How Your Brand Is Being Interpreted on LinkedIn® and by AI – With or Without You

Your company page is the most accessible and open record AI has of your brand. If you are not managing what sits there deliberately, AI will form its own interpretation – and that interpretation is already shaping whether you are discovered, recommended, or overlooked.

Structured Insight Panel

Topic

How AI interprets organisational brand on LinkedIn and beyond

Core Idea

AI forms a view of your brand from publicly available signals – your company page, content, recommendations, and presence across the wider web – regardless of whether you are actively managing them.

Why It Matters

Most organisations are focused on reach and engagement metrics, while AI is quietly building an interpretation of their brand from whatever it can find. That interpretation shapes discoverability and recommendation.

Key Takeaway

Audit your company page from the perspective of a first-time visitor, and ask what AI would learn about your organisation from what is there today

Key Questions Explored

• How is AI changing the way brand reputation is formed, and what does that mean for organisations that are not actively managing their presence?
• What signals does AI actually use to build a picture of an organisation – and how does this differ from traditional search?
• What role does the LinkedIn company page play in AI discoverability, and how should organisations think about it differently?
• How can HR, business development, and marketing teams collaborate more effectively on company page content?
• Where does human trust fit in an environment where AI-generated content is increasingly difficult to distinguish from authentic brand voice?
• What practical steps can organisations and leaders take right now to improve how they are interpreted by AI?

Who This Conversation Is For

This discussion will be of direct value to anyone responsible for how an organisation is perceived – online, in search, or through AI-generated recommendations.

• Senior leaders and executives who want to understand how AI is interpreting their organisation's brand and what that means for visibility and reputation
• Marketing and communications professionals navigating the shift from SEO to generative engine optimisation and looking for practical direction
• HR and talent leaders who recognise that LinkedIn is still a primary job-seeking platform and want to use the company page more strategically
• Business development professionals who want their organisation's expertise and credibility to be discoverable when potential clients are searching with AI
• Consultants and advisors helping organisations improve their digital presence, brand consistency, and interpretability in an AI-shaped landscape

Key Insights From This Session

AI already has an opinion about your brand

Even organisations with minimal LinkedIn activity are being interpreted by AI. If a competitor appears in response to a relevant search query and you do not, that absence is itself a signal. AI does not treat silence as neutral.

The company page is your most AI-accessible asset

Personal LinkedIn profiles can be set to visible to connections only, which limits how much AI can read. Company pages are wide open. This makes them the most important and accessible public record of an organisation's brand – and most organisations are not using them strategically.

AI gets things wrong – and those errors spread

AI tools are drawing on information that may be outdated, misattributed, or simply incorrect. One panellist cited an example of AI continuing to advise clients about a LinkedIn feature that was discontinued over a year ago. Checking what AI says about your brand is not optional – it is maintenance.

Strategy must precede content

Organisations that are using their company pages well start with clear goals, defined audiences, and messaging guidelines – then use AI to support content creation within that framework. Organisations that start with content and hope strategy will follow are producing noise, not signal.

Trust cannot be generated by AI – only supported by it

The most effective brands are using AI as a tool, not a replacement for voice. When content feels AI-generated – through predictable cadences, generic framing, or the absence of genuine perspective – it erodes the trust that the brand was trying to build. Authenticity remains the differentiator.

Recommendations are an underused AI signal

LinkedIn recommendations are publicly visible, credibility-rich, and indexed by AI. Most organisations overlook them entirely. A consistent body of recommendations is one of the clearest signals an AI system can read when assessing organisational reputation.

Key Concepts From This Discussion

• Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)

GEO refers to the practice of ensuring that an organisation or individual is discoverable and accurately represented across AI-powered search tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. It is distinct from traditional SEO, which focused on search engine rankings. As more users turn to AI to answer business questions, GEO is becoming an essential dimension of brand visibility strategy.

• AI Discoverability

AI discoverability describes the extent to which an organisation's brand, expertise, and positioning can be found, interpreted, and surfaced by AI systems when relevant queries are made. It is shaped by the consistency, clarity, and public accessibility of the signals an organisation puts into the digital environment – across LinkedIn, its website, publications, and other reputable sources.

