Most companies believe they have a LinkedIn strategy. In reality, what they tend to have is a content plan, and the distinction between those two things is exactly where the problem lies.
They are posting regularly, often with good intent and sometimes with the support of a marketing team, and yet when you look a little closer, very little of that activity is translating into anything meaningful. There are no new conversations of substance, no noticeable shifts in visibility beyond their immediate network, and certainly no consistent flow of opportunities that can be traced back to LinkedIn.
At that point, the assumption is usually that more needs to be done. More posts, more frequency, more effort.
But that is very rarely the issue.
What has actually changed
What we are seeing now is not so much a change in the platform itself, but a change in behaviour, and more specifically, a shift in how trust is formed.
The Edelman Trust Barometer has been pointing to this for a number of years, but the most recent data makes it difficult to ignore. Around 80% of people say they have lost trust in senior leaders or institutions and that they’re more likely to trust ‘someone like me’ – i.e. fellow employees. There is now a significant credibility gap between employees and CEOs. At the same time, a large proportion of people – well over half – believe that business leaders are not always being completely honest and open.
That has very real implications for how companies show up on LinkedIn.
If trust no longer sits at the top of the organisation, then a strategy that relies heavily on corporate messaging and company-led content is always going to struggle.
Where most strategies go wrong
When I look at how LinkedIn is approached inside most organisations, the focus tends to sit in very familiar places. There is a lot of attention on what should be posted, how often it should be posted, and what the company page is doing, all of which feels logical on the surface.
What is missing from that conversation is how people behave on the platform, how relationships are built over time, and how trust is developed in a way that actually leads to opportunity.
The result is activity that looks consistent but feels flat. Content is being produced, but it is not landing in the way it needs to, and it is certainly not creating the kind of momentum that leadership teams expect when they invest time and budget into LinkedIn.
This week I heard of a marketing department developing a ‘strategy’ to publish a series of events they were holding. The company was using a version of George Miller’s 1956 cognitive psychology theory aka the advertising ‘rule of 7’ whereby we believe we need to be exposed to information 7 times before it shifts from our short term to our long term memory. They decided that they needed to create and publish 7 posts about their events.
It is unrealistic to assume that every person this company wishes to engage will see each of those posts. A more effective solution, in my view, would be to use the people within the company to promote the company page content in order for it to land in people’s feeds more than once – and land in a way which is more likely to be seen, and trusted.
The commercial impact
This is where it becomes more than a marketing issue.
LinkedIn now plays a role much earlier in the decision-making process than it did even a few years ago. Whether someone is considering a supplier, a partner or a potential hire, they are forming opinions long before any formal conversation takes place, and those opinions are often shaped by what they see, or don’t see, on LinkedIn.
If your leadership team is not visible in a credible and consistent way, or if what they are sharing feels overly polished or disconnected from real experience, then you are likely missing opportunities without ever knowing they existed. That is the part many organisations underestimate.
What actually works in 2026
The organisations that are seeing results from LinkedIn are not necessarily doing more, but they are approaching it very differently. They have recognised that LinkedIn is no longer a place to just publish content, but LinkedIn is a place where trust is built over time through people, conversations and consistent presence.
That shift changes the focus entirely.
Rather than asking what the company should post next, the conversation moves towards how leadership teams show up, how they engage with their networks, and how they position themselves as credible, relevant voices within their industry. This is what I refer to as The Trust Advantage, and it sits at the centre of every successful LinkedIn strategy I see.
The Trust Advantage in practice
When this approach is working well, there are a few clear patterns.
People are connected to the right networks, not necessarily large ones, and those connections are relevant to the work they do.
Profiles are written in a way that reflects real expertise and personality, rather than simply listing job titles and responsibilities.
There is a noticeable shift in how individuals engage, with more emphasis on conversations and less on broadcasting, and over time this builds familiarity and credibility in a way that content alone never can.
Importantly, there is also clarity in how people talk about what they do. Not in a sales-led way, but in a way that makes it easy for others to understand where they can add value.
None of this is particularly complicated, but it does require a change in mindset.
What this looks like in reality
I recently worked with a leadership team who, on paper, were doing everything right.
They had a clear content plan, regular good quality posting, and strong internal support from marketing, yet very little of it was translating into meaningful results.
The shift was not to increase output, but to rethink how the leadership team showed up individually. We focused on positioning, tone of voice, and how they engaged with their networks, and within a relatively short space of time, there was a noticeable change in both visibility and the quality of conversations they were having.
What is important here is that nothing external had changed. The platform was the same, the people were the same, but the approach was different, and that is what made the impact.
Where to focus instead
If LinkedIn is not delivering what you expected, it is worth stepping back and asking a slightly different question. Not ‘What should we post next?”, but ‘How are we building trust, and who is responsible for doing that?’
Once the focus is shifted to talking about trust rather than content, what follows is different.
Visibility improves, credibility strengthens, and opportunities begin to emerge in a way that feels far more aligned with how business is actually done.
Final thought
Most LinkedIn strategies fail not because the platform is ineffective, but because they are built on assumptions that are no longer true. They assume that content alone is enough, that company-led messaging will carry weight, and that visibility automatically leads to influence.
In 2026, none of those things hold in quite the same way. Trust sits elsewhere, attention is harder to earn, and people are far more selective about who they listen to.
The organisations that recognise that shift, and adapt accordingly, are the ones starting to see LinkedIn deliver real value.
If this is prompting you to question whether your current approach is working as well as it could be, it is probably worth us having a conversation.
