Recently, I joined Mei Heron on TVNZ's Business Breakfast to discuss the way LinkedIn has quietly become one of the primary sources AI tools draw on when answering business questions.
But as there's a lot more to it than a two-minute segment can cover, I've gone deeper into what's actually driving visibility on LinkedIn below. I also share why the company page conversation misses the point and what businesses need to be doing differently right now.
LinkedIn® is now the authority of record
Did you know that when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Gemini a question about your industry, LinkedIn is the second most cited source of answers. Not your website. Not a trade publication. LinkedIn.
And if your business has a thin, neglected, or non-existent LinkedIn presence, it's not just missing from social media, it's missing from the research process of every potential customer, investor, or partner who's turned to AI to help them decide.
This isn't a social media problem. It's a visibility problem. And it's one that most New Zealand businesses haven't woken up to yet.
The LinkedIn Myth We Need to Kill
Most business owners still think of LinkedIn the way they thought of it in 2010: a digital CV, a place to post job ads, something the HR team logs into occasionally.
That mental model is costing them.
LinkedIn has quietly become the most important business intelligence platform on the internet. It's where professional credibility gets built, where industry conversations happen at scale, and increasingly where AI systems go to find authoritative information about businesses, people, and markets.
The problem isn't that businesses don't value relationships. We're actually very good at that. The challenge is recognising that the arena where those relationships now form and are validated has shifted. LinkedIn isn't replacing the way we do business in New Zealand, it's the digital version of it. The platform is built for exactly what we already do naturally: trust people we know, rely on networks, build through reputation.
The question is whether you're visible in that arena or not.
The Company Page Trap
When businesses finally do take LinkedIn seriously, they often make the mistake of treating it like every other social media platform and focus on broadcasting from a company page.
They share staff changes. Talk about the latest team building event. Boast about their clients and the work they’ve done for them.
Their process is post content; gain followers; drive traffic; repeat.
The results are predictably disappointing. Organic reach on company page posts is dismal – often reaching only 1% of followers, if that. Businesses spend time and money creating content that almost nobody sees, conclude that "LinkedIn doesn't work," and go back to doing nothing.
But here's what they've missed: the company page is not the engine. It's the anchor. It establishes legitimacy, gives AI systems a structured source of information about your business, and provides a home base. But the reach – the actual visibility – happens somewhere else entirely.
Where Visibility Actually Lives
The real power of LinkedIn isn't in what your company page posts. It's in what your people do.
When a leader in your business publishes a point of view, responds to a question in the comments of someone else's post, or adds substance to an industry debate, that's when LinkedIn's algorithm takes notice. That's when AI systems start indexing your perspective as part of the broader conversation on a topic.
Think of it this way: your company page tells the world you exist. Your people's activity tells the world what you think, what you know, and whether you're worth listening to.
There are three types of engagement that drive disproportionate visibility, and most businesses are doing none of them:
Engaging on your own team's content. When a company page comments on and shares posts by its own leaders and team members, it signals to LinkedIn that this content matters. It amplifies reach. It creates a feedback loop that the algorithm rewards.
Engaging on industry conversations. When your business shows up – through leaders and the company page alike – in the comment threads of high-visibility posts in your sector, you're inserting your perspective into discussions that are already drawing an audience. You don't have to build that audience from scratch. You join one that already exists.
Engaging with your network's content. Liking, commenting, and sharing the posts of people in your industry isn't just good manners, it extends the reach of that content to your network while putting your name and business in front of audiences you'd otherwise never reach.
None of this requires a content team or a social media manager. It requires people who know their field, have opinions, and are willing to express them.
Why This Is an AI Problem Now
For the last decade, the stakes of ignoring LinkedIn were real but manageable. You might lose some leads to competitors who were more visible. You might seem behind the times. Annoying, but not existential.
That calculus has changed.
AI tools – the ones your customers, prospects, and competitors are now using daily to research markets, shortlist vendors, and form opinions – are actively feeding off LinkedIn. When they're asked about trends in your industry, they surface the voices that have been part of the conversation. When they're asked to recommend businesses in your space, they draw on structured data about companies that have a credible, active presence.
A business that is absent from LinkedIn isn't just missing from social media anymore. It's missing from the answers that AI generates. And unlike a Google search ranking that you might claw back over time with SEO effort, AI-driven authority is built through sustained, visible engagement. It compounds. The longer you wait, the further behind you fall.
What This Actually Requires
None of this demands a dramatic overhaul of how you work. But it does require a shift in mindset.
Leaders need to be visible. Not necessarily prolific but present. A thoughtful post once a week, combined with regular engagement on others' content, builds more authority over time than a burst of activity followed by silence.
Company pages need to be active participants, not just broadcasters. The page should be commenting, sharing, and engaging – not just pushing out its own updates.
Your team is your amplification network. When employees engage with company and leadership content, it multiplies reach organically. This doesn't require a formal program, it requires a culture where people understand why it matters.
Consistency beats virality. The businesses that win on LinkedIn aren't the ones chasing viral posts. They're the ones showing up reliably, in the right conversations, over months and years.
The Opportunity
Here's the honest reality: most businesses are behind on this. Which means the window to move and establish authority before competitors do is still open, but it won't be for long.
We build trust through relationships. LinkedIn, used properly, is a relationship-building platform at scale. It's not replacing how we do business; it's extending it into a world where AI is increasingly the first point of contact in any buying or decision-making journey.
The businesses that figure this out in the next 12 months will have a compounding advantage over those who don't. The ones who wait, hoping their reputation and word-of-mouth will continue to carry them, will find that the new word-of-mouth – the one that happens before a human ever picks up the phone – doesn't include them.
That's not a LinkedIn problem. That's a business problem.
Want Your Company to be Visible to AI Via LinkedIn?
That's exactly the kind of work we do here at Link∙Ability.
Contact us to find out how we can help you.