• Company Page as Brand Signal

The LinkedIn company page functions as a concentrated and publicly accessible representation of an organisation's identity, values, and expertise. Unlike personal profiles – which can be restricted to connections only – company pages are open to search engines and AI systems. The content published there, and the consistency with which it reflects the organisation's goals and voice, directly influences how AI interprets the brand.

• Employee Advocacy

Employee advocacy refers to the practice of enabling and encouraging team members to share, engage with, and amplify company content on their personal LinkedIn profiles. When done well, it extends the reach of the company page, adds human credibility to the brand signal, and creates a network of authentic voices speaking to the organisation's culture and expertise. AI reads these distributed signals as evidence of organisational authority.

• AI Training Data Consent

LinkedIn – like many platforms – has implemented settings that allow user content to be used for AI training purposes. In some regions, this is opt-in; in others, including the US, it has been enabled by default, requiring users to actively opt out. Professionals should review their privacy settings to understand whether their content is contributing to AI training models, and to make an informed choice about that participation.

About the Speakers

Lynnaire Johnston  –  Host – Executive Visibility Strategist, Link·Ability

Lynnaire Johnston helps senior leaders ensure their presence – online and offline – reflects their level of expertise, authority, and influence. Her work focuses on AI discoverability, semantic visibility, and the gap between how leaders are interpreted and how they intend to be understood. Based in New Zealand, she is the founder of Link·Ability and a regular host of Disruptive Business Leadership.

Brenda Meller  –  Guest Panellist – LinkedIn Marketing Coach, Meller Marketing

Brenda Meller is one of the most recognised names in LinkedIn training globally. Based in Detroit, she is an international speaker – including at Uplift Live in Birmingham, the world’s only LinkedIn-centric conference – and the author of Social Media Pie. Her expertise spans LinkedIn strategy, company page management, and helping organisations use AI tools without losing their authentic brand voice.

Melanie Richards  –  Panellist – Hybrid Event Conversion Strategist

Melanie Richards is a hybrid event conversion strategist certified in trust. She works with leaders and organisations to create conversations, collaborations, and modern workforces across in-person, virtual, and hybrid contexts. Her expertise in group dynamics and the unspoken dimensions of community makes her a distinctive voice in discussions about how brand reputation is built through authentic engagement.

Felipe Cofiño  –  Panellist – Executive Search and Recruitment

Felipe Cofiño works in executive search, hiring, and recruitment. He brings an external assessor’s perspective to questions of brand reputation, consistency, and how organisations are perceived by candidates and the broader market. His work on employment branding sits at the intersection of talent strategy and organisational identity.

Roy Kowarski  –  Panellist – Strategic Exhibition Partner, Out There Branding

Roy Kowarski helps organisations navigate every aspect of their exhibition and trade show presence – from strategy and stand design through to preparedness and outcome frameworks. He brings a grounded perspective on positioning, perception, and the gap between how organisations present themselves and how they are interpreted by others. Roy is the regular host of Disruptive Business Leadership.

Knowledge Block – Core Concept

Brand Interpretation in an AI-Shaped World

For much of the past decade, organisations have managed their brand reputation through what they chose to publish – the posts they wrote, the campaigns they ran, the content they distributed. Visibility was largely a function of activity: the more you published, the more you were seen.

AI has changed the underlying logic. AI systems do not wait for you to publish. They actively scan the available digital environment – LinkedIn company pages, personal profiles, websites, publications, reviews, and third-party mentions – and construct an interpretation of your brand from whatever they can find. That interpretation is then used to answer questions, surface recommendations, and shape perceptions in ways that organisations rarely see directly.

The implication is significant. An organisation that has not thought carefully about its company page, its employee advocacy, or the consistency of its messaging across platforms is not simply underrepresented in AI search. It is being actively misrepresented – by gaps, outdated information, or the absence of a clear signal.

The organisations best positioned in this environment are those that approach their digital presence the way they would approach any strategic communication: with clear goals, defined audiences, consistent messaging, and an understanding that every piece of content is a signal – not just to human readers, but to the AI systems that are increasingly shaping who gets seen, trusted, and recommended.

