LinkedIn has become one of the most influential platforms shaping professional reputation, trust, and visibility. Yet many leaders still feel unsure about how to show up in a way that feels authentic, strategic, and worth their time.

In this episode, Emma and Natalie from HMC unpack what effective leadership presence on LinkedIn really looks like. Moving beyond vanity metrics and formulaic posting advice, the conversation focuses on how leaders can use LinkedIn as a long-term reputation and relationship-building tool rather than a content treadmill.

The episode explores why consistency matters more than frequency, how credibility is built through perspective rather than promotion, and the role LinkedIn plays in influencing customers, staff, industry peers, and even AI-driven search results. The team also discusses common mistakes leaders make on the platform, why silence can be just as damaging as oversharing, and how to balance personal voice with organisational responsibility.

This episode is particularly relevant for CEOs, founders, senior leaders, and subject-matter experts who want their LinkedIn presence to support trust, leadership visibility, and business outcomes without feeling forced or performative.

Listeners will come away with practical guidance on how to approach LinkedIn with intention, clarity, and confidence, and how small, well-considered actions can compound into long-term brand equity.

Takeaways:

• Authenticity matters. Leaders build trust on LinkedIn by sharing perspectives that reflect who they are and how they think, not by trying to sound like everyone else.
• Showing up counts. Thoughtful engagement and useful insights add far more value than posting for the sake of it or chasing trends that do not fit your role or reputation.
• Your profile is your foundation. A current, well-considered LinkedIn profile should accurately reflect where you are today, not where your career was several years ago.
• Consistency beats bursts. Regular, considered activity builds visibility and credibility over time, while long gaps make it harder to stay relevant.
• Leadership presence builds authority. Sharing informed viewpoints helps position leaders as credible voices in their field and supports trust in the wider organisation.
• Know your audience. Content that speaks to the right audience, their challenges, and their interests will always outperform generic posts.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• HMC
• LinkedIn
• ChatGPT
• Perplexity

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Here we go.

Hi, I'm Emma.

Hi, I'm Natalie.

So we've been talking a little bit before filming and LinkedIn has been around for 22 years.

It is a young adult.

And I guess it's kind of funny thinking about the evolution of LinkedIn and how it started as a job hunting platform, but it's very quickly evolved into so much more than that.

And I actually kind of forgot that you look for jobs on LinkedIn.

Yeah, no, it really is a one stop shop these days.

So we now know there are 1.2 billion users and that equates to around 310 active monthly users.

And it is the domain for thought leadership content of various.

So it is increasingly used in that space for long form pieces and articles, newsletters, and a springboard for all of that good content so far beyond what it used to be used for.

Yeah, and I think the interesting thing too that always sticks in my mind is I've heard different stats thrown around, but with all of those users, there's only about 1% of people that are creating content.

I don't know if that ties in with your other stat, but that's maths.

And we're not gonna worry about maths today because we're talking about words, not numbers.

And so considering that only 1% of people are creating content, if you start doing that too, then you've got a real opportunity to stand out in your particular niche.

But before we get into that, we should talk about what an optimized LinkedIn profile looks like.

What would you say are your key pointers in that?

If your headshots, I guess if it's older than 10 years, perhaps that's the one that needs to go.

Doesn't have to be a professional headshot, it just has to be one that really captures your vibe.

So not my headshot from my early 20s.

No, I should put a more realistic.

Yeah, reflection of myself in my 40s.

I mean, it's a pretty intuitive setup process.

And where the gaps are, you know, they're fairly obvious.

So you don't want conspicuous gaps.

You definitely don't want to show gaps in your employment history, especially over the last probably 10, 20 years.

And they might be for no rhyme or reason, but just making sure that there is.

When someone does a quick skim, things add up.

And even the content that you're engaging.

It has to be obvious when someone glances at your profile that you are active and you're engaging and you're building a network and you have some decent connections.

That takes a bit of time.

It's not something you can magically just make happen now.

So you do have to be active on the platform for it to look like you are meaningfully active.

And that requires more than just liking the odd post once or twice a week.

That's actually a thoughtful comment, that's actually engaging.

It's an enormously helpful way to get started.

What would you add to that?

It does take time to optimize your profile.

It's not something that you can do straight away and it's a really good opportunity to indicate your vibe, I guess, in attracting the right network for yourself.

So here's an example from my previous life as a freelancer.

