You use your expertise every working day. You answer questions, notice problems and make recommendations that draw on years of experience. Yet someone looking you up on LinkedIn® may see very little of that thinking.
Your job title and services tell them where you work and what you offer. Examples give them a basis for understanding how you approach a problem and whether your expertise fits their needs.
Much of that material already exists in your everyday work. The useful step is to recognise what it demonstrates and explain it so someone outside the situation can understand its value.
Start with the expertise you want recognised
Choose one area you want to be known for. A long career can leave you with plenty of possible examples, but some will be more relevant to your current direction than others.
If you want people to recognise your strategic thinking, a collection of finished products may leave that thinking unexplained. An account of how you clarified a brief or chose an approach gives them more to work with.
This relationship between what you say and what you show came through clearly in my assessments of Out There Branding’s Company Page.
What the Out There Branding assessments revealed
Out There Branding is an exhibition and brand engagement business. When I assessed its Company Page in July 2026, the content already demonstrated strong thinking about exhibitions, creating conversations and choosing merchandise for its purpose and usefulness.
The formal description of the business was less focused. It covered a broad range of services, products and capabilities, leaving visitors to work out how everything fitted together.
My recommendation was to bring the About section into line with the strategic approach already evident in the content. The description needed to explain who the business serves and how its services and tools support that work.
When I reassessed the Page in September, its banner, tagline and Overview communicated a clearer, more consistent story. Strategy was positioned ahead of products, making the business easier to understand as an exhibition and brand engagement partner.
There was a further opportunity. Much of the Page’s activity relied on sharing founder Roy Kowarski’s personal posts and newsletters. I recommended adding more examples published directly by the organisation: client work, case studies, exhibition outcomes and explanations of how strategy influenced project decisions.
The improvement we could see was clearer positioning. Publishing more organisational evidence was the next recommendation. Keeping those stages clear matters when describing the work and its outcome.
The same exercise applies to your own profile. Compare the expertise you describe with the examples a visitor can find. How well do they connect?
Five ways to give people evidence of your expertise
1. Answer a question using your professional judgement
Choose a question you hear regularly. Explain what you need to understand before answering and which circumstances change your recommendation.
In my work, one recurring question is whether someone would be better publishing LinkedIn articles or posts. I want to know what they are trying to achieve and what they have to say. A timely observation and a detailed explanation need different amounts of space.
The format decision follows the purpose and the substance. Sharing that reasoning gives someone a way to make their own decision and shows how I approach mine.
Think of a question you answered this week. The qualification you added may be the most useful part to share.
2. Explain the reasoning behind a decision
People often see your finished recommendation without seeing the alternatives you considered. Describe the situation, the realistic options and the factor that carried the most weight.
For example, you might explain why a simpler process suited a team’s needs, or why new information led you to reconsider earlier advice. Make clear when your recommendation would be different.
A focused explanation lets someone see how you weigh a decision. It can also give them something useful to apply in their own work.
3. Show a useful piece of your work
A checklist, annotated extract, framework or worked example can make your approach easier to understand. Explain what it is designed to do and what someone can learn from it.
Our Link∙Ability Authority Audit gives people a way to examine whether the evidence attached to their name supports the expertise they claim and the opportunities they want. It also shows how I turn a strategic question into something people can examine for themselves.
Your equivalent could be a sample brief or an exercise you use in training. Choose material you have the right to share and explain any language that only makes sense inside the original project.
4. Describe your contribution and what changed
Give enough context for someone to follow the problem, your contribution and the observable change. The Out There Branding example shows my assessment process as well as the improvement in how the Page communicated the business.
Your own example might involve clarifying responsibilities, identifying a risk or making a process easier to follow. A specific qualitative improvement is worth describing. You do not need an impressive number to make it useful.
Be accurate about your part, including where others contributed. Separate completed changes from recommendations still to be implemented.
5. Make the evidence easy to find
A useful example loses value if someone has to search through months of activity to discover it.
Look at which examples deserve a place in your profile’s Featured section, what your Experience descriptions could explain more clearly and which resources belong on your website. Give each item enough context for a visitor to understand why it is relevant.
Keep your selection aligned with the work you want now. One well-explained example can give someone more to assess than a collection of unexplained links.
Choose one example to work on
You do not need to tackle all five approaches. Choose one area of expertise and find one existing example that supports it. It might be a question you answered, a decision you made or a resource sitting in your files.
Write a short explanation of what it demonstrates, then give it a place where the people you want to reach can find it.
For a starting point, use the Link∙Ability Authority Audit
I explore these five approaches in The Visibility Advantage Podcast, including the Out There Branding example.