Building Stori | Head Personal Branding & Content Marketing | Personal Branding Strategist | Managing Brands & People

I’m a marketing strategist with 4+ years of experience working across personal branding, influencer marketing, content strategy, and creator-led storytelling.
I’ve worked closely with coaches, founders, and creators - helping them shape narratives, build personal brands from the inside out, and show up online with clarity and confidence.

Over the years, I’ve interacted with countless influencers and digital creators, understanding deeply what drives visibility, trust, and audience loyalty.
This experience has shaped the way I approach marketing:
not as a loud performance, but as a human conversation.

For the past two years, I’ve also been building and strategising a newsletter from scratch.
A big part of this work involves researching how real people communicate - digging into Reddit threads, analysing LinkedIn posts, studying creator patterns, and speaking to people who show up authentically online.
From all these insights, we create simple, actionable prompts that make personal branding feel less intimidating and more accessible.

And then there’s my other identity - the writer.
For the last 1.5 years, I’ve been working quietly on my personal blog, where I talk about emotions, womanhood, the things we internalise, and the feelings we rarely articulate.
It’s where I’ve discovered that sharing honestly creates space for others to say, “I feel that too.”

My work is strategy.
My writing is honesty.
My brand is a blend of both.

If you’re someone who values storytelling, authenticity, emotional depth, and marketing that feels human - we’re speaking the same language.

Shivi Jalota

I'll build YOU a strong BRAND that will add extra dollars in your pocket! | Ghostwriter and Copywriter | Let's make BUSINESS happen, what say? | Author | Theatre Artist

You’ve got the talent. The ideas. The skills.

But no matter how hard you work, your LinkedIn profile feels like a resume graveyard instead of a lead magnet.

- You post once in a while but get little to no engagement.
- You’re building something valuable, but the world barely notices.
- You know personal branding matters: but don’t have the time, strategy, or content that actually works.

Sounds familiar? You're not alone.

Think about it.
• The opportunities you get.
• The leads that find you.
• The way people perceive your expertise.

All of it is shaped not just by what you do… but by how you're seen.

Here’s the truth most people don’t tell you:
Visibility beats ability.

If people don’t see you, they won’t trust you. And if they don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you.

What sets successful founders and professionals apart is a brand people remember, respect, and buy from.
But building that kind of brand isn’t about posting randomly and hoping something clicks.

It’s about designing a system that works, one that:

→ Positions you as the go-to in your niche
→ Turns content into conversations (not crickets)
→ Builds trust, authority, and influence over time
→ Brings you qualified leads, without endless cold pitching

The question is: are you ready to stop being invisible and start becoming unforgettable?
So tell me: What would shift in your career or business if LinkedIn became your #1 source of leads and opportunities?

Meghanjana Nag

I sat in a Starbucks yesterday, watching a guy pitch his services to a potential client.


For 40 minutes straight, he talked about his process.

His framework. 
His methodology. 
His 7-step system. 

The client nodded politely, checked her phone twice, and said "let me think about it."

I've seen this movie before. 

Hell, I starred in it for a long time in my career.

You know what nobody tells you when you're building a business?

People don't buy how you do it. They buy what happens after you do it.

BAD: "I use a proven 5-phase content strategy that includes audience research, competitive analysis, content pillar development, strategic distribution, and performance optimization."

GOOD: "Six months from now, you'll have a waitlist of dream clients who found you through LinkedIn, ready to pay premium rates, while you're spending less time chasing leads and more time choosing who you want to work with."

See the difference?

Every day on LinkedIn, I see incredibly talented people giving away their entire playbook for free.

"My exact framework for..."
"The methodology I use to..."
"Here's my 10-step process for..."

And they wonder why they're not converting.
You're teaching people to fish when they want to buy fish.
Actually, scratch that. They don't even want to buy fish. They want to not be hungry anymore.

Your prospects can Google "how to write a LinkedIn post" and get 47 million results. 

What they can't get from Google is the feeling of being seen, understood, and guided to the other side of their problem.

1. Not "I'll help you build a content system" → "Imagine waking up to qualified leads in your inbox without spending a single dollar on ads."

