We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gouri Dixit a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gouri, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?

The customer success story I’m sharing will always remain special to me. My client reached out to me for LinkedIn Personal Branding. It was early 2023, and I was in the initial stage of building my personal brand as a content writer. So, to get a lead for a LinkedIn branding project was surprising. I got on a call with the client, vibed with them instantly, and signed the contract within the next three days.

What made this project special was also the client’s reason for building their personal brand. Usually, people (including me) want to generate leads through branding. However, for this client, leads were secondary; they wanted to serve their community and connect with their network on a deeper level. Their goal was to share what they had learned from their personal and professional lives and help their audience avoid making the mistakes they had made.

We collaborated for a whole year, and during that time, we built such a strong brand for the client that their audience would DM them, saying, “Reading your posts feels like I’ve known you for years.”

People loved the posts I wrote for the client for the value they offered, and my client achieved their goal of building a deeper connection with the audience.

It also had a financial benefit, as the client was invited to multiple podcasts and LinkedIn Lives. People started noticing them as an industry leader, and they were also featured in LinkedIn news.

The cherry on top was when the client launched their first digital product. They got 160+ signups in less than three months—all through organic LinkedIn marketing. The entire year, leads reached out to my clients because of their personal brand, and they conducted fully booked webinars.

Lastly, when we ended the contract, the client was satisfied that they had fulfilled not only their desired goal of serving their community but also gained additional benefits.

During the one year of our collaboration, it was a great partnership (yes, we liked to call ourselves partners) that resulted in a happy me and a happy client.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a technical person by education and a creative by profession. I live in Nagpur, India, and work full-time as a freelance content writer and strategist.

Writing, especially freelancing, was never my plan. I’m a computer science engineer and always wanted to study engineering. Writing has been my passion since childhood, but it was never a professional choice.

It was only in late 2019, when I was in my second year of college, that I realized engineering was not my calling. It was writing all along. While in college, I was also a member of the Toastmasters International organization, where my real experiment with writing started. In 2020, I came across the term “freelancing” while preparing for a speech at Toastmasters, and a new avenue opened for me!

Soon after graduating, I joined my first writing internship at a Medtech startup in 2022. Since then, I’ve worked with 10+ clients spanning over three countries. As a freelance writer, I’ve had my fair share of experimentation and have worked with EdTech, Real estate, Lifestyle, Design, HR and recruitment, and content marketing brands.

In my two years as a writer, I’ve realized that I love strategizing as much as writing. Part of the reason is that I worked with founders on their branding, which included strategizing their marketing as a huge part.

I found the reason I love my work so much—“content strategy.” So, I upgraded myself from a content writer to a content strategist. I strategize marketing for brands and founders so they don’t have to. I figure out their marketing so they can focus on growing their business. I help them with their SEO strategy, blogging, and LinkedIn marketing. My work primarily focuses on making my clients’ lives easier by figuring out their marketing for them. It includes strategizing what platforms to use, what content to post, how to generate ROI-focused content, etc.

Since I’ve found the secret to my happy work, I have managed to make my clients happy with my work. I only work with clients I can relate to regarding their values, business understanding, and understanding that it’s a collaboration.

Yes, it’s a collaboration. We work together as a team, and the client’s input is equally important to the work I deliver.

In January 2024, I launched my website, Path To Content, to reach out to clients I enjoy working with and to help educate beginner writers and freelancers about the world of writing and marketing.

I also share informative content from my experience on LinkedIn and in my newsletter.

I’m grateful to have found writing as a passion and a profession. It’s the only way I know how to express myself, and it makes me happy to help my clients with it.

How did you build your audience on social media?

LinkedIn is my primary social media platform for promoting my business. Today, I have 11K+ followers. But I made some mistakes when I started building an audience. Let me start with what I did wrong.

Firstly, I didn’t take the time to understand how LinkedIn works before starting to create content. Every platform has certain rules of thumb that, when understood, make it easy for you to crack the code of building a brand there.

Secondly, I just started. That cliche advice of “Just start, and you’ll figure it out.” Yeah, true. But to build your audience on social media, you need a plan. I started creating content without having a plan for my messaging or positioning.

Now, coming to what I did right—I didn’t fake anything. I showed I was a beginner when I was one. No need to fake expertise when you don’t have any. Your audience is smart enough to pick it up when you are lying or unsure about something.

Even beginners can create content and build a brand to achieve their unique goals. Speak about what you know, share your two cents, and share what you learned new. Try out something yourself and talk about what you’ve learned. You don’t need to sound authoritative. Just share information. It works! Nothing can beat authenticity.

One mantra I followed was, “There’ll always be someone who doesn’t know what I know now.” Through my content, I can help those who are a step behind me. To go a step ahead, I write to my past self, who didn’t know what I know now. Writing always comes easy when I’m writing to myself.

I made sure I was sharing my real personality. I once heard that you build a real brand when your online persona matches your personality in person. You attract the right audience.

I tried not to be like others. I can’t be humorous when writing, so I don’t deliberately try it. I know I can explain things in simple terms. I made that my identity.

Finally, I’m still no expert, but to answer your question about sharing any advice with beginners, here are a few pointers:

1. Before anything, zero in on your social media platform. Every platform is created to cater to different needs. Find out what you want and choose the platform that best suits your goals.
2. Spend at least 2-3 weeks understanding how content creators use that platform. Understand the style of content that works, how engagement works, how networking works, etc. Start engaging and networking even before you start creating content.
3. Understand your needs and create a content plan that works for you. For example, lead generation is my primary goal. For someone else, it could be to network and hire top talent. Your content goals and strategy will vary accordingly.
4. Optimize your profile to attract people.
5. Sort out your content messaging. For example, since I wanted to generate leads for content writing, my content messaging focused on showcasing my expertise. If you want to establish yourself as a thought leader, your messaging will focus on sharing bold opinions, bursting myths, being bold when you speak, etc.

These basics will get you started on any social media platform easily.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

It happened recently when I upgraded my freelancing role from a content writer to a content strategist.

Honestly, when I started freelancing, all I knew was writing. Through experiences and experiments, I added content strategy as an advanced skill set to my arsenal. Evidently, it was going to affect my already established brand on LinkedIn.

For the last two years, I’ve built my brand on LinkedIn as a content writer. All my content was targeted to land clients for writing projects. It was focused on me talking about SEO and content writing. Never did I talk about social media marketing, though I was working with a client on their social media at that time. As I didn’t think of pivoting at that time, it didn’t seem right to confuse my audience by showing I offer two services.

It was sheer coincidence that the client landed on my profile, liked how I had built my brand, and wanted the same for them. It was an experiment then—a “let’s give it a shot” thing.

I soon started enjoying strategizing and my client was getting visible results. After starting my own website and having worked with clients on strategy projects, I finally decided to pivot in June 2024.

The main challenge has been changing my image from an SEO writer to a strategist who manages a brand’s content requirements, from SEO and blogging to LinkedIn. I had to change my positioning, messaging, and target audience while retaining my existing following.

I believe I’ve figured out how to achieve that, as I’m seeing positive results from pivoting my business offerings and positioning.

After all, that’s the beauty of business. You experiment, you explore, you learn, you decide to pivot. The key is knowing when it’s the right time to pivot and following the right strategy so you don’t disrupt your existing social advantage.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pathtocontent.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gouri-dixit-content-writer/
• Other: Medium: https://medium.com/@gouridixit22Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/pathtocontent/