Before someone reaches out, they usually take a minute to look you up. They read a few things. They see what comes up. They try to get a sense of who you are and what you do. These days that often includes ChatGPT, right alongside Google and LinkedIn.
What they see in that moment quietly shapes how you come across. You might feel familiar or still a little hard to place. That first impression can make it easier or harder for someone to take the next step.
ChatGPT isn’t making that picture up. It’s pulling from what’s already out there about you. How you talk about your work. Where your name appears. The topics you tend to be connected to. When those pieces don’t quite line up, the picture can feel a little scattered.
If you’ve ever had the sense that your experience is there but doesn’t always show up as clearly as it should, that’s usually what’s going on. This is about helping that first impression match the work you really do.
How Authority Is Interpreted
ChatGPT doesn’t decide who has authority by looking at credentials or titles. It works with what it can see publicly and how often it sees it. That means written content, online profiles, interviews and places where someone’s work is referenced in a meaningful way. Over time, those pieces start to form a clear picture of what someone is actually known for.
Consistency plays a big role here. ChatGPT pays attention to how someone describes their work and whether that description stays the same across platforms. If you talk about yourself one way on LinkedIn, another way on your website and another way in articles or interviews, it becomes harder to tell what you actually do. When the same themes and language show up over and over, it’s easier for the system to associate your name with a specific kind of work.
It also matters what someone spends their time writing about. If a lawyer regularly writes about deal strategy, client relationships and how work actually gets done in practice, ChatGPT starts to associate that person with those topics. If their content jumps from leadership to wellness to random trends without a clear throughline, that association is weaker. Depth and repetition make a difference.
Another factor is where a name shows up. Someone who publishes thoughtful articles, appears on podcasts that focus on real conversations and is quoted in industry publications becomes easier to place than someone whose presence is limited to short posts or self-promotional content. Over time, these appearances help clarify for what someone is known when they point back to the same area of work.
Where people often run into trouble is assuming that being good at their job is enough. If experience lives mostly offline or is described vaguely online, ChatGPT has very little to work with. That doesn’t mean someone lacks expertise. It just means it isn’t easy to recognize from the outside.
In practice, authority here comes from being understandable. When your work, experience and focus are described clearly and consistently, it becomes easier for systems and people alike to connect your name with a specific kind of expertise.
The Problem With Broad Positioning
Many professionals describe themselves in ways that sound polished but fail to explain their actual work. Titles like marketing strategist, brand advisor or growth consultant are common because they feel flexible and safe. They are also unhelpful.
From a visibility standpoint, broad positioning makes it difficult for anyone to understand what problem you solve or who you solve it for. ChatGPT encounters the same issue. When someone asks a specific question, the model needs to know where to categorize you. If your expertise cannot be summarized clearly, there is no reason for your name to appear as a recommendation.
Clear positioning provides that anchor. Saying you focus on legal marketing and LinkedIn personal branding for lawyers and professional services immediately establishes context. It defines the audience, the platform and the scope of your work. That language needs to be used consistently across your public presence, including your LinkedIn headline, About section, website and any bios tied to your writing or speaking.
Using the same phrasing repeatedly reinforces recognition. It allows both people and AI systems to associate your name with a specific area of expertise without confusion.
Staying Coherent Over Time
Leadership recognition comes from coherence, not volume. Many professionals create content reactively, responding to whatever topic feels relevant in the moment. One week the focus is leadership. The next it is productivity. Then trends, mindset or tools.
Over time, that approach makes it difficult to understand what someone is actually known for. From the outside, there is no consistent point of view. ChatGPT reads that inconsistency the same way a human reader would. There is no stable signal to connect to a name.
People who are recognized as leaders tend to return to the same core questions repeatedly. They examine those questions from different angles. They adjust their examples as the market changes. Their perspective remains consistent even as the context evolves.
This is how expertise becomes recognizable. Familiar ideas, developed thoughtfully over time, create trust.
The Role of Long-Form Writing
Short posts help you stay visible, but they don’t really show how you think. They give people a glimpse. Longer pieces give them a feel for how you approach things.
When someone reads a longer article you’ve written, they can see how you frame a problem, what you pay attention to and how you work your way through something that isn’t simple. That’s what creates confidence. Not a clever line or a viral post, but a sense that you actually know what you’re talking about.
ChatGPT picks up on that too. It looks at the longer pieces where you explain ideas in full and where your perspective has room to come through. Those are the places where your judgment and experience show up most clearly.
The topics that tend to matter most over time are the ones that keep coming back in real work. How senior professionals think about being visible. Why certain personal branding approaches fall flat in professional services. What law firms miss when it comes to credibility and presence. These questions don’t go away, even when the tools change.
When you keep writing about the same kinds of questions in this way, people start to get a much clearer picture of what you actually do and how you think.