2. Not "I teach productivity frameworks" → "Picture closing your laptop at 4pm every day, knowing you accomplished more than you used to in 12-hour days."

3. Not "I offer career coaching" → "Six months from now, you're telling your boss 'no' because you've got three better offers on the table."

Feel how different those are?

Give them the after. They'll pay you for the how.

Tired of posting, praying & getting nothing? | Our strategy builds the most premium personal BRANDs that gets 10x growth & booked-out clients in 90 days, or you pay $0, Curious?

"Cold outreach doesn't work".
"LinkedIn doesn't work."
"X doesn't work".

Yes none of it will work for you if you keep blaming luck, the algo or whatever.

I have a friend pulling $80K in MRR from X. 
Another doing $120K from cold email. 
Another who signed 5 clients 6 weeks into LinkedIn.

None of these platforms "work" or "don't work."

They work for people who actually understand what they're doing.

Someone says "I posted for 6 weeks and didn't get clients."

Cool. Did you:

1. Talk to the right people about the right problem?
2. Actually offer something people want?
3. Build any trust before asking for the sale?
4. Say anything different from the 47 other people in your space?

Or did you just copy a template, post at the "optimal time," use the trending hooks, and wonder why nothing happened?

I'm watching people blame algorithms for problems that have nothing to do with algorithms.

Your content isn't failing because of reach.

It's failing because it doesn't make anyone feel anything or do anything.

You're not losing to the platform. 

You're losing to the person in your industry who actually figured out how to communicate value.

The platforms that "work":

The ones where you show up like a human who solves real problems for real people, not a content robot repeating LinkedIn advice about LinkedIn.

That's it. 

LinkedIn works if you make it work.
Cold email works if you make it work.
X works if you make it work.

And if none of them work for you? The common variable isn't the platform.

It's you.

Fix that first. Then pick your channel.

He thought LinkedIn would never work for him. 



We were on Zoom. He'd just shown me 4 months of content. Every post polished. Every caption thoughtful. Zero clients.

"I've done everything they said to do," he said. "I'm posting 4 times a week. My engagement is up. And I can't pay my rent."

I asked him one question:

"Show me the last five conversations you had with people who actually hired you."

Executive coach. 20 years in leadership. Legit transformation stories. The kind of person who should be booked solid.

I made him pull up his CRM.

"Read me the first message from the last three people who became clients."

I said: "Now read me your last ten post headlines."

Not a single post that would make those three people stop scrolling and think "holy shit, this person gets me."

We pulled the questions people asked before they hired him.

- Every discovery call recording
- Every intake form
- Every "what made you reach out?" answer
- Every DM that led to a booking

The first post using this approach got 83 likes.

His thought leadership posts were averaging 400+.
He panicked. "Should we go back to the old way?"

I said: "Check your DMs."

Eleven messages. Four from VPs at Fortune 500 companies. Seven requested discovery calls.

Within 60 days:

4 new clients signed
$180K in revenue
Two more in pipeline

And here's the part that made him laugh-cry: his engagement went down overall

But his bank account went up. LOL. 

P.S. — The irony? This post will probably get less engagement than my "thought leadership" posts. But it'll get the right DMs. And that's the whole point :D

A client called me "kid" on a live call in front of his entire team.

I was 21. 

And for about 3 seconds, I wanted to hang up, shut my laptop, and convince myself that business was a terrible idea.

I didn't.

Later, I closed the $8,000 deal before the call ended.

I said, calmly:

"I hear the hesitation, and it's fair. Age is a reasonable thing to factor in. I am not asking you to trust my years. I am asking you to look at the outcomes. Here is what happened for the last 3 clients who had the exact same problem you are describing right now."

Then I shared specific numbers. Specific timelines. Specific transformations.

He was quiet for a moment.

We closed before the hour was up.

Most try to compensate for age with credentials. More certifications. More testimonials. More explaining themselves.

That is the wrong game.

Credentials answer the question: "Who are you?"

But the client's real question is always: "What will you do for me?"

