FOR FOUNDERS & CEOS
Should a CEO have a personal brand? The benefits, the risks and how to do it well
A balanced look at why CEOs build a public profile, what can go wrong, and how to do it in a way that serves the company.
A no-nonsense guide to getting your LinkedIn profile right, posting with a simple rhythm you can keep, and deciding honestly whether to get help.
LinkedIn works best for founders who treat it as their professional reputation. A broadcast channel it isn’t. Sort out the profile basics, then post one to three times a week from your personal profile. Mix lessons and opinions with behind-the-scenes posts and customer questions. Write the posts yourself or get help, but every one has to sound like you.
Sell to other businesses, hire staff or talk to investors, and LinkedIn is probably the first place those people look you up. LinkedIn says it has more than 1.3 billion members, with over 430 million across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the UK included (LinkedIn). So your profile is already working for you, or against you, whether you look after it or not.
Still deciding whether to be visible at all? Read should a CEO have a personal brand? first.
It comes down to how much you’d like us to handle. How often do you want to post? Are we writing from interviews with you? Do the posts need new photography or short video alongside them?
If you’d like to talk it over, we’d be glad to hear what you’re working on.
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Most founders don’t need to go viral on LinkedIn. They need to be easy to find and credible at the moments that count. That’s when a prospect checks you out before a call, when a candidate is weighing up your job offer, or when an investor or journalist wants to know who you are.
It’s also somewhere to explain what your business believes, in your own words. A company account can announce things. A founder can say why a decision was made, where the industry has it wrong, or what they learned the hard way. That’s the core of founder-led marketing, and for B2B firms and professional services LinkedIn is often where it works best.
Before you post a thing, make sure anyone who clicks through finds something worth reading.
Pick a recent, well-lit photo with your face clearly visible, looking the way you do on a good day at work. LinkedIn says members with a profile photo get up to twice as many profile views and three times as many connection requests (LinkedIn Help). This is where a portrait from a proper brand photography session earns its money.
Use the banner to show what you do. Your company name with a one-line promise works, and so does a photo of you at work. LinkedIn recommends 1584 × 396 pixels for background photos (LinkedIn Help). Keep important text clear of the bottom left, because your profile photo sits over that corner on desktop.
Your headline shows up beside your name almost everywhere on LinkedIn. Make it say who you help and how. A bare job title won’t do it. “Founder at Acme” tells people very little, while “Founder of Acme, helping UK manufacturers cut energy waste” tells them whether to keep reading.
Write in the first person, the way you’d explain yourself over a coffee. Cover the problem you solve and why you started. Then say who you work with and what someone should do next. Put your strongest line first, since only the opening shows before people click to read more.
Featured lets you pin your best material near the top of your profile. According to LinkedIn, you can feature posts you’ve written and articles you’ve published on the platform, plus documents and links and other external media (LinkedIn Help). Pin a strong post, a short founder video or a link to your website.
You don’t need a fresh idea every day. You need a handful of themes you keep coming back to, all drawn from what you already know. This mix works for most founders:
| Type of post | Roughly | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Lessons learned | 30% | “We lost our biggest client in year two. Here’s what we changed.” |
| Opinions on your industry | 25% | “Most onboarding processes are built for the supplier, not the customer.” |
| Customer questions answered | 20% | “The question I’m asked on almost every sales call, answered properly.” |
| Behind the scenes and team | 15% | A team member explaining how they solved a tricky job. |
| News and offers | 10% | A new service, a hire, a milestone or an event. |
Treat the percentages as a guide. They aren’t a rule. What counts is that most of your posts help the reader, and promotion stays a small slice. A few habits make a difference.
Write the way you talk. Use short paragraphs and plain words, with one idea per post. Open with the interesting bit, because the first line decides whether anyone reads the second. And try short video. A 60-second clip of you answering one question can do more than a long post, and a single filming day with a brand videography team can give you weeks of clips.