Related Resources

• What Is Executive Visibility and Why Does It Matter Now
• How AI Is Changing LinkedIn Visibility for Senior Leaders
• The Link·Ability Blueprint

Quote Highlights from the Conversation

“Your AI tool is like an unpaid intern with limitless hours. But it is an intern. It needs coaching. You need to read everything it gives you, correct it when it makes mistakes, and train it over time."
— Brenda Meller

“Company pages are wide open. Personal profiles can be restricted to connections only. I think there is a real opportunity there from an AI perspective – I will leave the audience to think about that."
— Brenda Meller

“Show up with value. Show people how you can help them overcome obstacles. If they believe you can help them, you have their vote."
— Roy Kowarski

“AI can simulate how you might begin a relationship. But it cannot actually help you take the steps. The calls to connect – that is what is missing."
— Melanie Richards

“If someone asks AI about a company in your niche and you do not appear, you are missing the opportunity entirely. Absence from AI is not the same as not being found on Google – AI still has an opinion."
— Lynnaire Johnston

Key Takeaways for Leaders

• Search for yourself and your organisation in AI tools today. Compare what AI says about you to what a Google search returns. The gap between the two is where your reputation risk sits.
• Audit your company page from the perspective of a first-time visitor. Ask what problem it helps them solve – not what it says about you. If the page is primarily about your organisation rather than your audience, that is where to start.
• Treat LinkedIn recommendations as an AI signal. A consistent body of recommendations is publicly visible, credible, and indexed. If you are not building this deliberately, you are leaving a key trust signal unmaintained.
• Define your goals for the company page before producing any content. Without clear goals and defined audiences, content becomes noise rather than signal – to both human visitors and AI systems.
• Check your LinkedIn privacy settings. If you are in the US, your data may be opted into AI training by default. Make an informed decision about whether that reflects your wishes.
• Use AI as a tool within a defined brand framework, not as a replacement for brand voice. AI-generated content that feels generic erodes the trust your brand is trying to build. Authenticity remains the differentiator.

Full Transcript

Below is the full conversation from the Disruptive Business Leadership session titled How Your Brand Is Being Interpreted on LinkedIn and by AI – With or Without You. The transcript has been lightly edited for readability while preserving the meaning of the discussion. The session replay is available alongside this page.

Opening and Context

Lynnaire Johnston

Welcome to Disruptive Business Leadership. I am your stand-in host today – Lynnaire Johnston. Thank you very much for joining us. We have a very special guest panellist with us today: Brenda Meller from Detroit. Thank you for agreeing to join us, Brenda. I know you have had a really busy week, and we are genuinely thrilled that you would take the time to talk to us today, because our topic is perfectly suited to your expertise.

We are going to explore how your brand is being interpreted on LinkedIn and by AI – with or without you. Some housekeeping first. Thank you to our panellists: Roy Kowarski from Sydney – this is normally his show, but he is still recovering from his operation and doing very well. Felipe, thank you for joining us. And our lovely Mel Richards from New York – thank you, Mel, for being the person we can always count on.

With everybody’s help today, we are going to explore how LinkedIn and AI systems interpret brand signals, and what that means for organisations that are not actively managing this. We will look at the specific signals that platforms and AI read, and how organisations can work with them rather than against them. I hope we will provide some practical direction you can implement straight away.

I want to start with the fact that LinkedIn as a platform has changed dramatically with the arrival of AI. Today I want the focus to be on our companies and our company brand. Some of us have company pages, some do not. Even without a company page, AI still has an opinion about us. So let us start by talking about how our brands are being seen by AI in this new world.

How AI Is Changing Brand Reputation

Brenda Meller

I want to start by reminding everyone what AI actually stands for: artificial intelligence. We have gotten so wrapped up in AI as this wonderful, all-powerful thing – but it is still artificial intelligence. Think of it like vanilla ice cream. Real vanilla bean versus vanilla flavoured. It is still artificial.

From a brand reputation perspective, AI gives many organisations – particularly smaller to mid-size ones without dedicated marketing strategists – a real leg up. They can use AI to write webpage copy, create a company page description, or draft LinkedIn posts. But we need to be careful that we are not using it as a crutch or a replacement.

