Building a LinkedIn Personal Brand with AI: 8 Strategies
At the 2024 AI Connect K-12 Data Science Conference, Aditya Sharma, CEO of HiCounselor, outlined eight strategies for growing a LinkedIn personal brand, from picking a niche to commenting daily on influencers' posts. He paired each with AI tools such as Copilot, Phantom Buster and Sprout Social.
By The AI Enterprise Magazine Team4 min read
Key takeaways
- Pick one niche. Be clear about the single role or topic you want to be known for.
- Post consistently. Start at two posts a week, then move toward daily.
- Use hooks and relevant hashtags. Sharma recommended five to eight hashtags, not dozens.
- Engage. Answer every comment and comment on 10 to 15 influencer posts daily.
- Use AI as a helper. Tools can suggest niches, timing, hooks and comments.
At the 2024 AI Connect K-12 Data Science Conference, a virtual event, Aditya Sharma, CEO of HiCounselor, shared eight strategies for building a personal brand on LinkedIn with AI tools. Aimed at students seeking internships and jobs as well as aspiring founders, the 20-minute session combined posting tactics with specific AI tools.
Sharma said he studied engineering, earned a master's degree at Duke University, and worked at PwC in Chicago and then as a senior Salesforce consultant at Deloitte in San Francisco before founding HiCounselor in 2020. By his account, the company has helped more than 600 candidates land jobs, raised almost $2 million in a pre-seed round and generated over $4 million in revenue. He credited LinkedIn personal branding with a major role in that path. These figures are his own and were not independently verified in the session.
Why build a personal brand on LinkedIn?
For job seekers, Sharma said, a strong profile helps candidates stand out to recruiters, earn trust with interviewers and, the biggest benefit, draw inbound opportunities instead of cold outreach. For founders, he said, it can bring customers at almost zero cost, relationships with investors, product feedback and help hiring.
He told attendees he has about 126,000 followers, that one post reached 13 million views, and that his content drew about 11 million impressions in the past year. A personal brand, he said, is "the way you want others to perceive you."
Sharma argued that using AI to grow on social platforms is expected now. "Everyone else is using it," he said, so people should know the right tools and use them smartly.
How do you pick a niche and a posting schedule?
His first strategy was to choose one niche. "If you are talking to everyone on social media, that means you are talking to no one," he said. A student should be clear on one target role, such as data analyst, data scientist or AI engineer, rather than listing several. To find one, he suggested talking through interests and goals with Microsoft Copilot's voice feature and asking it which roles or niches to target.
The second was frequency. Sharma said LinkedIn's algorithm shows a post to a limited audience first, and uses their reaction to decide whether to show it more widely. Posting at a consistent rhythm helps, he said. Beginners should start with two posts a week and move to one a day.
What should you post, and when?
Students can write about career goals, industry trends, learnings from internship projects, growth stories or volunteer work, Sharma said. Founders can write about the problem they solve and the customers they meet.
Beginners, he suggested, should pick about 10 influencers in their category and study what they write. He named Phantom Buster as a tool that can extract an influencer's last three years of posts and sort them by views or engagement. He described three Cs of growth, copy, curate and create, and advised beginners to focus on the first two without copying text exactly. After a month or two, he said, they will have their own ideas.
His third strategy was timing. For people in the United States he recommended posting between 6 and 9 a.m. Pacific time, and he named Sprout Social as a tool that suggests the best time by location and schedules posts.
How do hooks, engagement and hashtags work?
Strategy four was to start every post with a hook line, the opening that makes people click "more." He said it should grab attention, spark curiosity and then deliver real value. He named Tribescaler as a tool that helps write hook lines and repurpose viral posts.
Strategy five was to respond to every comment, because engaging builds trust. Strategy six was to use five to eight relevant hashtags rather than 10, 20 or 30.
What about photos and commenting?
Strategy seven was to add a photo to every post. Sharma said he posted the same content with and without a photo and the photo version drew about half a million impressions and more than 2,000 comments. He advised a high-definition, professional image and suggested using Copilot or ChatGPT-4o to polish a photo.
The last strategy was to comment on 10 to 15 influencers' posts every day, which he called the most important and the toughest. It takes 30 minutes to an hour, he said, and AI can speed it up: paste the post into Copilot or ChatGPT and ask for a valuable comment. When influencers start engaging back, he said, followers surge.
Sharma closed by urging attendees to spend time on LinkedIn almost every day.
Where to hear more
AI Connect continues to run free live sessions on data and AI. The 2027 schedule includes 24 free live webinars across four series: the AI x Enterprise Panel Series, AI Demo Days, Agentic AI Showcases and the Plug & Play Series. Registration for 2027 events is coming soon. See the webinar schedule.
Frequently asked questions
How often should you post on LinkedIn?
Sharma recommended beginners start with two posts a week and move to one per day once comfortable.
What is a hook line?
The opening of a post that makes people click 'more'; it should grab attention and then deliver real value.
How many hashtags should a LinkedIn post have?
Sharma advised five to eight relevant hashtags rather than 10 to 30.
Which AI tools did he mention?
Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Phantom Buster, Sprout Social and Tribescaler.
This article is based on remarks by Aditya Sharma, CEO, HiCounselor at AI Connect K-12 Data Science Conference 2024 on July 25, 2024. More coverage: More AI Connect Events.
Filed under: People, Culture & Leadership, AI Use Cases & Applications