Writing From Observation and Experience
There’s a big difference between writing that sounds polished and writing that sounds like it came from someone who’s actually been in the work. People who’ve spent years doing something don’t just repeat advice. They talk about what usually goes wrong, where things get complicated and what they’ve seen play out across a lot of real situations.
That’s what readers respond to. You can tell when someone has sat in meetings where the outcome wasn’t obvious and decisions had real consequences. Even when they’re writing about a familiar topic, it feels more specific because it comes from experience rather than theory.
ChatGPT pulls from that kind of writing too. It looks at how people describe their work and the situations they keep coming back to. When the same kinds of issues show up again and again, it becomes easier to understand what someone actually does.
Where Expertise Appears
Publishing on your own platforms matters. Your LinkedIn posts, your articles, your website, all of that is where your point of view starts to take shape. But it’s only part of the picture. What really changes how you’re seen is when your ideas show up in places you don’t control.
When you write an article for an industry publication, appear on a podcast people in your field actually listen to or get quoted in an article, your name starts to show up alongside your ideas. It’s no longer just you saying what you do. Other people are putting you in that context too.
That changes how you come across. A mention in a publication your clients read matters. When someone looks you up, they see where you’ve been quoted and which podcasts or interviews you’ve done. They get a sense of the kinds of things you’re usually asked about. That starts to shape how they think about your work.
This is why the strongest visibility tends to come from thoughtful places such as industry newsletters and podcasts and publications that your client and referral sources read. Every time your name appears there, it quietly reinforces what you’re known for when people look you up.
The Importance of the About Page
Your online About page plays a much bigger role than most people realize. That includes the one on your website and the one on your LinkedIn profile. It’s often the first place someone goes when they want to understand who you are and what you actually do.
A good About page doesn’t read like a resume. It reads like a clear introduction. It explains who you work with, what you’re known for and how you came to do this kind of work. It gives a sense of your perspective and where it comes from. It’s written in the first person and sounds like a person, not a firm.
This page also matters because it’s one of the places ChatGPT looks when it tries to summarize someone. When the language is clear and specific, it’s much easier for that picture to come through in a way that matches how you really show up.
Repetition and Recognition
People don’t figure out what you’re known for in one moment. They build that picture from what they keep seeing connected to you. That might be an article you wrote. A quote in a trade publication. A podcast you were on. A LinkedIn post someone shared.
Over time, those things start to add up. Someone begins to notice that your name keeps coming up in the same kinds of conversations. That’s when they start to connect you with a particular kind of work.
ChatGPT works the same way. It looks at what’s out there about you and the topics that keep appearing alongside your name. When those topics stay consistent, it becomes easier for it to understand what you actually do.
How SEO Fits Into This
When people go looking for someone, they aren’t thinking about keywords. They’re thinking about their problem. They type in what they’re worried about, what they don’t understand yet or what they need help with. That’s what shows up in search and that’s what tools like Google and ChatGPT are built to respond to.
That’s why the way you write matters so much. Start with headlines that sound like real questions your clients actually ask. Use section headers that follow the way someone would think through an issue. If you were talking to a client on the phone, how would they describe what’s going on. Use that language. Those are the words people are searching for.
The same idea applies to how you describe your work. Look at your bio and your About page and ask whether it sounds like something your clients would say about you. If it’s full of vague phrases or industry shorthand, it’s harder for anyone to understand what you actually do. Clear, specific language makes it easier for both people and search tools to connect you to the right kinds of questions.
A simple way to work on this is to pay attention to the questions you get in real life. What do clients email you about. What do they ask in meetings. What do they Google before they call you. Use those exact phrases in your writing. Over time, that makes your content line up much more closely with the way people search.
How This Takes Shape Over Time
Most people who start to feel visible in their space didn’t get there all at once. They’ve been doing the same kind of work for a long time and talking about it in small, steady ways. Writing about the same issues. Being part of the same conversations. Showing up in places that make sense for what they do.
ChatGPT reflects that history. It looks at what has been building around your name over months and years, not just what you posted recently. When your work and your ideas keep appearing in the same space, it becomes easier for it to understand where you fit.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. Pick three or four topics that really match what you do and keep coming back to them. Write one longer piece every month or two that goes deeper into one of those topics. Share shorter observations from your day-to-day work in between. When someone asks you to be on a podcast, contribute to an article or write a guest piece, say yes if it lines up with those same themes.
What This Means in Practice
What shows up about you in ChatGPT reflects how clear your work is to someone who’s looking you up. When your writing, your bio and the way you talk about what you do all line up, it’s easier for someone to understand what you actually do.
That comes from a few simple things done well. Being clear about the kind of work you do. Using the same language when you talk about it. Taking the time to write pieces that show how you think. Letting your ideas appear in places your audience already reads.
ChatGPT works off the same information people do. It pulls from what’s out there about you and how consistently it tells the same story.
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