LinkedIn has quietly undergone a major transformation. What was once primarily viewed as a platform for recruitment and networking has become a place where expertise, reputation and business relationships are built publicly.
The rise of B2B content creators reflects that shift. They are founders sharing lessons from building companies, consultants breaking down industry challenges, and executives translating complex ideas into insights their audiences can understand. Their goal is not virality. It is trust.
This is also why CEOs and CXOs are increasingly becoming content creators themselves. Not because every executive needs to be an influencer, but because business decisions are increasingly shaped by the people behind the brands. Before taking a meeting, buying a service or partnering with a company, people often look at the thinking, expertise and credibility of its leaders. The reputation of the individual now influences the reputation of the organisation.
The Gulf understood something long before the rest of the business world caught up: relationships are the real currency. Deals in this region close because someone vouched for you, because your name travelled from one majlis to another, because your reputation walked into the room before you did. LinkedIn has not replaced this relationship-driven culture. It has simply created a new space where those relationships begin.
So here is my claim. In five years, an executive without relationship capital online will be as limited as one without a network offline is today. And the GCC will feel it first, because network has always been the whole game here.
The reason is not that LinkedIn suddenly matters more. It is that content suddenly matters less. AI has removed the cost of producing content, making it abundant and, increasingly, forgettable. Feeds are full of polished executive posts that sound remarkably alike because the same tools are helping create them.
The paradox: more people can publish than ever, but fewer are creating genuine connection. The barrier to creating content has disappeared. The barrier to building trust has not. As everything becomes easier to automate, the most valuable asset becomes the one that cannot be replicated: human perspective.
Not content. Connection.
I know this because it’s how I built my own business – as a new founder with no traditional network, but with a body of thinking published consistently, in my own voice. That opened rooms I never imagined I’d be in.
Relationship capital, it turns out, can be built brick by brick.
The strongest B2B creators understand this. They are not simply publishing content; they’re translating expertise into something people can understand, remember and trust.
But here’s where most executives get it wrong. The problem is rarely authenticity. It is translation. I work with a consultant in the construction sector, one of the most technically fluent people I have met. His expertise was real, his track record was real, and none of it was reaching anyone, because he explained his work the way he would to a fellow engineer, not to the client who simply needed to know their problem could be solved. Once his thinking was translated into language decision makers could connect with, the response was immediate. People had been waiting to hear from someone like him. They just could not hear him before.
That is the opportunity for CEOs and CXOs. Their expertise already exists. The challenge is making it accessible.
Which brings me to the uncomfortable part my industry prefers not to say out loud: a great deal of executive content is written with help, including by agencies like mine. So what separates that from the AI slop I just criticised?
Think of an interpreter at a summit. The ideas belong to the speaker; the language belongs to the interpreter. The interpreter’s job is simply to make the thinking understood. AI slop is the opposite: polished language with no original thinking behind it.
In practice, my hardest job is not writing for executives. It is stopping them from hiding. I meet founders who are funny, sharp and full of opinions, yet their LinkedIn profiles tell a completely different story. The real work is not manufacturing a voice. It is bringing the existing one forward.
If you advise a CEO, here is the reframe I would offer.
Stop asking them to post more. As a B2B creator, ask them what they actually believe that nobody else in their industry is saying, and build from there.
Volume does not compound. Relationship capital does.
This region has run on that truth for generations, in majlis gatherings and handshakes and reputations carried by word of mouth. The medium has changed. The rule has not.
The executives who win the next five years will not be the ones who create the most content. They will be the ones people feel they already know, and no machine can build that for them.
(Niharika Anjan is Founder and CEO, Narrativ-ae)
