20 Experts on Building a CEO’s LinkedIn Personal Brand

I’m a fundraiser for a charitable organization with my prior roles as Head of Sales & Business Development in MarTech SaaS. So LinkedIn has always played a pivotal role in engagement in cold outreach to warm up relationships and then seek common ground.

To build fundraising opportunities from scratch, I utilized the organization’s CEO LinkedIn profile, enhancing its content and visuals. Then, I developed content pillars and had the CEO record his thoughts. Next, I polished it for the LinkedIn format and published. Alongside, I ran the first outreach campaigns from the CEO profile, establishing new connections with potential major donors.

The effort resulted in conversations with The Howard Buffet Foundation, JERU, the Bosch Foundation, Norwegian Refugee Council, to name a few. And contracts exceeding $750,000 in total. The LinkedIn strategy also involved engagement with the content of our target personas, namely, leaving meaningful comments that open up a discussion. Now, the CEO posts himself occasionally. The key point: you always need a specialist who will outline a social selling strategy first.

As someone who’s grown a digital insurance brokerage, I collaborate with our marketing team to share stories about modernizing insurance sales and securing venture funding, but keep my voice authentic by writing key points myself. I dedicate an hour each week to review analytics with my team, seeing which topics resonate most – surprisingly, posts about my biking adventures mixed with business lessons often get the highest engagement.

While my team handles scheduling and optimization, I personally respond to comments and messages since genuine CEO interaction helps build trust in our industry.

My marketing team helps curate relevant financial news and data points, but I always write the analysis and market predictions in my own voice to maintain authenticity in my LinkedIn presence.

I’ve noticed my engagement rates are highest when I share personal investment lessons or market observations, so I dedicate time each week to draft these thoughts while my team handles the formatting and scheduling.

At FATJOE, I carve out time each week to jot down interesting SEO case studies and industry observations, which my team helps organize into LinkedIn-friendly formats while preserving my personal voice and expertise.

Our marketing team has created a simple template system that makes it easy for me to share quick insights between meetings, ensuring regular engagement without sacrificing authenticity.

As a CEO, I hate posting on LinkedIn. I’ve only posted about six times in the last three years.

Yes, I recognize the value of posting. But, I just don’t feel like sharing stuff to share stuff.

My team does a great job encouraging me to share when something truly is newsworthy and deserves to be promoted. For example, our company just hit a big milestone – 1 million answers submitted – and our team encouraged me to post something on LinkedIn. The team reviewed my copy, made suggestions on how to crop and edit a photo for proper engagement. All stuff that’s helpful for a social media dinosaur like myself.

The end result? Something got posted. The post had great engagement, and created a lot of internal and external excitement for what we’re building.

That said, some CEOs like myself hate posting to LinkedIn. The best thing a team can do to encourage CEO posts is to speak up when something deserves to be shared and to help with the optimization process so that the post is easy to execute.

When a prospect, or buyer, gets a direct email or friend request from you, LinkedIn is probably one of the first places they are going to reference if they are interested.

So, if you want to get to the next step, your LinkedIn profile needs to support your personal brand as well as the value that you bring to your customers and community.

Thought leadership with LinkedIn newsletters, blog posts, videos, and engagement with members of the community that you’re associated with is critical.

People buy from people they “Know, Like, and Trust.” So, your LinkedIn profile and content should be developed to include social proof, authority in your subject matter, and testimonials/comments and references from other customers.

Community-building is a powerful and underrated approach on LinkedIn for CEOs looking to bolster their personal brand. Instead of just focusing on posting content or managing their profile, encourage them to join or even start exclusive LinkedIn groups for industry leaders. This not only amplifies their reach but also positions them as thought leaders who actively engage in meaningful conversations.

To encourage this, suggest the CEO leverage their unique insights and experiences when participating in these groups. They can share valuable knowledge, pose insightful questions, and connect with peers on a deeper level. Advising them to use storytelling within these interactions can engage other members more effectively, transforming them from passive readers into active participants. Look for networking opportunities with group members-events, collaborations, or discussions-which can elevate their presence and establish lasting professional relationships.

Helping a CEO build a personal brand on LinkedIn comes down to making them sound like a real person, not a corporate robot. Nobody wants to read another stiff, salesy post. People connect with honest opinions, real experiences, and useful insights. If the content is actually valuable, the right audience will pay attention without needing a hard sell.

Some CEOs like to write their own content but need help polishing it. Others want content created from scratch. Either way, it has to sound like them. The best approach is working together, bouncing around ideas, shaping their thoughts, and making sure their posts don’t feel forced. Jumping into comments, starting conversations, and interacting with other voices in the industry makes a big difference. LinkedIn is a two-way street.