The framework I use now is simple:

→ Lead with the problem, not your background
→ Anchor every claim to a specific result, not a general capability
→ Name the fear directly before they can weaponize it against you
→ Move the conversation forward before the doubt has time to settle

Age is only a dealbreaker when you allow it to be the most interesting thing in the room.

I've talked with 50+ CEOs and CMOs in the last 90 days.

And I noticed something weird.

More than half of them have zero personal presence on LinkedIn.

They say:

- "Our company brand is strong enough."
- "We don't have time for that stuff."
- "I'm not really a 'content person.'"
- "What would I even post about?"

Fair. I get it.

Here's what's happening to them though:

1. They're paying $15K-$40K/month for lead gen that's getting progressively worse
2. Their sales team is cold calling and getting 2-3% response rates
3. They're losing deals to competitors they've never heard of
4. When they do get inbound, it's price shoppers who found them on Google


Now the other group. The ones with an actual presence.

1. Gets 4-6 qualified partnership inquiries per month. Closed $340K in partnerships last quarter that came directly from their content. Didn't pay a dollar for any of it.

2. Speaking at 3 conferences this year he didn't apply to. They reached out to him. His company's sales cycle dropped from 6 months to 3.5 months because prospects already trust him before the first call.

3. Hired his last two executives from people who followed his content. Saved $60K in recruiter fees. Both of them took lower salaries because they "wanted to work for him specifically."


The difference isn't that one group is better at business.

The difference is that one group realized something the other hasn't yet:

When people know you, hear your thinking, see how you operate, they're not buying from a company anymore.
They're buying from someone they already feel like they know.

Look, I'm not saying personal branding solves everything.

But I am saying I've never met a CEO with a real presence who regretted building it.


So what's actually stopping you?

Because it's probably not time. It's probably not "I don't know what to post."

It's probably that you haven't seen the cost of staying invisible clearly enough yet.

The good news? Your competitors haven't figured this out either.
The bad news? One of them will. Probably soon.

You building in public, or staying hidden behind your logo?

Your call.

The personal branding industry is lying to you.

And once you see why, you can't unsee it.

Most people teaching personal branding make money by selling courses on how to grow your personal brand.

Their business model requires you to believe that follower count matters.

Because "how to get clients" is a harder sell than "how to get followers."

Because here's the truth they won't tell you:

95% of personal branding advice is about visibility.

Zero percent is about the thing that actually generates revenue: positioning.

Visibility gets you seen.

Positioning gets you hired.

One builds an audience.
One builds a client list.

The people teaching you personal branding are optimizing for the wrong metric.

They measure success by:

1. Follower count
2. Engagement rate
3. Viral posts
4. Profile views

You should be measuring success by:

1. Quality of inbound leads
2. Average deal size
3. Sales cycle length
4. Revenue per post


Someone with 50K followers and bad positioning makes less than someone with 5K followers and sharp positioning.

I've seen it over and over.

The hard question nobody asks you:
Are you building an audience or building a business?

Forget follower count for 90 days.

Ask yourself instead:
If my ideal client Googles their exact problem, do I show up?
If they land on my profile, can they tell in 10 seconds if I'm for them?
If they read my last 5 posts, would they think "this person gets me"?

That's positioning.

Everything else is just visibility noise.

I had a client come to me with 11,400 followers.

Impressive number. Zero inbound leads in 6 months. Not one.

So we did something uncomfortable, we audited who was actually engaging.

Turns out?
→ Mostly other coaches 
→ A handful of job seekers 
→ Random people who liked the word "growth"

Not a single decision-maker in sight.

Here's what nobody tells you about LinkedIn follower counts:
They're optimised for the wrong currency.

The algorithm rewards content that gets volume reactions. Volume reactions come from the masses. The masses aren't your buyers.

So you end up building a massive audience of people who will never, ever pay you.

And it feels like progress. That's what makes it dangerous.

The clients worth $20K, $50K, $100K+?
They don't comment. They don't like. They don't share.
They watch.

Quietly. For months. Then one day, a DM appears.
"I've been following your content for a while. I think we should talk."
That's the metric that matters.