We should be reading everything it produces and asking: does this match our brand values? Does this match our brand voice?

Felipe Cofiño

Two things stand out for me. One is AI literacy as a skill – it is increasingly appearing as a job requirement. But specifically around brand, people are still getting their heads around GEO – generative engine optimisation. It simply means: are you searchable on AI platforms in the same way you were searchable on Google? That is how powerful this is going to be.

I went into Gemini – which I had never used before – and searched for myself and past companies. I was impressed. It was accurate, down to my core values and even some of my own quotes. So the message is: go and check what

AI is saying about you, because with AI it is a whole different ballgame.

Lynnaire Johnston

I really like that suggestion: ask AI about yourself. Then compare a Google search to an AI search. It is genuinely revealing – both about what can be found, and about what is missing. If something is absent from Google, it simply cannot be found. But if it is absent from AI, AI still has an opinion about you. If someone asks AI about a company in your niche and you do not appear, you are missing the opportunity entirely.

Melanie Richards

I want to combine what Brenda and Felipe said with a reminder to stay human-to-human. I went into AI and searched terms I have been using for seven years – and found hashtags that AI still associates with me even though the platform has moved on. What I would invite listeners to do is keep exploring. Stay curious about your own opinions, regardless of what platforms or AI tell you to think, say, or do.

Roy Kowarski

I hired an AI specialist and she helped me create agents. What an agent does is learn about your business over time. I use the human involvement and the AI together – I listen to what AI produces, I review it, and then I decide what I want to say. The more you tell it about yourself and your business, the better it gets. What I am finding with other companies is pushback – they think it is too complicated, or they copy and paste. And copy-and-paste does not work. It is too detectable.

Lynnaire Johnston

I admire you for getting onto agents so quickly – that is the next step up. My own use of an agent has been to set up a LinkedIn-centric AI chatbot for my membership community. People can go to it, ask questions about LinkedIn, and have them answered. What impressed me is that it does not just answer the question – it takes it one step further. For anyone still dragging their feet on AI: now is the time to really get to grips with it.

Company Pages and AI Visibility

Lynnaire Johnston

Company pages have long been the domain of marketing and comms teams, and what they produce tends to be content about the company. All about us. I wonder whether AI is an opportunity for organisations to turn the company page around and make it about their customers or their team members.

Brenda Meller

I see the low reach of company pages as highly concentrated rather than a negative. When someone visits your company page, they are seeing only your posts. Would you rather have ten of the right people reading your message, or three thousand people scrolling past? I am currently working with organisations on company page management, and I am seeing real openness to using AI as part of the content creation process.

It always starts with strategy. What are your goals for your company page? Define your top three goals, your audiences, and your messaging guidelines. Upload those to your AI tool and say: based on these goals and this voice, give me ideas for twenty-five LinkedIn posts. Use AI to jumpstart idea generation. But read everything it gives you. Your AI tool is like an unpaid intern with limitless hours – it needs coaching.

Felipe Cofiño

HR and business development should have equal involvement in the company page alongside marketing and communications. LinkedIn started as a job platform – HR has had a connection to it from the very beginning. I told our comms team: use AI to research five relevant workplace topics and see what it comes up with. When they did, they found genuinely useful ideas, tweaked them into their own voice, and started posting relevant content for the first time.

Lynnaire Johnston

I think involving HR in company page content is genuinely valuable, and most organisations are not doing it. And let us not forget: LinkedIn is the second most cited source for answers to business questions asked of AI. The content you put on LinkedIn is available to AI – even if your AI tool claims it cannot read LinkedIn directly.

What AI Actually Uses to Form a View of Your Brand

Brenda Meller

In layman’s terms, AI is scanning the web universe and pulling from reputable sources. LinkedIn is highly reputable, so it ranks accordingly. But AI gets things wrong. I have a coaching client who receives AI-generated advice about his LinkedIn profile. One piece told him to update his five hashtags in creator mode. Anyone who works in LinkedIn strategy is laughing – creator mode was discontinued over a year ago. AI does not always know this.

