Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed a real shift in how CEOs are expected to communicate. Increasingly, they’re being encouraged to be more visible online. To post regularly. To share opinions, lessons, videos, reflections and glimpses behind the scenes. In many ways, that is a good thing.
The days of the invisible CEO are fading and rightly so. Employees want to understand the person leading the business. Clients want to know what a leader stands for. Investors, partners and future hires are all looking for signals beyond the corporate website and annual report. LinkedIn is where those impressions are formed.
But there is a risk. As more CEOs create content, some are drifting into territory that feels uncomfortable, overproduced or faintly ridiculous. The recent Forbes article on C-suite content creators becoming the new influencers captured the shift well. One line stood out to me:
‘Unlike traditional influencers, their currency isn’t lifestyle, it’s expertise.’
That sentence gets to the heart of executive thought leadership. A CEO can absolutely build influence online, but they need to understand what people are really buying into. In most cases, it is not the lunch order, the staged walk-and-talk, the forced joke or the carefully lit video of them pretending to be spontaneous. People want to see how they think. They want insight. They want judgement. Above all, they want confidence that the person leading an organisation knows what they’re talking about.
The McDonald’s example
A useful cautionary tale came from McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski, who posted a video of himself eating the Big Arch burger.
On paper, it probably made sense. The CEO of one of the world’s most recognisable food brands personally trying the product. It feels like it should be human, relatable and authentic….
Instead, the internet responded exactly as the internet tends to. The video was widely mocked for feeling awkward and contrived. His enthusiasm appeared forced, competitors quickly parodied it and what was intended as a simple moment of connection became an example of how quickly executive content can slip from credible to theatrical.
The problem wasn’t that the CEO appeared on camera. In fact, I’d encourage more senior leaders to be visible. The issue was that the content felt manufactured. Rather than reinforcing credibility, it distracted from it.
Being human doesn’t mean borrowing influencer formats or behaving like a social media personality. It certainly doesn’t mean squeezing yourself into content that ultimately makes you look less authentic than saying nothing at all.
The audience is sharper than people think
Senior audiences can spot forced content very quickly. So do employees, clients and candidates. People may not be able to explain exactly why something feels wrong, but they know when a leader sounds scripted. They know when a committee has written a post. They know when a video has been shaped around a trend rather than a useful point of view. That’s especially true on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is more forgiving than most social platforms, but even there, authenticity really counts. A thoughtful post about leadership, strategy, hiring, transformation or lessons learned can generate meaningful engagement because it offers genuine value. A transparent attempt to manufacture virality can quietly undermine the very authority a leader is trying to build.
The executives who consistently build strong reputations online tend to have several things in common. They know what they want to be known for. They’re willing to have a point of view. They resist commenting on everything, choosing instead to focus on areas where they’ve earned credibility. Most importantly, they sound like themselves.
Their audience feels they’re hearing from the leader, not the communications department.
Expertise first, format second
One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations make is starting with the mechanics instead of the message. The conversation quickly becomes about platforms, formats and algorithms. Should the CEO be posting more? Should they be doing video? Should they comment on breaking news? Should they sound more personal? Those questions are the wrong place to start. Before thinking about how a leader communicates, you need to be clear about why anyone should listen in the first place.
Every strong executive profile I’ve worked on has started with exactly the same conversation: What do you want to be known for? Not this quarter. Not while you’re in your current role. Over the next five or ten years. Once that’s clear, the content almost writes itself.
The danger of borrowed behaviour
One of the biggest risks for CEOs online is borrowing behaviour from people whose job is completely different. A consumer influencer is often rewarded for entertainment, intimacy, humour, speed and constant visibility. They may bring people into their daily life because that is part of the relationship with their audience.
CEOs operate in an entirely different environment. Their content sits alongside hiring decisions, business performance, organisational culture, investor confidence and corporate reputation.
That doesn’t mean they have to be dry. Some of the most effective executive content has warmth, humour and personality. But there still needs to be substance. Leaders can talk about strategy, customers, innovation, people, growth, resilience, transformation and the experiences that have shaped their thinking. They can even talk openly about mistakes, provided the insight is genuine and the lesson has value.
What they should avoid is performing relatability simply because they think they ought to. That’s where executive content becomes thin. And that’s often where leaders become surprisingly vulnerable. A weak post from a junior employee is usually forgotten. A weak post from a CEO has a habit of travelling much further because people enjoy puncturing authority when it appears self-conscious or self-important. That may seem unfair. It’s also the reality of leading publicly.
Visibility needs a strategy
The answer is not for CEOs to disappear back behind the corporate comms team. That would be a mistake. Leaders who are invisible online leave a gap. If they do not shape their own narrative, other people will shape it for them. If they only appear when there is a crisis, a vacancy, a transaction or a press announcement, they miss the chance to build trust over time.
The answer is to be more deliberate. Good executive visibility should feel natural to the reader, but there is usually a great deal of thinking behind it. The leader needs clear themes. They need a tone that sounds like them on a good day, rather than like an over-polished corporate brochure. They need a rhythm that is realistic. They need to know when to speak, when to stay quiet and when to let the company brand take the lead.
They also need to understand the difference between presence and performance. Presence is built through useful, consistent, credible contributions. Performance often looks like content created because someone said, ‘We need the CEO to be more visible.’ That is rarely enough.
What senior leaders should ask before posting
Before a CEO or senior leader posts, there are a few questions worth asking.
- Would I say this in a room full of serious people?
- Does this sound like me?
- Is there a useful point here?
- Am I sharing something I have earned the right to talk about?
- Could this help a client, colleague, candidate, investor or peer understand how I think?
- Would I still be comfortable with this post in six months?
These are simple questions, but they stop a lot of weak content from going out. They also help leaders avoid the trap of posting for attention rather than reputation. Attention is easy to chase. Reputation takes longer to build, and it is much easier to damage.
LinkedIn is still the best place to build executive presence
For all its flaws, LinkedIn remains one of the strongest platforms for senior leadership visibility. It’s where decision-makers already spend time. It is where clients, candidates, journalists, investors, partners and board contacts often form an early impression. It’s also one of the few platforms where expertise can still travel without needing to be reduced to entertainment. For CEOs and senior leaders, that makes LinkedIn a serious career and reputation tool.
A well-built LinkedIn profile can explain who you are, what you stand for and where your expertise sits. A strong content presence can reinforce that positioning over time. Together, they can help senior leaders become more visible for the right reasons.
That’s why the phrase ‘for the right reasons’ is so important. Because the goal is not to become famous online. Most serious leaders don’t want that. The goal is to be understood and remembered for the areas where you have real authority. The goal is for the right people to see your thinking before they ever need to make a decision about you.
The real lesson from the CEO influencer era
The rise of the C-suite creator is not a passing gimmick. It reflects a wider shift in how trust is built.
The most effective leaders won’t be remembered because they mastered every content trend or posted every day. They’ll be remembered because every time they spoke, people felt they learned something worth knowing. That’s what executive thought leadership has always been. Not becoming famous. Not chasing likes. Simply making genuine expertise visible. And if that can be achieved without an awkward burger video, all the better.
At Hanover Talent Solutions, that’s exactly where we begin. Before we talk about content calendars, LinkedIn strategy or executive branding, we ask one simple question: What do you want to be known for?