Let’s be honest — most LinkedIn content from executives sounds like it was written by a corporate PR department trapped in 2012.
You’ve seen the posts.
Flawless grammar.
Zero personality.
Buzzword soup.
But real thought leadership doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from personality.
It comes from letting your actual voice shine through — even if someone else is helping you write it.
As a ghostwriter for CEOs, founders, and executives, here are 10 ways I make sure your personal brand content sounds like you (not like ChatGPT trained on your company’s boilerplate).
1. Voice Notes > Written Briefs
⤷ Want it to sound like you? Start by talking. Ramble. Rant. Laugh. Ghostwriters can clean it up—but they need to hear your rhythm first. Most of my clients meet with me weekly or biweekly so that I can listen and learn their brand voices.
2. Steal from Your Slack
⤷ The way you talk to your team? That’s gold. The language you naturally use in real life is the tone your audience will trust online. Most of my clients add me into their Slack channels and immerse me in their team so I understand the dialogues that are happening.
3. Keep One "Non-Negotiable" Phrase
⤷ Everyone has a signature phrase. Maybe it’s “Let’s be real” or “Here’s the kicker.” Keep it in. It builds brand voice fast. Custom catchphrases you'll hear me say for example: "Headphones over Megaphones when building a brand" and It's not B2B or B2C - It's B2H (Business to Human).
4. Don’t Over-Polish
⤷ A little roughness = realness. Perfect grammar can sometimes kill personality. This is why I believe PR (as we know it) is dead. If you’d say “gonna,” write “gonna.”
5. Use Stories, Not Statements
⤷ Don’t just say “I believe in transparency.” Share the time you admitted you were wrong on stage and what happened next. Neuroscience shows that stories are attended to and remembered differently than statements.
6. Call Yourself Out
⤷ Self-awareness is magnetic. Don’t be afraid to share your quirks, old mistakes, or that time you totally bombed a pitch.
7. Don’t Censor Your Opinions
⤷ Thought leadership ≠ trying to please everyone. Say what you actually think. That’s how we find your people.
8. Limit the Buzzwords
⤷ You’re not here to “leverage innovative frameworks.” You’re here to share real ideas that move people. I often use social listening via Hootsuite & Talkwalker [The Brand Audit is an official partner] for my clients to help them understand how their audiences are actually talking and the phrases that they use.
9. Use “You” More Than “We”
⤷ Speak to your audience like it’s a 1:1 conversation—not a press release. I coach my clients on starting two way dialogues on social media.
10. Read It Out Loud
⤷ If it sounds like something you’d say over coffee or Facetime? Post it.
⤷ If it sounds like your investor deck? Rewrite it.
11. Use Emotional Triggers
⤷ Content that evokes emotion is 2x more likely to be shared than purely factual posts (Harvard Business Review). Incorporate Emotional Triggers into your content.
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Note: This blog is copyright of The Brand Audit. We would love you to share this content, but please always credit any ideas shared to Christina Minshull or The Brand Audit. Unauthorized copying is a violation of intellectual property law and may result in legal action.
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