If I have to read one more “I’m humbled to announce” post on LinkedIn, I am going to throw my MacBook into a lake. I’m serious. It’s reached a point where the performative nature of social media isn’t just annoying—it’s actually preventing people from doing good work. We’ve been sold this lie that if you aren’t dancing on TikTok or “providing value” in a 12-part Twitter thread, you don’t exist in the professional world.
That is total bullshit. I know because I tried it, and it nearly broke me.
Back in 2019, I decided I was going to be an “influencer” in my niche. I was sitting in a Caffe Vita in Seattle, drinking a $7 latte, and I spent four hours trying to take the perfect photo of my notebook and coffee. I wanted to look like the kind of person who has deep thoughts. I posted it with some caption about “the grind.” It got 14 likes. I felt like a loser. But more importantly, I realized I hadn’t actually done any real work that day. I had just been a prop in my own life.
You don’t need social media to build a brand. You need a body of work. You need people to know what you stand for, not what you ate for lunch or how you feel about the latest algorithm change. Here is how you actually do it when the very thought of opening Instagram makes you want to crawl into a hole.
The part about having a ‘Home Base’
If you hate social media, the first thing you need to do is reclaim your territory. Social media platforms are rented land. You’re a sharecropper for Mark Zuckerberg. If he decides to change the rules, your “brand” disappears overnight. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently: you need a website. A simple, boring, static website that you own.
I used to think a website was a vanity project. I was completely wrong. A website is a filter. When someone Googles your name—and they will, before a job interview or a big meeting—you want them to find something you controlled, not a weird photo from your cousin’s wedding in 2012.
It doesn’t have to be fancy. I personally hate Canva. I refuse to use it even though everyone says it’s the “gold standard” for non-designers. To me, Canva designs look like cheap wedding invitations for people who don’t actually like each other. Use something simple like Hugo or Jekyll, or even just a basic Ghost blog. Just make it clean. Put your best work there. Write about what you know. That’s it.
Proof of work is the only metric that matters
Most “personal brand experts” are just failed middle managers who realized they could sell confidence to people who are actually good at their jobs. They tell you to post daily. I tell you to build something once a month and write about it.
I call this the 10-3-1 rule, though I just made that up right now so don’t go looking for it in a textbook. For every 10 hours you spend working, spend 3 hours documenting what you did, and 1 hour sharing it with exactly five people who actually matter. Not 5,000 strangers. Five people who can actually hire you or partner with you.
Real authority isn’t about how many people follow you; it’s about who follows you and why they trust your brain.
I tested this. Last year, I spent 14 days trying to be “active” on Twitter (I refuse to call it X). I tracked my mood and productivity. Then I spent 14 days completely offline, just writing one long-form technical piece for my blog and emailing it to a few former colleagues. My cortisol levels—I actually used one of those cheap saliva kits from Amazon—were 22% higher during the Twitter weeks. And guess what? The single blog post led to two consulting offers. The Twitter threads led to… nothing. Just a headache and a weird obsession with what some guy named “CryptoAlpha88” thought about my take on project management.
The ‘Unfair’ Take: Social media makes you stupider
I might be wrong about this, but I think the more time you spend condensing your thoughts into 280-character bites, the less capable you become of complex thinking. It’s like trying to run a marathon by only ever taking three steps at a time.
If you want a powerful brand, be the person who can explain the difficult thing in 2,000 words. Be the person who has the patience to stay with a problem. In a world of goldfish, the person who can focus for an hour is a god. I know people will disagree and say you have to “meet people where they are,” but if where they are is a digital flea market of noise and shouting, why would you want to be there?
Anyway, I’m getting off track. I was supposed to be giving you steps.
How to actually execute this (The Boring Version)
- Start a newsletter that isn’t a newsletter: Don’t call it a newsletter. Just tell people you send an occasional email when you find something interesting. Use Buttondown or something minimal. Avoid Substack Notes; it’s just Twitter in a cardigan and it’s just as distracting.
- Speak at tiny events: Find a local meetup or a specific industry webinar. 20 people in a room is worth more than 2,000 “impressions” on a screen. You can see their eyes. You can tell when they’re bored.
- Write ‘Proof of Work’ articles: Don’t write “5 tips for better SEO.” Write “How I increased our organic traffic by 12% using this specific spreadsheet.” People crave the ‘how,’ not the ‘what.’
- The Lamy Safari test: This is a tangent, but I swear by it. I do all my first drafts with a Lamy Safari fountain pen (extra-fine nib) in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook. There is something about the physical resistance of pen on paper that stops you from writing the kind of generic garbage that AI or “content creators” churn out. If you can’t write it by hand, it’s probably not worth saying.
One more thing: stop worrying about “engagement.” Engagement is a trap. It’s a metric designed to keep you addicted to the platform, not to help you grow your career. If you get one email from a peer saying “that piece you wrote actually changed how I think about X,” you have won. That is a brand. Everything else is just noise.
The ‘Risky’ Statement
I honestly believe that people who post daily on LinkedIn are fundamentally broken. There is a specific kind of psychic damage that happens when you start viewing every life experience—a walk in the woods, a conversation with your kid, a failure at work—as “content.” It turns you into a commodity. It strips away your humanity. I actively tell my friends to avoid hiring anyone whose LinkedIn profile is too polished. If they’re that good at social media, they probably aren’t spending enough time being good at their actual job.
I’ve kept the same $120 pair of Red Wing boots for six years. I get them resoled every two. I don’t care if there are better, lighter, more “modern” boots out there. They work for me. Your personal brand should be like those boots. Sturdy, reliable, and a bit scuffed up. It shouldn’t look like a shiny new pair of plastic sneakers that everyone else is wearing just because they’re on sale.
Building a brand without social media is slower. It’s harder. It requires you to actually be good at something. But it’s the only way to build something that lasts longer than a refresh cycle.
What happens if you just… stop? If you deleted the apps today and just focused on doing one great thing a month and telling the right people about it? I don’t know the answer for you, but for me, it was the best career move I ever made.
Go build something real.