For years, I’ve told lawyers and other professionals to Google themselves regularly. You need to know what someone finds when they hear your name from a client, receive a referral, see you speak at a conference or come across one of your LinkedIn posts. Now I would add another step to that exercise: ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and other AI tools about yourself.
Ask what you’re known for. Ask what you write about. Ask who the experts are in the area where you want to build your reputation. Ask who someone should follow to learn more about that subject. The answers can be enlightening, especially when they don’t match how you would describe yourself.
People are starting to use AI for many of the same reasons they use Google: to research an issue, find someone with particular experience, learn about a person they’ve been referred to and identify credible sources of information. That makes the body of work connected to your name even more important.
Your LinkedIn posts are part of it, but so are your articles, bio, media quotes, podcast appearances, speaking engagements, webinars and other places where you share your knowledge. Over time, all of that content helps establish what you know and the subjects people associate with you.
This is also why being intentional about your personal brand matters. If you want to be known for a particular area, there should be enough information online to support that association. Someone researching you should be able to see more than a title and a list of credentials. They should be able to find your ideas, your perspective and examples of you talking about the issues you know well. AI gives us a new way to see whether we’re actually accomplishing that.
What Does AI Search Have to Do With Your Personal Brand?
Think about how you would research someone you were considering hiring. You probably wouldn’t rely solely on a sentence in that person’s bio saying they have “extensive experience” in an area. You would look for evidence. You might read what they’ve written, see where they’ve spoken, look at the matters they’ve handled, check whether they’ve been quoted in the media and review what they discuss on LinkedIn. You might also look at whether other credible people and organizations reference their work.
AI tools also have to make sense of information about people and subjects available online. When someone repeatedly writes and speaks about a particular subject and credible sources also associate that person with the same area, there is a much clearer body of information connecting the person to that expertise.
This is one reason I’ve always encouraged professionals to think about personal branding as something much broader than polishing a LinkedIn profile. Your profile is important because it provides context about who you are, what you do and your experience. The content and thought leadership associated with your name provide additional evidence of what you actually know.
LinkedIn can be particularly useful because it gives professionals a place to publish ideas and demonstrate expertise under their own names without waiting for someone else to give them the opportunity. You can answer a client question, comment on an industry development, explain an issue or share your perspective whenever you have something useful to contribute. When that activity is connected with articles, speaking engagements, podcasts, webinars, media coverage and other credible mentions, it can create a much richer picture of your expertise.
Your Digital Footprint Is Bigger Than Your Bio
Law firms and other professional services organizations spend a tremendous amount of time on website bios, and for good reason. Those pages are often among the most visited pages on a professional services website and frequently play an important role when someone is deciding whether to hire or refer a professional. But a bio is only one piece of what someone can learn about you online.
Your broader digital footprint can include LinkedIn posts and articles, client alerts, thought leadership, podcast interviews, conference panels, webinars, media quotes, videos, association involvement, guest articles, event pages and other references to you and your work. Looking at all of those things together can be a useful personal branding exercise because they may tell a very different story from the one you intended to create.
For example, your bio might say that you focus heavily on healthcare transactions, but if there is very little content connecting your name to healthcare or transactions elsewhere online, that expertise may be much less visible than you realize. Someone else may regularly explain developments in healthcare M&A, comment on market trends affecting deals, speak on panels about the sector and contribute to articles about those issues. That person has created a much stronger public association between their name and the subject.
This matters well beyond AI. Potential clients, referral sources, conference organizers, reporters and other professionals are all trying to understand who knows what. The clearer and more consistent the information associated with your name is, the easier you make that process for them.
What Do You Want to Be Known For?
One of my favorite questions to ask people when developing a LinkedIn and personal branding strategy is what someone would think they know a lot about after reading their last 20 posts. It sounds simple, but it can reveal quite a bit.
