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You probably use your expertise every working day.
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You answer questions, spot problems, weigh up options, and make decisions that someone with less experience would find difficult.
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But how much of that can another person or AI see when they look you up?
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They might find your job title, a list of services, and a statement about how many years you've been in your field.
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Those things provide context.
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They don't necessarily show what you can do or how you think.
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That's what we're looking at today.
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Practical ways to give people and AI systems evidence of your expertise, things you can draw from the work you're already doing without turning every working day into a content production exercise.
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In our earlier episode on authority, we looked at whether the evidence attached to your name supports the expertise you claim.
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Today we're taking that a step further.
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Where does that evidence come from?
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What could you share?
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And how do you make it useful to someone who's deciding whether your expertise is relevant to them?
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I've got five practical approaches to share with you, including examples from our own work, such as a company page assessment for Australian Exhibition Company Out Their Branding.
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As you listen, think about one area you want to be known for.
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You don't need to apply every idea, look for the one that gives you a useful place to start.
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Before we get into the five approaches, there's a small but important decision to make.
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What expertise are you trying to demonstrate?
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If you've had a long career, there could be quite a lot to choose from, but someone considering you for a particular piece of work needs evidence relevant to that work.
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Suppose you want to be known for guiding an organization through change.
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Your qualifications and previous positions may support that.
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But an example of how you identified a barrier, brought people into the process, or adjusted a plan would give someone a much better sense of your contribution.
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Or you might be a consultant who wants clients to understand that you provide strategic advice.
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If all they can find are descriptions of the products you supply, they may not recognize the thinking that comes before those products.
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That relationship between what you say and what you show
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matters.
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A clear description gives people a starting point.
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Your examples gives them something to assess.
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And the evidence doesn't have to be a spectacular success story.
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A well-explained everyday decision can reveal a great deal about your expertise.
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The first approach is to take a question you regularly hear and answer it in a way that shows your professional judgment.
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You'll almost certainly have questions that come up again and again.
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Because the answers feel familiar to you, you may overlook how useful they could be to someone else.
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The interesting part is often the qualification you add.
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What do you need to know before you can answer?
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Which circumstances change your recommendation?
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What mistake could someone make if they followed the simplest answer?
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In my work, one question is whether someone would be better publishing LinkedIn articles or posts.
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Before making a recommendation, I want to know what they're trying to achieve and what they have to say.
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Are they sharing a timely observation?
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Or explaining something that needs space, examples and a resource they can refer people back to.
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A short post might do the first job well.
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An article might be a more useful home for the second.
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The format decision follows the purpose and the substance.
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Explaining that reasoning shows someone how I approach the question.
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It also gives them a way to make their own decision.
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Your equivalent could be an accountant explaining what they need to understand before recommending a business structure.
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Or a manager explaining when a performance issue calls for clearer expectations, additional training, or a different conversation.
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Those are hypothetical examples, but the principle's the same.
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Take the question beyond a quick answer and show the factors that matter.
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A useful way to start this is to write down a question you answered just this week.
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Then add what did I ask before answering and why?
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You could turn that into a post, a short video, or a frequently asked question on your website.
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Even a substantive comment and a relevant discussion can give people a glimpse of your thinking.
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Keep the explanation focused.
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You're giving someone enough context to understand your judgment rather than everything you know about the subject.
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The second approach is closely related but starts with a decision rather than a question.
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People see your finished recommendation.
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They rarely see the options you considered, the compromises involved, or the reason you ruled something out.
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That's often where your expertise is most apparent.
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You might explain why you chose a particular approach for a project, why you advised against a popular option, or why you changed advice you'd given previously.
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I have an example of that last one.
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My advice about the shape of LinkedIn videos changed from square to four by five portrait format as presentation in the feed changed.
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For example, the useful part is explaining why I reconsidered the advice.
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A recommendation that made sense in one set of circumstances needed reviewing when those circumstances changed.
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Advice has a context and reviewing your own recommendations is part of maintaining your expertise.
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In your work, you might have changed a process after noticing that it created unnecessary delays, or selected a less elaborate solution because the client's team needed something they could maintain themselves.
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If you share a decision like that, give us the situation, the realistic alternatives, and the factor that carried the most weight.
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Then explain what someone else can learn from it.
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You can also explain where your recommendation would be different.
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That helps people avoid treating one example as a universal rule.
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Confidentiality may affect how much detail you can provide.
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You can anonymize a situation or explain the decision criteria without naming the client.
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If you use a hypothetical illustration, make that clear.
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The practical starting point here is to look at a recent recommendation and ask what part of my reasoning would be useful for another person to understand.
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The third approach is to show something you use or produce in your work.
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That could be a checklist, an annotated extract, a framework, a worked example or a small part of an assessment.
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It doesn't have to be the entire deliverable.
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The explanation alongside it matters.
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Tell people what it's for, what to pay attention to, and how it informs a decision.
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For example, our linkability 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.
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That makes an abstract subject easier to work with.
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Someone can look at their own professional presence and identify where the evidence is strong, where it is thin, and where it points towards work they no longer want to pursue.
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Sharing a resource like that demonstrates how I translate a strategic question into something people can examine for themselves.
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Your equivalent might be a checklist you use before approving its project, a sample brief or an anonymised analysis.
