Amlan’s tryst with content began when he was (in his own words) “pushed into” the social media space because “he could write.” He was a translator, writer and editor, who eventually was responsible for managing socials. He says "(this was) pushed onto us, packaged into just another hat.”

Then he moved into the big bad world of consulting, where LinkedIn was considered important. What he found was that large corporations spent huge sums of money in creating high-value intellectual property (IP) but the distribution was amiss. "They were just creating reports, pushing thousands of dollars or euros into it. And the whole marketing strategy would be three social media posts and one offline event that no one cared about," he elaborates.

"People don't care as much about the report as they do about the person who built it," Amlan explains. This was his foray into employee generated content. The goal there was to get people who were doing the work behind the scenes, front and centre in helping distribute the content.

About a year ago Amlan began his ambitious quest of posting one post a day on LinkedIn everyday for at least 365 days. I ask him about the challenge, "We will not get into how I am counting them," he remarks, deadpan, with a hint of sarcasm. He slowed down before the next part. (It was the only moment in the conversation he did.)

"I felt like somehow my writing was taking a hit."

Years of ghostwriting for directors and partners at large corporations is what he attributes as the cause. "No one really reads your post because it's creative. They read it because it's from a certain person."

At one point he decided that he could not keep sounding like a managing partner.

However, this wasn’t the first time Amlan attempted to get into writing for himself on LinkedIn. In 2022, when he tried LinkedIn properly he used to post three posts a week, each timed to the minute while he tracked all the analytics. He also had a list of ICPs to engage with. He was doing everything by the book and it was exhausting. "After doing all this, when the smallest inconvenience hit, that was the reason I needed to stop it, and I just crashed and burnt."

Roughly four years later he came back with the performance lens deliberately switched off. He wanted the year to “desensitize him to cringe”. The hardest part was maintaining the streak. "I have made terrible rules in my own head. This post will count. This post will not count. Or only posts about B2B thought leadership will count. Stupid reasons," he remarks ruefully.

Some nights he opens LinkedIn at 10pm with nothing. "I have a million unfinished drafts that could have been posts but didn't pass this check," he says. 

What does he do in times like this? He ships a one-liner, then rules that it doesn't count. Sixty or seventy of those sit on his profile. 

Amlan calls his offering Narrative design. I asked him about it. “Narrative design is for medium to large enterprises sitting on real IP.” 

“When it comes to content, I have seen the same thing happen everywhere: a company has an idea, goes through a painfully long execution, ends up with a product, and only then says, okay, market it. What narrative strategy is, basically, breaking this whole process and putting content in between each of these layers so you can build a complete narrative that your audience can then use to get a real idea about your brand/product."

"It's really just a bougie name for content strategy. But it's basically how content strategy should be done."

This statement did surprise me because in my few interactions with Amlan, anytime I have expressed doubt about a new piece of content I would like to post, his response has always sounded like a Nike billboard “Just do it”. 

Narrative design is strategy and sequencing. His own brand is to go out there and post. How much strategy should an individual have before they start?

"We tend to over romanticize strategy."

He cited James Clear on motion versus action. "When you haven't posted any content, your strategy is not going to help you much. Because the way I know content works is, you have to fail. And people are afraid of failure. But the good thing about failure is, if you fail a bunch of times, you have benchmarks," he says.

So how many posts before you realize that you do need a strategy to back it? “12 posts,” he says, “or about three months.” He believes before this number people are overthinking what time to post and how many comments to leave.

"Your strategy cannot just be going viral. You have to be able to stop at some point and use this reach or impressions or whatever to make money, make it work for your brand." 

He knows people getting six or seven hundred impressions a post and converting fine. He works with a friend who has a highly technical job and shares equally technical content. And because it is aimed at other experts in the same field, those posts will never get twenty thousand impressions. "If three hundred people from your network are seeing your posts, it's great. You wanted these people to see your posts and they're seeing it."

Sounding like someone who has run out of interest in the argument, he proceeds to say, "I just don't understand it. But I get it if that's what people want. So be it."

As we head towards the end of the interview, I ask him one last question: Is building a personal brand a durable asset, or is it fragile and platform-dependent?

"Everyone at this point should have a personal brand in some form," he replies emphatically. “I have seen bar owners do great on LinkedIn. If you are digitally relevant, you have one leg over someone in your space who is not.”

He follows this statement up with a disclaimer, “people are getting banned left, right and center, sometimes for reasons nobody can understand. Platform dependence will exist everywhere, so avoiding it is not the right move. Letting a platform then push you into somewhere you own your audience is the goal, which is why so many people are building other distribution channels such as their own newsletters and email lists.”

"If you do your personal brand right, and you are believable, relatable, and can demonstrate that you're good at what you do, people will follow you wherever you go. Doesn't matter if it's LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube."

Grow-th takeaway: So does Amlan’s advice make you want to throw out your strategy?

I would say hold your horses. When it comes to building your personal brand, strategy is not the starting gun. You begin, you accumulate a body of work you can be honest about, and THEN strategy heralds you further. Everything I know about what works on my own account came out of data I had ONLY because I posted badly for months first.

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