Someone may be an exceptional employment lawyer, M&A lawyer, recruiter, consultant or financial advisor and still have a LinkedIn presence that gives very little indication of that expertise. Their posts may jump among unrelated subjects, consist largely of company content or focus heavily on deals, awards and events without providing much perspective. Other professionals have tremendous knowledge but publish so infrequently that there simply isn’t enough information for someone encountering them online to understand what they know.
This is where content pillars can be particularly helpful. I generally recommend choosing three to five subjects that reflect your expertise, your audience’s interests and the areas in which you want to build more visibility or business. The subjects should be specific enough to give you direction without becoming so narrow that you quickly run out of things to say.
For example, “M&A” covers an enormous amount of territory. A lawyer might have particular expertise in founder-led transactions, healthcare deals, private equity transactions or cross-border acquisitions. “Employment law” could encompass workplace investigations, executive transitions, employment issues arising in transactions or many other areas. Identifying the more specific issues where you have experience gives you a much better foundation for creating useful content because you can start addressing the actual questions and problems that arise within those areas.
Why Original Content Matters
You can explain why you’re sharing an article, identify the part you believe clients should pay particular attention to, add an issue that wasn’t covered, discuss a question you’ve been hearing or explain how the development could affect a particular industry. A few thoughtful paragraphs can tell your audience much more about your expertise than simply reposting something with a generic comment.
The same principle applies when creating original content. You don’t need a groundbreaking idea every time you publish. In fact, some of the most useful professional content answers questions that may seem basic to you precisely because you deal with them every day. Your clients don’t have the same experience, which is why your explanation can be valuable to them.
Pay attention to the questions that come up during client calls, the issues you find yourself explaining repeatedly, the misconceptions you correct and the developments everyone in your industry is discussing. Those conversations can provide a steady source of content ideas grounded in your actual experience, and they naturally lead to material that is more specific and useful than generic commentary.
Building a Recognizable Body of Expertise
Consistency matters here, although I don’t mean posting every day or repeating the same message endlessly. The value comes from creating enough useful content around your core subjects that people begin to make an association between those subjects and your name.
Imagine someone has followed you on LinkedIn for six months. If you want to be known for healthcare private equity, that person should have learned something about healthcare private equity from following you. If executive compensation is an important part of your practice, your audience should periodically encounter useful information from you about executive compensation. Over time, those interactions help reinforce what you know and what someone might come to you for.
There are many ways to explore the same area without making your content repetitive. You can comment on news, answer common questions, explain terminology, share lessons from your experience, discuss trends, address misconceptions, interview someone, create a checklist, write a longer article or record a short video. The common thread is the subject matter, while the format and angle can continue to change.
This is also why I wouldn’t build a LinkedIn strategy around whatever happens to generate the most engagement in a particular week. A highly technical post may receive fewer likes than a personal story and still be incredibly valuable if the right client or prospect reads it. It can also become another piece of the larger body of work associated with your expertise. Engagement matters, but it is only one way to evaluate whether content is doing something useful for you.
Answer the Questions People Are Already Asking
One of the best ways to develop useful content for LinkedIn, traditional search and AI search is to answer real questions. Your clients and prospects are already giving you those questions every day, which means content development can start with listening more carefully to the conversations you’re already having.
A private equity lawyer might explain something sponsors should consider when evaluating a particular deal structure. An employment lawyer could address issues companies should consider when terminating a senior executive. A recruiter could explain why a strong candidate might turn down an offer that appears competitive on paper. A legal marketer could discuss why a lawyer can post regularly on LinkedIn and still generate very little business from it.
These topics have value because they begin with an actual information need. They also tend to use the language clients and prospects use when describing their problems, which can help your content align more naturally with the questions people enter into Google or ask an AI tool.
You can apply the same thinking to headlines and headings. Instead of trying to be overly clever, tell people what they’re going to learn. A clear headline such as “What Private Equity Firms Should Know About…” can often be more useful than a vague title because the reader immediately understands what the article covers. Clear organization also makes longer pieces easier to navigate and gives you natural opportunities to answer specific questions in depth.
