Your LinkedIn Profile Is Becoming Your Professional Reputation, Warns Social Selling Expert

London, UK 8th October 2026 - What you post on LinkedIn is no longer just being seen by your network. Social selling expert Dean Seddon says professionals need to start treating their social media presence as part of their wider digital reputation as search engines and AI platforms increasingly surface public LinkedIn content.

The days of treating LinkedIn as an online CV or somewhere to occasionally post company updates are disappearing, according to social selling expert and Maverrik founder Dean Seddon.

As LinkedIn, search engines and AI-powered search tools become increasingly sophisticated at understanding and surfacing online content, the posts professionals publish, the subjects they discuss and the expertise associated with their name are becoming part of a much bigger digital footprint.

Dean believes businesses are underestimating what that means for their reputation.

“Your LinkedIn profile isn't sitting in isolation anymore,” said Dean.

“What you say, what you consistently talk about and what people associate your name with is becoming part of how you are discovered and understood online.

“For years, businesses have worried about what appears on page one of Google when someone searches their company name. Increasingly, they need to think about what the internet understands about the people behind the business too.”

Social media is becoming part of search

Public LinkedIn profiles have long been capable of appearing within search engine results.

But the relationship between LinkedIn, search engines and AI search is becoming increasingly important.

LinkedIn confirms that certain public content can be crawled and displayed by search tools, including Google, Bing and ChatGPT. That content may subsequently appear within search results or contribute towards AI-generated search experiences.

For businesses selling expertise, Dean believes this fundamentally changes the role of social media.

A LinkedIn post is no longer necessarily something that exists for 24 or 48 hours in the feed before disappearing.

It can become part of the searchable information connected to a person's name, company and area of expertise.

That means the question is shifting from:

“How many people saw my post?”

to:

“What does my content teach people, and what technology am I known for?”

From personal branding to professional reputation

Personal branding has become one of the most widely used phrases in social media marketing.

Dean argues businesses should start thinking beyond it.

“This isn't really about creating a 'personal brand' for the sake of having one,” he said.

“It is about reputation.

“If somebody researches you before a meeting, searches your name, looks at your LinkedIn activity or asks an AI platform about a subject you claim to be an expert in, what are they going to find?

“Does your online presence reinforce your expertise, or does it create confusion?”

For professionals selling complex services, expertise or high-value solutions, that distinction can have a direct commercial impact.

Buyers frequently research individuals and companies before speaking to a salesperson, meaning a prospect may already have formed an opinion about a business long before the first conversation takes place.

LinkedIn content can therefore play a role not only in lead generation and social selling, but in credibility, trust and buyer confidence.

Topic authority is becoming more important than vanity metrics

Dean believes this creates an opportunity for professionals who have previously assumed they need tens of thousands of followers to win business through LinkedIn.

Rather than obsessing over viral reach, follower counts or producing content simply to generate engagement, he recommends becoming deliberately associated with a smaller number of commercially relevant topics.

“If you sell cybersecurity services, you want somebody to be able to look at your profile and immediately understand that cybersecurity is your world,” he said.

“If you're a commercial lawyer, people should quickly understand the problems you solve and the subjects you know inside out.

“You shouldn't need a prospect to scroll through 18 months of content to work out what you actually do.”

This approach forms part of what Maverrik teaches as social selling: using expertise, content and conversations to create demand and build relationships with potential buyers rather than relying exclusively on cold prospecting.

According to Dean, consistency between a professional's LinkedIn profile, content and commercial proposition is becoming increasingly important.

“Your headline says one thing, your About section says another and then your content talks about six completely unrelated subjects; that's a positioning problem,” he said.

“Your profile and your content should make it easy for a human being to understand what you're known for.

“If people can't work it out, you shouldn't assume technology will.”

AI makes generic content less valuable, not more

The rapid adoption of generative AI has also made it easier than ever for businesses to produce large quantities of content.

But Dean believes that has created another problem.

“When everyone has access to tools capable of creating 50 perfectly acceptable LinkedIn posts in a few minutes, simply publishing more content isn't much of a competitive advantage,” he said.

“The value comes from having something worth saying.”

He argues businesses should use AI to support their marketing and sales activity without allowing it to remove the experience, opinions and expertise that differentiate them.

The same principle applies to LinkedIn outreach.

Automated connection requests and mass-generated direct messages may allow businesses to contact greater numbers of people, but Dean thinks the future of successful B2B social selling will increasingly favour quality over quantity.

“People can recognise a generic AI-generated sales message very quickly,” he said.

“A short personal video, a relevant voice note or a message that demonstrates you've genuinely understood somebody's business can be far more powerful than another automated sequence sent to 10,000 people.”

The shift from reach to relevance

For Dean, the biggest change is ultimately a move away from chasing mass attention.

Businesses do not necessarily need millions of impressions if the right 50, 100 or 500 prospective buyers recognise their expertise.

That means the goal of a LinkedIn strategy should not simply be to 'get more engagement'.

It should build a clear association between a person, a problem and a solution.

Dean said:

“The old LinkedIn game encouraged people to obsess over views, followers and whether a post had gone viral.

“But if you're selling a high-value service, you don't need everybody to know who you are.

“You need the right people to understand exactly what you're good at.

“That is the difference between using LinkedIn as social media and using LinkedIn as a social selling platform.”

Businesses need to audit their digital reputation

Maverrik is encouraging business leaders and sales professionals to look at their LinkedIn activity through the eyes of a potential customer.

That includes reviewing:

• What topics they are consistently associated with
• Whether their LinkedIn profile clearly explains the problems they solve
• Whether their content demonstrates genuine expertise
• What appears when somebody searches their name or company online
• Whether their online presence supports or contradicts their positioning
• Whether their social selling activity prioritises meaningful conversations over mass outreach

Dean believes the businesses that adapt fastest will have an advantage as buyers increasingly use a combination of social media, traditional search engines and AI tools when researching potential suppliers.

“Reputation used to be built through referrals, recommendations, meetings and word of mouth,” he said.

“All of those things still matter.

“But your digital reputation now sits alongside them.

“What you publish today could influence what a potential client discovers about you weeks or months from now.

“That means businesses need to stop asking whether LinkedIn is worth posting on and start asking a much bigger question:

What do we want to be known for?”

About Dean Seddon

Dean Seddon is a social selling and LinkedIn expert with over 15 years' experience helping businesses turn expertise into predictable client acquisition.

He has helped organisations and sales professionals generate more than $252 million in revenue and has trained more than 250,000 salespeople and business owners.

His work helps businesses that sell deep expertise and complex services build clearer positioning, stronger offers, and repeatable social selling systems that generate conversations and clients without relying solely on referrals or aggressive outbound sales.

About Maverrik

Maverrik is a specialist LinkedIn and social selling training company helping organisations, sales teams and business leaders use LinkedIn to build authority, create conversations and generate new business.

Its programmes focus on practical social selling, LinkedIn strategy, personal branding, content, prospecting and sales conversations, helping professionals use LinkedIn as a measurable business development channel rather than simply another social media platform.