I recently saw a TED talk by ‘Dan Clay’ who works as a Strategy Consultant for banks in New York.

Dan is an openly gay professional, who is very well known for his performance and recreating ‘S*x and the City’ outfits on Instagram, as a drag alter ego called ‘Carrie Dragshaw’. His talk was about being a leader and how you don’t have to hide your personality, to conduct business.

Currently it’s pride month in New South Wales in the build up to Mardi Gras 2019 . Initially I was a bit reluctant to include this on a business site. When I started reading through the comments on Dan’s TED talk on LinkedIn, I was inspired by the amount of people who had been commenting on the post.

Dan’s TED talk was based around how the character he’d developed on Instagram, both taught and gave him courage, to be exactly who he is, both in his work and home life, instead of having to conform to a more ‘masculine’ manner of presentation, just to please other people.

LinkedIn really is a fantastic networking site and whilst it is most definitely not like Facebook, it still is a branding platform for yourself. Discussing these personal life experiences may be viewed as controversial or ‘inappropriate’ but I personally believe it is one of the best ways to gain people’s attention. It’s relatable content and gives you the ability to see how people who have been exposed to different forms of prejudice or other personal experiences, are able to take the lessons learnt and put them into practice in their professional lives.

So what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t put onto LinkedIn about how much beer you were able to drink on your Saturday night, but don’t be afraid to take personal experiences and put them into Blogs/ Vlogs or other content on sites such as LinkedIn. These are the events which make you relatable and will capture a reading audience’s attention.

See Dan’s video, click here .