I really optimized my profile for my niche and I had inbound inquiries coming from, from that.

And you can do the same from a business point of view too.

So it's important to make sure that you are interacting with other accounts like you say.

Cause I think sometimes we think create some content and that's the end of the job, or just post some stuff.

But you're gonna get more traction if you are adding value to other people's conversations too.

So the job you had five or 10 years ago when you set up your LinkedIn perhaps and described yourself and your attributes and key skills and whatnot, you might think they're.

But you may have had a few significant job shifts in that period.

So go back to them, make sure they actually do reflect what you are now or the, you know, the person you want to be known as, because chances are you will need a bit of a refresh.

And I think taking the time at.

Least a couple of times a year to think about who are my audiences, who do I really want to connect with in meaningful ways.

And so your strategy is kind of deliberate.

So the posts and what you're thinking about sharing is very much shaped by that audience likely to appeal to them.

Okay, so now we've talked about optimising profiles, let's talk about our favourite topic, which is thought leadership.

Thought leadership.

Thought leadership.

So I guess one of LinkedIn's greatest strengths is having that professional audience there.

So it's kind of the platform for thought leadership really.

So when you or one of your exec team or even employees, I would like to seeing more companies encouraging employees to share their insights.

It positions your brand as a leader in the space.

And you know, we've seen some clients generate media interest from LinkedIn posts.

Because the journalists are there now.

Yeah, they're there actively commenting.

You know, people are being bold and tagging them in.

That shit you recently happened to me.

Yeah, yeah.

It is like this little one stop shop.

There is an ecosystem that's kind of this thing right here and all the key players are there.

So you can be very provocative around very timely, contentious issues in that space and create a lot of noise very quickly.

I work in the thought leadership space a lot.

I love it.

I love working with chief executives who think they need a much bigger platform, but soon realising that their own brand and their own personal profile is actually the game changer.

It's bringing that human element.

Brands are not succeeding on LinkedIn when the brand, the company page is the repository for the thought leadership style content.

It's when the leader and when the leader imbibes it with really human, authentic content.

But there has to be a comfort level for that.

And it's really scary for some people.

Some people say simply know it's a no go zone.

So it's finding that comfortable kind of like place where you can get them to be a bit more off script, bit more lo fi every now and then and just riff really.

But they have to engage thereafter too.

Right.

We're not just dropping mic drop moment later.

See next month.

It's a constant commitment.

But usually once they see the thousands of people engaging with their post, the ego's pretty much there where they're all in.

Yeah.

Because we've been doing that for a few of our clients.

What would you say?

You know, it's always the way you're writing this piece of content.

You think, yes, this is gonna get some traction and then it's the piece of content that just took you five minutes to write, that's the one that goes viral.

What do you think the secret sauce is for writing really great thought leadership?

This has happened to me very recently where one.

Well, I didn't think it was like super bland, but I just did not expect to get the traction.

It did and it did.

It went positively viral and put everything else I'd laboured over for this particular client.

It's a shame.

Well, not really.

I mean you'd always got good results but this one just went nuts and it was a combination of all the good things.

It was a winning formula.

It was responding to a really topical issue in the media that day, responding fast, when there was very little known about it.

People were thirsty for more information.

Good picture, high profile, individual.

It was a beautiful human face.

It was a provocative opening line.

Like it's.

You don't want to get to your point, your provocative point in a few sentences.

Hit them with it up front.

It was human.

It wasn't the standard.

The ChatGPT posts, they do stand out.

So it is the well crafted, very authentic pieces which are going gangbusters there at the moment.

Yeah.

Okay, let's go over to one of the other benefits of LinkedIn that doesn't get talked about.

We're gonna talk about like tech and AI and data and all those sexy things.

So obviously having the analytics on the back end to show us reach and engagement and all that is really useful for seeing what kind of content is gaining traction on LinkedIn.

But what would you say about using AI to write your posts?

I've seen a lot of talk about it with people saying, you know, this doesn't have to be a hard thing for you to do.

ChatGPT can write posts.

ChatGPT can write really good answers for, like if you wanna leave a comment on somebody else's post to interact with it.

I have my thoughts and feelings about that and I think we're probably similar.

So what do you think?

No secrets here.

We use ChatGPT Ferplexity, all the tools every day.

That's just part and parcel of crafting content, personally, where I sit right now, and it probably will change in the weeks, months to come.