After 5 years of watching this pattern repeat:
Follower volume ≠ decision-maker attention
Likes from the wrong people ≠ authority
30 generic posts < 1 perfectly positioned one
Growth game ≠ revenue game

One question worth sitting with this week:

Who actually messaged you last quarter because of something you posted?

Not who liked it. Not who commented "great post!"
Who. Reached. Out.

Everything else is noise wearing a crown.

I fired a client last month.


Well, "fired" sounds dramatic.

2 weeks in, he asked: "Why haven't we gone viral yet?"

I said: "Because that's not how this works."

He said: "But I'm posting every day."

The clients I work with now?

They're getting 100K+ impressions on single posts.
2,000+ likes.
Inbound DMs from people they'd never be able to cold pitch.
Discovery calls that start with "I've been following you for months."

None of them saw those numbers in month one. Or month two. Or even month three.


Organic marketing is compound interest for your reputation.

The first 90 days? You're making deposits that feel like they're going nowhere.
Month four? Small returns.
Month six? People start recognizing your name.
Month nine? You're not chasing clients anymore. 

They're coming to you.

But most people quit at month two because they're not seeing the math yet.

So yeah, I've stopped working with people who want instant results.

Not because I'm picky.
Because I'd rather work with five people who understand the game than twenty who'll blame me when they're not famous by Thursday.

Organic marketing isn't a hack.

It's a bet on yourself that takes time to pay out.
And the people who win? They're not smarter or luckier.

They just didn't quit before the compound interest kicked in.

"Why should I invest in my personal brand when I already have a marketing team - and I just cut their budget by 50%?"

A CEO asked me yesterday

I asked him one question back:

"When your leads Google your company, they find your website. When they Google your name, what do they find?"

Silence.

Here's what most leaders don't realize about personal brands:

1. Your marketing team is getting more expensive every year.

Cost per lead keeps climbing. Ad platforms keep squeezing. Everyone's fighting for the same attention.

Meanwhile, your personal brand costs the same tomorrow as it does today: your time.


2. Your competitors are becoming commodities.

When someone Googles "B2B SaaS solutions" or "executive coaching" or whatever you do, they get 50 companies that all say the same thing.

When they Google your name and find a human with thoughts, opinions, and a perspective? 

You're not in that comparison anymore.
You're the category of one.

3. Your marketing team is building interest. You build trust.

Here's the difference:
Marketing gets someone to click.
Your personal brand gets someone to believe.

People don't buy from companies anymore. 
They buy from people they already feel like they know.
Your marketing team can't manufacture that. Only you can.

4. The leads coming to you are different than the leads coming to your company.

Company leads: "What's your pricing?"
Personal brand leads: "I've been following you for months, when can we start?"

One is shopping. The other is pre-sold.

Which sales conversation would you rather have?

Everyone told me to grow an audience first.

I ignored that advice and landed a $2,000 client with 0 followers, 0 content history, and 0 credibility signals on my profile.

"Build an audience first" is advice optimized for people who already have time, stability, or an existing platform to leverage. 

If you're starting from nothing, that's a 12-month runway before you see a dollar. 

Most people don't have that.

So I did the opposite.

I sat down for two hours. Found 50 people on LinkedIn who matched one specific profile - a particular role, a particular pain, a particular stage of business. 

Not 500. Not a broad industry. 

Fifty real humans who I believed had the exact problem I knew how to solve.

The results were not glamorous:

→ 50 messages sent
→ 8 people replied
 → 3 got on a call with me
→ 1 became a paying client

That's a 2% conversion rate. That's also $2,000 from a blank profile.
 
Most outbound fails because people spray a generic pitch at anyone with a pulse. 

What actually moves someone is the quiet feeling that you did your homework - that you're talking to them, not at them.

The audience can come later. The rent is due now.

taplio

The Battle

Shivi Jalota

Meghanjana Nag

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMeghanjana Nag's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Shivi Jalota

Meghanjana Nag

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Meghanjana Nag's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMeghanjana Nag's LinkedIn Performance