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A trainer could share a short exercise and explain what it's designed to reveal.
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A consultant could show the questions they used to clarify a problem before providing a solution.
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You can share a useful slice while retaining the depth of the service you provide.
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The aim is to let someone see enough of your approach to understand its relevance.
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Choose something that makes sense outside the original project.
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Internal shorthand, unexplained labels and a screenshot full of tiny text can make good work difficult to appreciate.
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And make sure you have the right to share it, especially when it contains a client's material or belongs to your employer.
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For your starting point, look through your existing work for one item you regularly use to make a problem clearer.
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What short explanation would make it useful to someone else?
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Our fourth approach is to explain a piece of work through the problem, your contribution and what changed.
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This is where a concrete example can be particularly useful.
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People can see what you noticed and why your recommendation mattered.
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Let me use Out There Branding, an exhibition and brand engagement business whose LinkedIn Company page I assessed in July and reassessed in September.
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The original assessment found strong thinking in the content associated with the page.
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There were clear ideas about exhibitions, creating conversations, and about merchandise being chosen for its purpose and usefulness.
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But the formal description of the business was broader and less focused.
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It covered a range of services, products and capabilities, leaving a visitor to work out how they fitted together.
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So the
expertise was already visible in the content, the page's foundational description wasn't explaining that strategic approach equally clearly.
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My recommendation was to bring the about section into line with the stronger positioning already evident in the content.
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Explain who the business serves, how its services and tools fit together, and the outcomes its approach is intended to support.
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When I reassessed the page in September, the banner, tagline, and overview told a much clearer and more consistent story.
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Strategy was positioned ahead of products, and the business was easier to understand as an exhibition and brand engagement partner.
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That was a visible improvement in how the page communicated the organization.
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There was also a next step.
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Much of the page activity still relied on sharing the founder, Roy Kowarski's personal posts and newsletters.
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That reinforced relevant expertise, but there was an opportunity for Out Their Branding to publish more evidence of its own work directly.
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I recommended client examples, case studies, exhibition outcomes, and explanations of how strategy influenced a project decision.
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The reports establish the improvement in positioning.
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They don't establish an increase in inquiries or sales, or that all of those further recommendations have been implemented.
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The useful outcome we can describe is a clearer, more coherent explanation of the business.
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That specificity makes the example credible.
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Someone can follow the diagnosis, the recommendation, and what the follow-up actually showed.
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It also demonstrates my own work.
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I'm showing how I assess a page, distinguish between different problems, and prioritize what to assess.
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Your own example might be a much smaller piece of work.
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You could have clarified a brief, identified a risk, or made a process easier for a team to follow.
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Explain your contribution accurately.
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If other people were involved, make their part clear too.
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And if an outcome is qualitative, describe the actual change rather than reaching for an impressive number.
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The practical lesson from Out Their Branding applies to personal profiles as well.
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Compare what you say you do with the evidence someone can find.
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Does that evidence support the expertise you want them to recognise?
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The fifth approach is about where the evidence lies.
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You may already have a useful article, a strong example, or a resource that demonstrates your approach.
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But if it's buried in months of activity, someone looking you up may never encounter it.
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Give your strongest evidence a deliberate home.
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On your LinkedIn profile, consider which examples belong in your featured section.
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Give each item a title and description that explain what someone will learn from it.
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A visitor needs enough context to understand why it's there.
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In experience, describe relevant contributions and changes alongside the scope of your role.
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If you say you're experienced in a particular area, look for a concrete example that supports that statement.
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For an organization, think about whether the company page offers examples published by the business itself as well as material shared from its people.
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As the out there branding assessment showed, both can contribute, but they serve somewhat different purposes.
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Your website can also provide a home for selected examples or resources.
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You don't need a large collection to begin.
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One well explained example can be more useful than a long list of unexplained links.
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Recommendations provide another form of evidence.
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When someone is willing to write one, invite them to describe the work you did together, your contribution, and the difference it made in their own words.
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That gives the reader more context than general praise alone.
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Keep your selection relevant to your current election.
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You may have excellent evidence of work you did 10 years ago, but if you're seeking different opportunities now, your most prominent examples need to support that direction.
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A practical test is to look at your profile as someone who doesn't know you.
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How quickly could they find an example that supports your main claim of evidence?
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We have covered five approaches.
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Answer a question using your judgment, explain a decision, show a useful piece of your work, describe your contribution to a problem, and make the evidence easy to find.
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You don't need to tackle all five right away.
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Choose one area you want to be known for.
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Then find one existing piece of evidence that supports it.
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It could be a question you've answered, a decision you've explained to a colleague, or a resource sitting in your files.
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It might be a piece of work that simply needs some context before another person understands its value.
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Explain what it shows and put it somewhere relevant that people can find it.
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You're giving them a basis for assessing whether your expertise fits their needs.
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They can see how you think, what you contribute, and why it might matter to them.
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If you'd like a starting point for reviewing the evidence you already have, you'll find the Linkability Authority audit through our resources page.
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The link for that is in the show notes.
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At Linkability, we work with professionals and organisations to make their expertise clearer and easier to discover on LinkedIn and through AI.
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If this episode has prompted you to look more closely at your own presence, you're very welcome to get in touch.