I don't like to get hemmed in by a suggested formatted response from the outset because I find that even though that can be enormously, oh, look, I've done my job for me, now I just have to tinker.

I find that the most creative, provocative way of writing that response will probably only come from here.

And timing wise, that AI ain't gonna know when the right time is either Right.

There's all sorts of other societal things going on that mean the time is right now and you strike while that iron is hot.

And also there are things that you need to bring to it to reflect the person you essentially ghostwriting for.

Some of those things that you can seldom feed into your AI.

Sometimes those are just those magic moments of personality that you inject.

So you're not anti AI to craft thought leadership content.

But I use it as a tool to Figure out if I've got gaps in my thinking in rhetoric, not as my repository for ideation, if that makes sense.

They're good words, weren't they?

I think for a while, maybe like last year, there seemed to be like this formula that people would follow.

You probably bypassed that whole formula because you're a marriage maverick.

So there was this formula, you know, it always does start with the provocative hook, which you should be doing.

But then it was just this very like one sentence, one sentence, blah, blah, blah.

And I think the tools like ChatGPT have clocked onto that.

But then there's a lot of very samey content and everyone sounds the same.

But the production stands are generally high.

Right.

You don't see any Tycos anymore.

Yeah, they are high, but they all sound the same, so it loses that authenticity.

You might have an authentic idea or an original idea, but if you are not using your voice.

I talk about vibes and stuff a lot because I am a bit woo woo like that.

And I just feel like it creates a barrier, you know, that people might not be consciously aware of, but subconsciously they're like, something's not clicking here.

Yeah, I'm not talking to another human, I'm talking to a robot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I love it when, you know, I'm pitching a piece, which is really grunty thought leadership piece on LinkedIn.

It might be a, you know, a longer form article, but I'm fishing for personal details for that hook.

Right.

And maybe it is, you know, the kid that's just done that thing, that was a learning moment in that house, you know, and we're like, you test the comfort levels obviously of whoever you're.

Working with, but please, like draw a line at what you share.

Cause this is a professional, you know, like I proposed to my girlfriend last week.

Here's what it taught me about sass sales.

No, that's a no.

I think I've seen a few of those.

Yes.

And they usually.

Yeah, we don't do that.

That's icky.

You mentioned about, you know, journalists being on LinkedIn as well.

And I think that's what I really like about LinkedIn is sometimes if I've read an article that's prompted a thought for me that I want to share.

It's really cool being able to tag that journalist or that other spokesperson in your article.

So that's a really good way of making connections, sharing other people's work.

I like the ability to do that.

So that's a very transparent way of pitching, isn't it?

Okay, we have mentioned about, you know, it's not just creating content and you've pushed post and your job is done.

It is a really good way of networking, but also expanding the conversation further and expanding your thoughts on certain subjects by going and interacting with other people, you know, so hashtags are still a thing on LinkedIn.

So using hashtags and then searching hashtag, you know, your hashtags and seeing what other people are saying about things and adding comments.

That's a useful little tip.

Do you have any other tips around the actual usage?

No.

Just don't stay dormant too long.

The mic drop moments for some incredibly powerful.

If they've gone for three months, like we've forgotten about them.

There's a pace, there's a cadence you really need to stick with.

You need to be consistent with it.

Yeah, yeah.

And that doesn't mean like having a hard and fast plan, but it just means, you know, showing up, but I think also adding value.

So it shouldn't be just, oh God, I've gotta do a post.

Don't post just for posting's sake.

You can use your content to do the talking for you.

I know that a lot of people jump in other people's DMs trying to use it as Tinder and stuff.

Don't do that.

But also, you know, don't go and annoy people in their DMs and do a hard sell.

Like I would say, that's bad etiquette.

Yeah, don't do that.

Yeah.

But you generally have a plan.

Like take some time to figure out exactly what your objectives are.

Everyone can be noisy and get a lot of followers, but be more targeted.

If you don't know, then you need to engage someone who can actually guide you.

It is important probably for you to be on here might not just be about growing your business, it might be about growing your future job.

It might be growing, I don't know, attitudes and mindsets around a certain aspect of your business or something you are passionate about in your industry.

More widely, it might be about advocacy.

Maybe you are.

There's part of your business that is lobbying government on a really big scale.

Like there could be lots of ways that you have to be quite targeted then because that will guide the content that you produce.

Yeah.

Personal branding is a big thing at the moment.

