk about in your build in public posts - 

Talk about different business metrics and milestones that you achieved. The point here is to show growth and the plan ahead. 

Quarterly or annual revenue reports, highlighting growth percentages and key contributing factors

Number of new users/customers acquired over a specific period, accompanied by strategies that contributed to growth. You can go deep in these metrics, highlights the learning or what you did differently to gain more customers. Or what experiments failed that led to a decline in user acquisition

Announcements of successful funding rounds, detailing investors involved and how funds will be used

Launching into new markets or geographic regions, outlining strategic reasons and initial results

Talk about the problem you’re trying to solve, who faces that problem, why is it important to solve these problems?

Insights into prevalent industry challenges backed by data and research

Sharing anonymised customer feedback or survey results highlighting common pain points

Detailed narratives of specific customer challenges your product/service addresses

Talk about what problems did you observe around you and what is it's effect?

Problem - Agitate - Offering (PAO) Framework: 

Detailing your solution illustrates how your business addresses identified problems and differentiates from competitors.

Live or recorded demonstrations showcasing key features and functionalities.

Real-world scenarios where your solution resolves customer issues effectively.

Sharing future development plans and enhancements based on customer feedback and market trends. Namma Yatri does this where it has numbers and roadmap available on their website

Problem - Solution - Outcome (PSO) Framework:

Highlighting user success stories humanises your brand and validates the effectiveness of your solution. 

Profiles of customers who achieved significant results using your product/service

Quotes or video testimonials from satisfied customers sharing their experiences

Problem - Solution - Result (PSR) Framework

Announcing and explaining new feature launches keeps your audience informed about product updates and improvements. 

Detailed descriptions of new features, including benefits and how they address customer need

Feedback received during beta testing phases and how it influenced feature development

Resources to help users understand and leverage new features effectively

This can be anything interesting that happened with your company product in a given timeframe. You can talk about things like - 

Feature - Update - Impact (FUI) Framework

That's about it. This should help you get started with atleast 5 build in public posts that you want to do over the next few weeks. Let's quickly recap what we've learnt till now!

In the next section we will understand laws of platforms, how to engage online and how to gauge your content!

How to build in public?

Building in public displays your unique USP. Learn how to nail it!

Laws of platforms, Engagement & Key Metrics

We have everything set up, profiles, umbrella thought, content. Now it’s time to start posting. Understand laws of different online platforms, content strategies, how to engage with people online and gauging if your content has impact!

Consider you need to hire product managers. Where should you focus more, LinkedIn or Twitter? There's no definitive answer. Product managers are active on both platforms. Hence, while hiring product managers, the question isn't "Where can I reach more product managers, LinkedIn or Twitter?". Instead, ask yourself, "How can I maximise my reach to product managers on both LinkedIn and Twitter?"

differentiation between social media platforms

 you share. For instance, LinkedIn is suitable for professional content, while Twitter is more suited for personal content. 

Let's delve deeper to understand the norms of different platforms and what content is best suited for each.

For this guide, we'll only focus on 2 platforms - LinkedIn and Twitter

To start off, we'll see the type and form of content that works best for both these platforms. Then we'll discuss the strategies you can use across both these platforms!

Various social media platforms have different algorithms that determine the success of a post. While there's no definitive guide to these algorithms, there are some proven tactics that consistently work:

Posts with high engagement are pushed more. This creates a positive feedback loop: 

higher engagement leads to broader distribution, which results in even more engagement

. To kickstart this cycle, encourage your close network like family groups, employees etc to interact with your posts. 

You can automate this using zapier by making a zap that sends a whatsapp message everytime you post something! 

Posts accompanied by visuals tend to perform better. Try to incorporate relevant images or infographics with each post. However, avoid adding unnecessary or irrelevant images just for the sake of it. A post without an image is preferable to a post with irrelevant or fluffy content. This is particularly true for LinkedIn. 

Contrary to popular belief, the number of hashtags does not directly equate to the reach of a post. Hashtags should be used strategically to help your content reach the appropriate audience. Here are some tips on using hashtags effectively:

Timing your posts for maximum engagement is crucial. Consider when your audience is likely to have 

 - perhaps before bed, during lunch breaks, or in traffic. However, there's no one-size-fits-all approach and you'll 

 to find the optimal times for your unique audience.

As a general rule, posting on LinkedIn between 9 AM and 5 PM on weekdays can yield high engagement. User activity typically increases during mid-morning, lunchtime, and most of the afternoon as people tend to check their LinkedIn feeds during work breaks.

Repurposing content involves taking existing content and adapting it for use in different formats or on different platforms. This strategy maximises the value of your content and reaches a wider audience. Once you have come up with an idea to post, think of repurposing it. Repurposing might not be possible always, but it’s a good strategy to follow. While repurposing content, keep in mind the laws of platforms. You might have to change the tonality, length, etc while posting across platforms.

Start with content that has already resonated with your audience. This could be blog posts, videos, infographics, or social media posts

Convert a blog post into a video, twitter threads etc. For instance, a detailed article can be converted to a series of twitter threads.

Yes I know I have made it very easy for you to think of content now. But trust me, there’s more than what meets the eye. Building good and valuable content takes time and effort. If you think you can just sit and get a post out in 30 mins, that won’t happen. You need to plan for your content ahead of posting. A good way to do this is sitting on the weekend, writing and scheduling the posts for the next week

High quality items with high predictability brings comfort. Choose your days and time to post. And be consistent with it. If you’re starting out with building a brand, you’ll have to do so consciously. It will take effort and consistency to get the engine running. Hence, focused efforts with timely posting is important to get you started. Social media algorithms also promote posts from accounts that post frequently and at regular intervals

To kickstart your engagement, reach out to high-trust individuals in your circle and encourage them to interact with your content. Borrowing trust and credibility from these connections acts as a powerful boost. When you leverage their trust, two key things happen: people perceive you as more trustworthy, and the networks of those high-trust individuals are more likely to engage with your posts, driving up your overall engagement. This strategy not only amplifies your credibility but also expands your reach and influence significantly.

Laws of platforms

Understand the laws and algorithms of different social media platforms to reach a wide range of audience

Having a strong online presence is essential for any founder. But it's not just limited to public activity, it's a lot more than that like how you interact with people over DMs, in the comments sections etc. There needs to be consistency in your personality in public and private. For eg. you can't post about how great studying in India is while advising people to study abroad on DMs 