The cost of having nothing to say

Most LinkedIn posts blur together. You read one, scroll on and a minute later you have already forgotten what it said. Sounds familiar? You are not alone.

Part of the problem is sheer volume. Professionals increasingly feel they should post regularly, which has created a stream of polished content with very little staying power. Somewhere along the way, the original value of LinkedIn has become diluted: expert content built on experience, ideas and perspectives that give people something worth remembering.

Whatever industry you work in, and however senior you are, a point of view is essential if you choose to publish. It gives individual posts a purpose and, over time, shapes what people associate with you professionally.

A point of view develops beyond a one-off opinion. An opinion captures what someone thinks about a particular issue at a particular moment. A point of view reflects a more consistent way of seeing a field, shaped by years of solving problems, watching patterns repeat, challenging assumptions and drawing conclusions from experience.

A strong opinion can certainly make a post interesting. Professional reputation develops through the ideas that recur over time. People begin to recognise certain themes in your thinking and understand how you approach the issues you know best. Eventually, those associations become part of what you are known for.

For experienced executives, identifying those perspectives can be surprisingly difficult. After 10 or 20 years in an industry, many of your strongest insights feel obvious because you have lived with them for so long. What feels self-evident to you may still be very valuable to someone else.

The clues are usually in everyday conversations. Think about something you recently explained to a colleague, advice you find yourself giving repeatedly, or a mistake you keep seeing in your industry. Perhaps there is an approach you have come to favour after years of experience, or a belief that has changed as your career progressed. These are often the beginnings of a point of view.

Executives have different reasons for wanting to articulate those ideas publicly. Some want to support business development. Others want greater recognition among their peers, more influence within their industry, speaking or board opportunities, or stronger positioning for the next stage of their career. In each case, the value comes from giving people something specific to associate with you.

Think about the last person you recommended to a client or colleague. Their credentials probably helped establish credibility, while your recommendation itself was likely based on judgement: something they said, a position they took, a problem they solved or a way of thinking that stayed with you. You had developed confidence in how they approached their field.

The same process happens through expert content. A potential client may follow someone for months before reaching out. A conference organiser may repeatedly come across an executive’s perspective on a particular topic. A recruiter, peer or board member may gradually associate that person with a specific area of expertise. By the time an opportunity arises, an impression has already formed.

For most experienced professionals, the raw material already exists. It sits in the advice they give, the assumptions they challenge, the lessons they have learned and the problems they have spent years thinking about. The work lies in recognising those ideas and articulating them clearly enough, and consistently enough, for other people to remember them.