Personal profiles can be set to connections only, which limits what AI can access. Company pages are wide open. I think there is a real opportunity there from an AI perspective. I will leave the audience to think about that.

Felipe Cofiño

When I did a deep research on myself using AI, it was looking not just at LinkedIn but at YouTube, Amazon, various websites, and other platforms. AI’s deep research goes broad. One of the biggest trends I am seeing is companies with poor reviews now proactively addressing them – because they know those reviews are instantly searchable with AI. That is a sign of how aware organisations are becoming.

Melanie Richards

Trust cannot be built by AI alone – but it can be established, invited, and cultivated. When I looked at how AI was describing brands specialising in virtual sponsorship, it told me who they serve – but not how they help. That human element is missing from AI’s language. AI can simulate how you might begin a relationship. But it cannot actually help you take the steps. Whoever designs the next generation of AI tools: build in the calls to connect, because that is what is missing.

Roy Kowarski

I had people reach out to me recently asking how they found me. They all said: I went to your company page on LinkedIn and there was a resource there that helped me. Think of a company page like a stand at an exhibition. When somebody comes there, they need to learn something. They need to find value. I am also constantly cross-referencing between my company page and my personal profile. And I want to highlight something we have not mentioned yet: LinkedIn recommendations. When someone uses AI to check on you, it checks your recommendations. If you are not building those deliberately, you are missing a key opportunity.

Trust, Data, and the LinkedIn AI Training Setting

Melanie Richards

I noticed a post repeating across a LinkedIn group and individual profiles, targeting specific roles. The same copy, over and over, with comments turned off. It was clearly templated AI content. And even though the brand behind it may genuinely want to help people, the approach is not reflecting positively on them. Stop telling us who you want to help. Tell us how you help. That is what builds trust. If brands miss the human-to-human element, they will run out of people to talk to.

Brenda Meller

Companies doing this well have a clear strategy. They know their target audience. They have embraced employee advocacy. They are using their standout employees as a sounding board for content and have empowered them to respond on the company’s behalf. The ones doing it well understand that AI is a tool, not a replacement for brand voice. There is still a lot to be said for coming back to basics and having a genuine strategy.

Felipe Cofiño

Coca-Cola has an AI art generator they are using for promotion. Sephora is doing virtual try-ons. These are brands genuinely tapping into AI to improve the brand experience. Over the last two months, the most common ad I have seen when streaming is LinkedIn. Something is listening to my conversations. If AI is being used ethically, there is enormous potential to show people relevant content at the right moment. That is a powerful tool for brand visibility.

Lynnaire Johnston

I went to my library and checked out a book about The Washington Post. Within 24 hours, I was receiving adverts about subscribing to The Washington Post. I had not searched for it online. It was simply the library check-out. We have no idea how our data is being used. And did I subscribe? Absolutely. If they are clever enough to reach me like that, I will reward them for it.

Brenda Meller

I want to make sure everyone knows: inside your LinkedIn privacy and settings there is a toggle. In the US, LinkedIn has it set to yes by default – meaning your data is being used for AI training purposes. On principle, I have turned mine off. In the EU and some other regions, you must opt in. But in the US, many people may not be aware of this. I am fine with publicly available information being used by AI. What I object to is the opt-in that happened without our knowledge. If LinkedIn is listening: please ask us first.

Closing Thoughts and Key Takeaways

Roy Kowarski

We need to embrace and use all the resources available to us. My company page gets very few likes on individual posts – but orders keep coming from people who visit it and say, you taught me something. Show up with value. Show people how you can help them overcome obstacles. If they believe you can help them, you have their vote.

Lynnaire Johnston

My biggest takeaway today is this: think about your company page the way a visitor experiences it. What do they actually see when they get there? Is it all about you and what you do – or is it genuinely helpful to them? I am going to go into member view on my own company page this week and do exactly that audit. Because if AI is sourcing answers from LinkedIn, then the content on your company page is now your most important public asset.

Thank you to Brenda for your extraordinary generosity in sharing your expertise today. To Mel for the trust lens and the events perspective. To Felipe for the organisational and HR insight. And to our regular host Roy, from the branding and exhibition side. Thank you to everyone watching – live and on replay.