And authenticity, of course, we were talking about that last year.

But anyway, so aim of the curve.

Yeah.

You know, because people are trusting people, especially in the days of AI.

Like I feel like people want to see the people behind companies, behind brands.

They want to do business with people.

And I think that's been true for a long time, but it's even more true now with deep fakes and all of these things.

Like, it just helps to build more trust and credibility.

But what we've been noticing, and I think a lot of other people that are on LinkedIn and we have mentioned this already, but I just want to emphasise the point that people that are doing their own thing on their personal LinkedIn pages are getting a whole better response than just leaving their corporate or their company business page to do the heavy lifting for them.

So, like, we can talk now a little bit about the lo fi kind of movement because I think LinkedIn is still one of those platforms where you can get away with using a static image and a big long.

Like compared to all the other social media platforms.

You wouldn't be using really a lot of long form text, but you can still get away with letting your text do the talking and just having a static image.

It doesn't need to be huge production and video and all of that sort of stuff.

I feel like there is probably lots of conversations going on in workplaces at the moment around whether the sort of content that brand ambassadors, their own employees are actually able to do on work time, like on the clock, because that is actually the stuff that is meaningful for the brand itself.

It feels like if that is part of a marketing strategy, it should be.

It's probably going to trump the whatever contents is posted on the company's LinkedIn page.

Can they be supported to do that in the workplace?

I think this is this territory we're just only just sort of starting to get to.

Even in our own workplace.

We're all independently thinking of ways we all talk about issues in the industry on our own LinkedIn pages.

So when we are talking with an HNC hat on or not, it's a bit blurry, but I don't think anyone cares.

We work in this industry, we're pretty passionate about it.

Yeah, it's a bit of a blurry line, but it's exciting cause it's very much opened the space to anything and everything.

Yeah, yeah.

From an employee point of view, I feel like if you're given the mandate to do that, it's good for morale.

I would feel like my boss trusts me to speak on behalf of the company and I think that indicates something good to people outside of the company too.

I think so too.

More than we probably expect.

Especially if their thoughts may be a little bit random or Provocative or, you know, not safe, as in towing the party line.

If they don't look sanitised.

We know that content's gonna perform.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause it's genuine, it's real.

Yeah.

So that's a tricky thing to let go for companies, right?

Yeah.

Like they're all grown up, we can trust them to talk about the brand on their own.

Yeah.

As a PR person that kinda makes me feel a little bit nervous.

But at the same time I can see the benefits.

Yeah.

Of it.

But I can also see some of the brand ambassadors who are self appointed for some of the companies we work for going out there and doing it incredibly well and getting the cut through so much more than, you know, the brand itself and its company.

So it is worth the risk?

I think so.

A calculated risk.

Yeah.

Do you have any other points that you want to make?

I guess there's so many places we could have taken this conversation.

There's still a lot of stuff that we haven't covered.

But just in general terms about thought leadership, I think we've covered most of the bases.

Yeah.

I think that there's a lot of linked in.

Not fear, but fatigue perhaps.

People are glazing at the brag books.

Right.

The pictures of the team lunches and I won this trophy.

They don't want to see that anymore, but they get too scared to be absent.

They are there and they are hovering and they are watching and having the content that is rigorous, authentic and yeah.

Just really personalized.

I think it should be something that they want to know.

They're there for that and they're there for the future opportunities, wherever their career may take them.

So they're not going anywhere but they are rolling their eyes.

Anything that smacks of boastful.

What do we call it?

Humble brag.

Yeah.

Nobody likes a humble brag.

Yeah.

What are you missing out on?

If you don't do this, you will be invisible.

The recruiter who sees your CV in 5 years time won't find you or any evidence of anything you've ever done.

So it'll be a paper CV against nothing on the Internet.

AI bots will be trawler.

Do we call them bots?

Trawlers?

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess.

They're increasingly trawling LinkedIn and this thought leadership style content.

So it will work in your favour in terms of what the likes of ChatGPT and Perplexity will pull up.

Indexing your content.

So long as you're public, your LinkedIn posts are public, which is something I guess to think about.

The people I'm working with currently, they, for the most part, have their profiles public for that very reason.

Okay.

If you're not sure how to start showing up more consistently or strategically on LinkedIn, reach out to us.

We're experts, and it's one of the easiest ones you can make on LinkedIn.

Thanks for joining us.

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