Chidera told me this about twenty minutes into our call. Her experience spans nine years in content marketing and while working on a nonprofit's service strategy, she built investor decks and product sheets from scratch. After completing her stint there, when she went to pitch another company on the strength of past work, she just couldn’t. "I couldn't use keywords to search for exactly what I did. And that's because I didn't have a brag file."

I sought Chidera out because her arc is the exact thing I believe would inspire you to focus on building your personal brand. Chidera is a freelance B2B product marketer now, mostly in healthtech and fintech, and she spent years being excellent yet invisible. She has since spent every year since building the machinery to not be in that situation again.

Chidera began her career as a writer, first for a travel company documenting places back home in Nigeria. It was her move to a tech company that marked an interesting shift, ”When I started, I was more (passionate) about persuasive writing. Using particular words to make it catchy, more action oriented, drive more people to do this or that." The content looked fine. It was the disconnect underneath that bothered her. "I was looking at the content itself, like something abstract. I'm wasn’t really looking at the company or the product I was selling," she remarks candidly.

She kept seeing a disconnect between what she published and the long-term brand it was supposed to serve. So she went back to school to get a 2024 diploma in product management. Ask her what actually changed after she completed the course and she remarks, “I began to look at content in a very different light. And then I realized that the way we're producing content wasn't really working. For instance, I know most of my early content were ‘ultimate guides’. You could have an ultimate guide to content marketing, for instance, but after the course I would always ask what the target audience wants. I would look at what drives them to make actual decisions about purchasing. I would be very specific about these things - for instance, my target audience would be pregnant women and specifically those who are and having a second baby.” 

And why not sell to all pregnant women in general? “Because if you want to sell to everybody, you're basically selling to no one.”

A small interruption to this newsletter to say that this interview was made possible with the amazing notetaking app that is Granola. Sign up now with my link to get your first month for FREE.

For someone whose entire craft is based on enhancing visibility, her relationship with her own personal brand is a bit fuzzy. "It's a love and hate relationship," she said, rueful and a little amused at herself. "Initially I wasn't big on personal branding at all. I had a LinkedIn account I didn't post for about four years. I was using it to mainly look for jobs”

This inattention ended up having consequences. "I actually lost a job because of something like this. I had a LinkedIn account but there was nothing on it, and when hiring, people wanted to see what you're doing for your own self," she said matter-of-factly.

What she does now is more conservative in comparison to most personal-brand advice. Not "who am I," but "this is what I did for this company, and this is why." She puts the work in public and keeps most of herself out of it. "That kind of content doesn't get a lot of likes. But it gets a lot of views and DMs at the end of the day."

She is also done betting everything on one channel, for a simple reason: "Humans are unpredictable."

Her proof is her own Instagram: no posts there, just her name and people still message her there to ask if she will work with them.

I further ask her about the one thing most people get wrong about the content that is published in B2B today, "The majority of the content we put behind gates does not deserve to be there. You don't want the emails of people that are just interested in the content. You want the emails of people that might buy in the future," she says pointedly.

So what is the alternative? "Share your white papers publicly in Reddit communities or Slack communities. People there are not interested in giving out their emails, but they are interested in talking about it. And the more they talk, the more it comes back to you," she remarked.

Having worked in sensitive industries like healthtech, I asked her how she approached content creation here. “In most industries you write to be the smartest voice in the room. In health, that instinct is dangerous.”

“If I'm speaking to a mom with a second child,” she elaborates, “and I say 'you don't need to go to the hospital,' you've actually lost. You're not the highest authority. You're the middleman that gets them from awareness of a problem to 'I need to reach out to my health provider, and these are the questions I'd ask.'"

I asked Chidera for any advice she would like to give Freelancers and here is what she said, "we tend to overthink. Someone on LinkedIn said the time you spend on a post is not proportional to how it performs. You could post two lines and it goes wild, or write something long that nobody reads."

Grow-th takeaway: So does Chidera’s parting advice mean that you absolutely don’t follow the data?

No, I don’t think so, rather Chidera’s point drives the fact that you just need to begin posting first. Once you get into the habit then you can start analyzing why likes are low and test new things.

Chidera’s approach to personal branding is staying true to who she is - cheerful and honest. Keep it simple, don’t overthink and don’t chase likes (especially not in the beginning.) I also quite like the term brag file instead of portfolio. It sounds more hip and I feel it encompasses a lot more than just your portfolio. For example, could your LinkedIn be in your brag file? Or that website you create? Or a list of videos you have worked on? That’s something you have to decide.

If you would like to follow Chidera, this is her LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chidera-onyeagubor/