Your online presence can start shaping your professional reputation long before you build a real-life connection. 

Recruiters, future colleagues, industry leaders and potential mentors may encounter you online before they ever meet you in person. But that doesn’t mean you need to become an influencer, post every day or build a perfectly polished LinkedIn profile. 

Brooke Clay Taylor, Chief Operating Officer at Empire Ag and founder of the Rural Gone Urban Foundation, has a much simpler approach: know what you want to be known for and build an online presence that actually feels like you. 

Here are three places to start. 

1. Pick the platforms that make sense for you 

You don’t have to be everywhere. 

Start with understanding what you’re trying to accomplish and work backward. Different platforms serve different purposes. 

Think about: 

• Who do you want to connect with? 

• What kind of content do you enjoy creating? 

• Where are the people you want to learn from already showing up? 

The best one is the one that helps you reach your goals in a way that feels natural. 

2. Know what you want to be known for 

Before building your online brand, take social media out of the equation. 

Brooke recommends asking yourself: What words would I want someone to use to describe me after I leave the room? 

Maybe you want to be known as curious, dependable, thoughtful, innovative or someone who always shows up for others. 

Why it matters: Your personal brand isn’t just your profile, posts or resume. It’s the reputation you build through how you consistently show up — online and in person. 

Once you understand that, deciding what belongs online becomes much easier. 

3. Use your own voice 

AI can help you brainstorm. It can help you organize ideas. It can even help you figure out what topics you might have something meaningful to say about. 

But Brooke cautions against letting it replace your thoughts and voice. 

Her challenge? Spend 30 days on LinkedIn using your own words and see what happens. 

In a feed full of increasingly polished content, your personality can actually be the thing that makes people stop scrolling. 

It’s not too late to start 

You don’t need the perfect content strategy before you start building your professional presence. 

Choose where you want to show up. Decide what you want people to know about you. Then give yourself permission to sound like yourself when you get there. 

Catch the full conversation 

Brooke joins The Cultivating Leaders Podcast to explore what it really means to build a personal brand. With more than a decade of experience helping agriculture, food and rural businesses find their voice and tell their stories,