Build Beyond LinkedIn and Get More From What You Already Create
LinkedIn works best when it is connected to a larger thought leadership and visibility strategy. Fortunately, most professionals already have far more potential content than they realize because ideas are constantly being generated through their day-to-day work.
A conference panel can become several LinkedIn posts. A client question can inspire an article. An article can become a short video or a series of posts. A podcast appearance can generate additional commentary. A webinar can lead to follow-up content addressing questions raised by attendees. A presentation created for one audience may contain several ideas that can be developed for another.
This is why content repurposing is such an important part of an efficient personal branding strategy. Professionals are busy, and very few have time to invent completely new material every week. Looking carefully at what you already know, say, write and present can reveal dozens of opportunities to create useful content without starting from scratch.
This approach also expands the number of places where someone might encounter your expertise. One person may find you through LinkedIn, another through an article, another through a podcast and another because you spoke at an industry event. Those interactions can reinforce each other and create a much more complete picture of your work than any single platform could provide.
What Law Firms Should Be Doing
There’s a significant opportunity here for law firm marketing and business development teams because firms already have large groups of subject matter experts. Some lawyers are active on LinkedIn, some regularly speak at conferences, some are frequently quoted by reporters and some write excellent thought leadership. Others have tremendous knowledge but very little public visibility.
Firms can connect these activities much more intentionally. Start by identifying lawyers who have meaningful expertise, subjects they can discuss consistently and a genuine interest in becoming more visible. Then help those lawyers define their content pillars and build a strategy around them.
Support can take many forms. Marketing teams can interview lawyers to draw out ideas, turn presentations into articles and LinkedIn posts, repurpose client alerts, identify media and podcast opportunities, find relevant speaking engagements and make sure lawyer bios and LinkedIn profiles accurately reflect their current practices. They can also help lawyers think about the questions clients are asking and turn those questions into useful content.
A firm doesn’t need every lawyer participating at the same level. A focused group of lawyers consistently sharing useful expertise can create meaningful visibility for themselves, their practices and the firm, particularly when their individual efforts are connected with the organization’s broader thought leadership, PR and business development priorities.
How to Test What AI Currently Knows About You
One exercise I recommend is periodically checking how AI tools currently understand you and your expertise. This shouldn’t replace the other ways you measure personal branding and business development activity, but it can give you another perspective on your digital presence.
Open fresh sessions in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google so your previous conversations and personalization have as little influence as possible. Ask several variations of questions such as “What is [your name] known for professionally?”, “What topics does [your name] write about?”, “Who are experts on [your topic]?”, “Who should I follow to learn more about [your topic]?” and “Who regularly publishes about [your niche]?”
You can make the exercise more useful by asking questions that resemble what a potential client might actually ask. A query about “M&A lawyers” is extremely broad. A question about lawyers who advise founder-led companies on middle-market acquisitions is much more specific and may be closer to the kind of search that actually matters to your practice.
Pay attention to more than whether your name appears. Look at how you’re described, which areas of expertise are associated with you, whether the information is current and whether your own content or credible third-party sources are referenced. If you don’t appear, record that as your baseline rather than treating it as a failure.
Save the questions and results and repeat the exercise in 90 days and again in six months. AI answers change frequently, so the results shouldn’t be treated as a precise score of your personal brand. They can, however, help you see whether the body of work you’re creating is becoming clearer and whether your name is increasingly associated with the subjects that matter to you.
How to Strengthen Your Personal Brand for Search and AI
The best place to start is with the same fundamentals that make a strong personal brand valuable everywhere else. Identify the subjects you want to be known for and make sure those subjects are clearly reflected throughout your online presence. Create original content that answers specific questions, provides useful explanations and draws on your actual experience. Keep your LinkedIn profile and professional bio current and look for opportunities to contribute your expertise through articles, podcasts, webinars, conferences and media coverage.
