5 Steps to Build Your Personal Brand as a Franchise Leader
How to Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn
By Camille Gilvar, Social Media Account Manager at Thunderly
“People don’t follow brands, they follow people.”
This is the unofficial mantra of Thunderly’s team of social media experts, and for good reason. Roughly 70% of consumers feel more connected to a brand when its CEO has an active social presence. That number rises even further to 72% for brands with employees that share information about the business online.
The right personal brand can strengthen your credibility, attract top talent, and position you as the go-to voice in your segment of the industry. And ultimately, that can help drive franchise development.Â
The best part is, you don’t need a massive content team or celebrity status to build your personal brand. You just need a strategy, consistency, and the right kind of storytelling.
Here are five simple steps to start growing your thought leadership:
Step 1: Define Your Brand Voice
What are the topics where you have real expertise? Where do you want to share your thoughts? What are the problems your audience (franchisees, candidates, peers) cares about most? The answers to these questions are the foundation of your personal brand.
Most franchise leaders fall into one or more of these credibility lanes:
- Franchise development leader
- Operations and unit-level economics expert
- Culture and leadership champion
- Small business advocate
- Marketing and growth strategist
- Industry futurist (AI, tech, consumer trends)
You don’t need to chase every trend or recycle content from other people you see online. Show up as yourself in spaces where you have something to add to the conversation, and your reputation will grow from there.
Remember: your audience is there for you and, more importantly, your expertise. It all comes down to sharing your unique ideas and perspective to find your specific niche.
Step 2: Find Your Audience
If your goal is to build your personal brand as a franchise leader, LinkedIn is the place to be. This is the platform where deals start, where credibility is built, and where your network multiplies.
But LinkedIn isn’t the only place that matters.Â
A strong franchise leader should show up in as many places as possible. Podcasts, trade publications, conferences, videos, your brand’s own channels (websites, videos, newsletters). Every channel reinforces your message, reaches a potential new audience, and adds to your credibility. Not only that, but they also provide the secret sauce to a great social media presence: variety.Â
The biggest missed opportunity we see consistently is not integrating these channels. Got a media hit? Add it to your website! Have a professional video in your brand newsletter? Post it on LinkedIn! The more surfaces you appear on—and the more they work in tandem—the faster your personal brand grows and the easier it is to position yourself as an industry voice worth following.Â
Step 3: Create Posts That Resonate
Thought leadership is not just “We’re excited about our new location.” It also means teaching people something they didn’t know.
The fastest way to build your personal brand is to share insights, predictions, lessons learned, data-backed observations, and behind-the-scenes moments in your life. Especially on platforms like LinkedIn, the audience is there for professional development first and foremost, and thought leaders act as a new kind of mentor.Â
But that doesn’t mean you have to post the same things over and over again. Utilize LinkedIn features like carousels, polls, videos, and newsletters to vary the types of content. Reshare other posts you find interesting with a fresh perspective. Include links or share where your followers can go to learn more.Â
When leaders say something useful, informative, and entertaining, the audience pays attention.
And in franchising—where credibility drives deals—attention is fuel.
Step 4: Build a Consistent Content Cadence
You don’t need to post every day. But you do need to post consistently, which is where most franchise leaders fall off.
We get it—things move fast in franchising and you don’t always have time to craft a thoughtful post every week, much less every day. The important thing is finding a cadence that works for you and sticking to it as much as possible. The question isn’t “quality or quantity,” but “how can I have both quality and quantity?”
Employing the help of a social media expert or team can help take some of the burden of topic ideation and drafting off of your plate. But if you do want to do it all yourself, having a running list of post ideas and drafting posts early can help prevent a mad dash to get your post up on time. Aim for between 1-3 posts per week, and adjust as needed.
Whether you’re posting about conferences and events you’ve attended, industry insights you’ve learned over the years, brand milestones, franchisee stories, personal wins, or other topics that interest you, the opportunities are endless. Just remember that people follow you because they want to hear from you. Don’t leave them hanging!
Step 5: Continue to Grow Your Personal Brand
You’ve built your brand voice, drafted content people want to see, expanded your reach across platforms and channels, and are posting consistently—great job! But what comes next?
Growing your brand as a thought leader is not a “set it and forget it” situation. If you want to keep growing from there, there are a few other tricks that top thought leaders know:
Engage with your audience
On platforms like LinkedIn (as of 2025), comments are king. Current best practices include liking and commenting on other posts in your feed for roughly 20-30 minutes before and after each post goes live. And don’t forget to respond to comments, tagged posts, and DMs to keep the “social” in “social media.”
Pay attention to trends
The truth is, your content is at the mercy of the platform it’s on. Social platforms are constantly updating their algorithms, deciding what gets pushed out, who sees it, and how often. What worked six months ago might not be effective today. Search engines and AI platforms are also shifting how they prioritize and pull information, which directly affects visibility and reach. Even traditional media outlets have been rapidly restructuring their teams and workflows, changing what types of stories they amplify.
Pay attention to the trends and changes happening around you, and adjust your strategy accordingly. The leaders who adapt quickly are the ones who stay relevant.
Integrate with your brand’s strategy
Despite what the name may imply, your personal brand isn’t separate from your franchise brand. Your individual thought leadership needs to be part of your franchise’s integrated marketing program for the biggest impact. That means aligning your PR, social media, video, speaking opportunities, and overall reputation strategy. If you’re not integrated and cross-marketing, you’re missing out on real opportunities.
Track and refine over time
The biggest step to avoid a plateau is to track your thought leadership performance and refine your content from there. This could mean finding data on how many engagements you received on social media, the number of interviews or bylined articles you did each quarter, or the number of views your latest video or webinar ended up with. Find out what’s working and double down on it.
How Thunderly Helps Leaders Grow Their Personal Brand
If you want your brand and your thought leadership to be impossible to ignore, a full-service franchise marketing agency can help you get there.Â
Thunderly supports some of franchising’s most well-known CEOs, CDOs, CMOs, and founders. Our social media thought leadership services, PR packages, and personal branding videos can make you more visible to your peers, brand network, and potential candidates, without the workload falling entirely on your shoulders.
Get in touch with us or email Jack Monson (jack@thunderlymarketing.com) to learn more about how we can help you build your personal brand.
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