You do not owe LinkedIn your entire personality

There is a slightly strange thing that has happened to the idea of personal branding, where somewhere along the way “be authentic” seems to have been interpreted as “please tell the internet absolutely everything about yourself, ideally with a photograph taken just after a run and a lesson about resilience attached to it”.

We have reached a point where almost anything can apparently become content if you stare at it for long enough.

Missed a train? Leadership lesson.

Child refuses to put their shoes on? Suddenly we are talking about negotiation, emotional intelligence and the importance of meeting people where they are.

This is where I think personal branding gets unnecessarily complicated, particularly for founders and leaders who know they probably should be more visible but have no real desire to start broadcasting the minutiae of their lives to people they vaguely remember working with in 2016.

Personal branding is not really about sharing more.

It is about being clearer on what you want people to know you for.

That sounds quite obvious when you write it down, but I am not sure we always behave as though it is, because a lot of personal-brand advice jumps very quickly to the mechanics of posting before anybody has stopped to ask what all of that posting is actually supposed to achieve.

There are plenty of people who post frequently, have decent followings and are wonderfully visible, while still leaving you with absolutely no idea what you would go to them for if you actually needed something.

You know they went to Cannes, or that they have opinions about AI. You may even know what they had for breakfast if you have been following closely enough, but what you do not necessarily know is what they are particularly good at.

That, to me, is the more interesting bit.

A useful personal brand creates a set of associations around you, so that when your name comes up people have a reasonably clear sense of what you understand, what you care about, what you have a point of view on and where you might be useful.

If somebody is in a room discussing a problem you solve, you want your name to have a fighting chance of appearing in that conversation even when you are not there.

That does not happen simply because you post a lot, but it can happen because, over time, people start connecting you with particular ideas, problems, perspectives or areas of expertise.

For founders, this matters enormously because people are rarely buying just the thing listed on your website. They are often buying your judgement, your experience, your way of thinking and, quite frankly, whether they trust you enough to believe you will know what to do when the tidy little project plan inevitably encounters real life.

For leaders, the same principle applies because your reputation has a habit of arriving in the room before you do. People will already have formed some sense of what you stand for, what you are good at and what kind of perspective you bring, so being deliberate about those associations is not vanity; it is simply useful.

Which means the starting point probably should not be, “What should I post this week?”

A better starting point is, “What do I actually want to be known for?”

I think there are a few questions that help with that.

·       What do I know that is genuinely useful?

·       What do I believe that is shaped by experience rather than borrowed from whichever leadership book I’ve previously read?

·       What problems do I understand unusually well?

·       What do I want people to think of me for when an opportunity, client brief, speaking request or tricky conversation comes up?

Those questions are far more useful than starting with a blank LinkedIn box and hoping inspiration turns up before your coffee gets cold.

They also make content much easier, because once you know what you want to be associated with, you stop feeling as though you need to have an opinion on absolutely everything. You can stay in your lane without becoming dull.

In fact, the clearer your lane is, the easier it becomes for people to remember why they should come to you.

People tend to think repetition is a problem in content, but repetition is actually part of how a reputation forms. Nobody associates you with an idea because you mentioned it once on a Tuesday in March.

They associate you with it because you keep coming back to it from different angles, with different examples, different stories and different observations, until eventually the connection becomes obvious.

That does not mean saying the same thing every week in a slightly different font.

It means having a recognisable territory.

You might talk regularly about leadership communication, but one week that comes through the lens of a bad town hall, another week through something you noticed in a client meeting, another through a piece of research, another through a decision you got wrong yourself.

The subject stays familiar, but the perspective moves.

That is how people begin to understand not only what you know, but how you think.

Authenticity still matters here, although I think it is worth separating authenticity from total disclosure because the two are not the same thing.

You can be authentic without offering LinkedIn unrestricted access to your emotional hard drive, as nobody needs every detail.

People do, however, tend to notice when a personal brand becomes so polished that it starts to resemble an estate-agent brochure, where everything is bright, spacious, beautifully appointed and apparently nobody has ever argued next to the dishwasher.

If every post is a win, an award, a new client, or a photograph of you looking composed next to a branded lectern, the overall impression may be impressive, but it can also start to feel a little frictionless.

Real careers are not frictionless, and neither are businesses.

Most people have made poor decisions, changed their minds, and doubted themselves, but allowing some of that reality into what you share does not weaken your personal brand.

Often it makes your expertise more believable, because people can see where the thinking came from.

That does not mean turning every bad day into content or feeling obliged to publish your problems while you are still in the middle of them.

Some experiences are better understood with a bit of distance, once you know what they actually taught you and whether there is anything in them that might be useful to somebody else.

The point is not to perform vulnerability but simply not to airbrush yourself so heavily that the person disappears.

What you do need is enough clarity that the right people understand what you are good at, what you have something interesting to say about and why they might want to work with you, listen to you or recommend you.

So no, LinkedIn doesn't need your entire personality, because personal branding isn't really about being known by everyone.

It is about being known for something.

Preferably the right thing.