The way you organize your content matters as well. Clear headlines and section headings help people understand what a piece covers and find the information they need. Specific examples make your ideas more useful. Using the terminology your clients and prospects use can help your content connect with the questions they are already asking. Older content can also continue working for you when you update it as laws, markets and circumstances change.
You also don’t need to start stuffing keywords into everything you write or changing your voice because you’re thinking about AI search. Focus on creating genuinely useful content about the subjects you know well. Answer the questions your clients and prospects are asking, be specific, share your experience and make your articles easy to follow. Those are good content practices anyway, and they become even more important as people have more ways to search for information and find the people who know it.
Questions About LinkedIn, Personal Branding and AI Search
Can LinkedIn help me appear in AI search results?
LinkedIn can contribute to the broader body of information associated with your name and expertise. Publishing useful original content also gives potential clients, referral sources and others another way to discover and evaluate what you know. Your professional bio, articles, speaking engagements, media coverage, podcasts, webinars and credible third-party mentions can reinforce those same areas of expertise.
Do I need to post on LinkedIn every day?
You don’t need to post every day to build a strong personal brand. Choose a schedule you can realistically maintain and concentrate on creating useful content around the subjects that matter to your audience and your professional goals. Someone who publishes thoughtful content consistently over time can build a much clearer reputation than someone who posts constantly about unrelated subjects.
What should I write about on LinkedIn?
Start with the questions your clients, prospects and colleagues ask you. Look at issues you explain repeatedly, developments affecting your industry, misconceptions you encounter and areas where your experience gives you something useful to contribute. Your content pillars can help organize those ideas so that individual posts gradually build a larger body of work around your expertise.
How many content pillars should I have?
Three to five is a useful starting point for many professionals because it provides enough variety without making your content feel scattered. Those pillars can change as your practice, business and priorities evolve, so revisit them periodically and make sure they still reflect the work you do and the opportunities you want to attract.
How do I know what I’m currently known for online?
Review your LinkedIn profile and your recent posts as if you were seeing them for the first time. Google yourself and look at what appears, then run several searches about yourself and your areas of expertise through AI tools. Look for patterns across the results and consider whether someone who had never met you could quickly understand what you know and the kinds of problems you help solve.
Does traditional SEO still matter as AI search grows?
Traditional search remains an important way people discover professionals and information, and many of the practices that make content useful for search also make it useful for AI and for human readers. Clear organization, descriptive headlines, original information, specific answers, credible expertise and current content all contribute to a stronger digital presence.
How long does it take to become known for a particular subject?
Personal brands develop over time through repeated exposure and a growing body of work. Some content can produce an immediate conversation or opportunity, while other benefits may emerge months later when someone who has been following your work needs your expertise or is asked for a referral. Looking at progress over several months gives you a much better picture than judging your strategy based on the performance of individual posts.
What This Means for Your Personal Brand
If you’re wondering where to begin, look at the relationship between what you want to be known for and what you’re currently putting into the world. Identify three to five areas that matter to your practice or business, review your recent content and see whether those areas are actually visible. Then start paying closer attention to the questions people ask you and use those questions to develop content that demonstrates your expertise in a useful, accessible way.
From there, look beyond LinkedIn and consider the larger body of work attached to your name. Your bio, articles, podcasts, media coverage, speaking engagements and other professional activities can all reinforce the same positioning. You can also get much more mileage from the work you’re already doing by repurposing strong ideas across different formats and updating older content when you have something new to add.
AI adds another dimension to all of this because people now have another way to research professionals, evaluate expertise and discover information. That makes it even more worthwhile to build a clear and credible body of work around your name. When someone encounters you through LinkedIn, Google, an AI search, a referral or any other path, they should be able to understand what you know, what you can help with and why your perspective is worth paying attention to.
Stay in Touch! Connect with me on LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, Instagram, sign up for my email list and follow my blog. Obtain a copy of my LinkedIn Secrets guide. Sign up for my LinkedIn Mastermind.