Consistency beats volume. One to three posts a week is realistic for most busy founders, and it’s enough to stay visible. A considered post every week for a year will do far more for your reputation than a month of daily posting followed by silence.
LinkedIn’s figures for company pages point the same way. It says companies that post weekly see twice the engagement (LinkedIn). That’s a comparison and doesn’t prove more posting always works better, but it’s a sensible baseline. Leaving thoughtful comments on other people’s posts a few times a week helps as well.
Each one has a job. LinkedIn explains that profiles represent individuals and Pages represent organisations, and you need a personal profile before you can create a Page (LinkedIn Help).
Your personal profile is the place for your opinions and stories, and for the lessons you’ve learned. People connect with people, and founder posts tend to feel more human. The company page is the official record. Job ads and product news go there, along with case studies and anything the business needs to own if you step back one day. It’s also where most LinkedIn advertising lives.
A common approach is to post as yourself and share the best of it on the company page. If you advertise on LinkedIn, Thought Leader Ads let a company promote posts from employees and other members, but only with the author’s permission (LinkedIn Help).
It’s the cheapest option and the most authentic, and it teaches you what you actually want to say. The catch is time. Plenty of founders start strong and then stop as soon as the business gets busy. Keeping that rhythm going is where social media management support usually helps most.
Help can mean someone tidying up your drafts. It can also mean a writer who interviews you and turns your thinking into posts. Published UK prices for this are hard to find. Most published rates come from US agencies, where dedicated LinkedIn ghostwriting retainers often run to several thousand dollars a month, with minimum terms of six months or longer. Whoever you speak to, ask how many posts are included and how much of your time it’ll take each week, and check whether there’s a minimum term.
Is it dishonest to get help? Not if the ideas and opinions are yours, along with the experiences behind them. Speeches and books have been written with help for a long time. So have op-eds. Trouble starts when a post claims an experience you never had, or an opinion you wouldn’t stand behind in a meeting. Three rules keep it honest:
LinkedIn’s post analytics show impressions and members reached. You’ll also see profile viewers and followers gained from a post, and the analytics count reactions and comments along with the reposts and saves and any link visits (LinkedIn Help). Look once a month, and pay most attention to the signals that tie back to the business:
Give it three to six months before you decide. Reputation builds slowly. Watch the trend and ignore the ups and downs of any single post.
Our social media management covers LinkedIn alongside Instagram and Facebook. That covers strategy and content creation. We handle publishing and reporting too, and we review everything with you before it goes out in your name. We can also refresh your profile with new portraits and film short video so your LinkedIn and your website tell the same story as your other channels. You stay the voice. We help with the craft and the rhythm.
It can be, though it’s rarely the main way to reach customers. Consumer founders tend to use LinkedIn for hiring and investors. They also use it for partnerships and press, while Instagram and Facebook carry more of the customer-facing work. Go where your customers are first.
Only once regular posting is a habit. Longer articles suit founders with deep expertise and something substantial to say. Still, a short weekly post you actually publish beats a newsletter you give up on after three issues.
Someone can plan and draft posts for you, but LinkedIn’s terms say you shouldn’t share your account or log-in details. The safest set-up is for a helper to prepare posts that you approve and publish yourself. Company page posts can be handled by anyone you make a Page admin.
Expect three to six months of regular posting before you see a real change in profile views and conversations, and in enquiries. Early posts often feel quiet. That’s normal.
A balanced look at why CEOs build a public profile, what can go wrong, and how to do it in a way that serves the company.
A straightforward guide to planning, filming and cutting a founder story video that holds attention and earns its place on your website and social channels.
How to put your face and voice behind your business in a way that builds trust in the company, not just in you.
Four quick questions, and we’ll show you where we’d start. Your answers come straight to us with your message, so you won’t have to explain it twice.
A 30-minute introduction call on Microsoft Teams, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Your answers come with the booking, so we’ll be ready for you.
Prefer to talk it through? Make an appointment for a 30-minute call on Microsoft Teams, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
A closer look at the work behind each part of your plan.
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