Before putting a ton of effort into this, it’s smart to make sure they actually have something worth saying. If not, the best move is to talk to customers, figure out what problems they’re dealing with, and build content around that. Nobody cares about generic business advice, but they do care about solutions to real challenges.

When done right, this can bring in real results. More meetings, faster sales cycles, better quality leads. It all adds up. Some people have even made millions just by consistently showing up and sharing useful content. Guide your CEO using all this information.

At RecurPost, I take a hands-on approach to building my personal brand on LinkedIn because authenticity matters. I share insights from my journey as a founder, lessons learned from failures, and behind-the-scenes glimpses into our product development. I write my own content to keep my voice genuine but collaborate with my team for feedback and editing.

This balance lets me stay true to my experiences while maintaining a professional narrative. Engaging directly with my audience in the comments builds meaningful connections, which I believe is key to impactful personal branding.

During my time at Lusha, I’ve developed a collaborative approach where I gather insights from our CEO’s meetings and conversations, then turn those into content outlines that maintain their natural speaking style and thought process.

I find it works best to have them record quick voice notes after important meetings which we can transform into LinkedIn posts, keeping their time investment minimal while ensuring the content feels genuine and not over-engineered.

With my background in SaaS, I’ve learned that the most engaging LinkedIn content comes from sharing real problems we’ve solved and lessons learned, so I encourage our marketing team to capture those moments in quick voice notes or bullet points throughout the week.

Our content specialist then helps transform these raw thoughts into clear, authentic posts while keeping my personal voice intact – they’ll often send me short questions to fill in details rather than trying to guess what I meant.

Honestly, it depends on the CEO. Some love being hands-on, while others want nothing to do with it. In my experience, the closer the CEO can be to the creation of the content, the better. Someone else can do the editing, posting, and commenting, but you will see the most success if the CEO creates the content.

You could ghostwrite for your CEO based on their ideas, voice, and expertise-basically making them look like a LinkedIn pro without them having to stress over it. If they like writing their own stuff, you can proofread, tighten up the message, and make sure it actually resonates with their audience (instead of sounding like a press release).

Engagement is another big one-commenting on relevant posts, responding to comments, and making sure they’re part of the conversation rather than just broadcasting. Because a personal brand isn’t just about posting; it’s about being visible and actually engaging.

At the end of the day, the goal is to make it authentic but effortless for them, so they can focus on leading while still growing their presence.

I manage my own LinkedIn because I want control over what I share and how I engage. My voice, my insights, my experiences—it’s all personal.

The advantage is that I can respond in real-time, share my thoughts as they come, and build real relationships. No delays, no approvals—just direct engagement. I stay consistent by setting aside time to write posts and comment on industry discussions.

For any CEO thinking about personal branding, my advice is simple: Be present, share real insights, and engage.

From my experience working with Fortune 500 executives, I’ve learned that the best approach is to create a lightweight content framework – I help CEOs identify 3-4 core topics they’re passionate about and build content themes around those, while letting them write the first draft in their own voice.

Rather than managing everything myself, I focus on coaching them on engagement best practices and provide quick feedback on drafts via Slack, which has helped several CEOs grow their following by 200-300% in 6 months while keeping the content authentic.

As the CEO of MentalHappy, I personally engage in building my brand on LinkedIn by sharing authentic experiences and insights from my journey in mental health innovation. I craft content that highlights our platform’s impact, like how our Write it Out group improved participant retention by 25% through data-driven insights. This resonates with our audience, demonstrating MentalHappy’s real-world effectiveness.

I actively manage my LinkedIn presence by sharing stories about overcoming challenges, such as securing funding in a male-dominated landscape. This transparency in addressing entrepreneurship problems not only fosters trust but also showcases the resilience and strategic pivots that have propelled MentalHappy to be recognized by prestigious institutions like Y Combinator and ARPA-H.

Engagement with my network is key. I don’t just post and leave; I participate in discussions, leveraging AI tools like predictive insights to provide value-driven responses. This approach positions me as a thought leader who contributes meaningfully to conversations, amplifying our brand’s reach organically and connecting with potential partners or clients authentically.

For us at Sidechain Security, this is exactly what we are doing – more or less employing the “Ghost Writer” concept. We recognize that for our niche, Cybersecurity, we need a strong personal brand driving our content, rather than the company per se, so along with Twitter, we have identified LinkedIn as a key place to exist.

I personally don’t have the time to “do” the work, so have spent time coaching our head of marketing to create the content, post it, engage, all in my own “personal brand” voice. Yes, we are very open about it as well, because we want to differentiate this from AI content, showing our people that we do value these social locations.

I am a founder who is recently into personal branding on LinkedIn. Our content team helps me with strategizing content and graphics, while I write and ideate the content.

I don’t have much time to engage with others through comments so they pitch in and help me with that. Other than that, it’s a team effort so far. The best part is, it is working wonderfully and a major reason is them.