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As Health Quality Innovators (HQI) prepared to expand into new regions, it needed a strategy for building its CEO's personal brand and LinkedIn network to establish credibility and visibility ahead of the expansion.

Health Quality Innovators (HQI) is a nonprofit health care consulting firm leading complex population health and care-improvement programs for federal and state agencies, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But HQI's work — and its executive visibility — had always been concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic. As the organization prepared to expand into new regions, its CEO had little name recognition among decision-makers in those regions and fewer than 50 connections overall. HQI needed a strategy to build the CEO's personal brand and LinkedIn network as a way to establish credibility and visibility ahead of the expansion.

Our Approach

Halbrooke & Elm implemented a three-pronged approach for building the CEO's network and personal brand:

  1. Identifying and connecting with leaders from key organizations and agencies in potential new regions. We identified and connected with leaders across federal and state agencies, peer organizations, subcontractors, clients, partners and potential partners, and other health care organizations working in population health, health information technology and care delivery improvement. Each connection request included a standard message customized by relationship type. For example, outreach to a federal agency leader read differently than outreach to a subcontractor, ensuring each connection request felt purposeful rather than generic.
  2. Aligning the CEO's LinkedIn content with HQI's brand voice. We identified and recommended at least one company post per week, from organizational news to team achievements, for the CEO to like and reshare, along with suggested messaging to accompany each shared post.
  3. Writing and sharing thought-leadership content. To establish credibility, we developed original posts and/or articles published weekly from the CEO's account on topics including industry trends and commentary on coverage from industry publications, new partnership announcements, insight from internal initiatives, outcomes from recent HQI projects, reflections on event participation, and recognition of partners and clients.

Our Results

Within six months of implementation, Halbrooke & Elm added 41 new connections, a nearly 50% increase, and added 250 new followers, a nearly 100% increase. New connections included leaders from key organizations such as state hospital associations, federal agencies and regional membership associations, and new followers included CEOs, presidents and founders at healthcare organizations.

The CEO's top five performing posts and/or articles saw on average:

  • Nearly 1,200 impressions
  • 23 reactions
  • 19 reposts

In year two of working with HQI's CEO, Halbrooke & Elm added 87 new connections, a 112% increase from the previous year, and 317 new followers, a 27% increase from the previous year.

The top five performing posts and/or articles saw on average:

  • 3,486 impressions
  • 46 reactions
  • 7 reposts

Why This Worked

Our approach to this work succeeded because it prioritized relevance over reach. Rather than pursuing connections and followers indiscriminately, our strategy targeted the specific leadership tier HQI needed visibility with ahead of its expansion, a focus reflected in connection growth that accelerated year over year, from a 50% increase in the first six months to 112% the following year.

The content strategy built on that same discipline. Thought leadership paired with curated company content kept the CEO's presence active and on-brand, drawing an audience of CEOs, presidents and founders — peers most relevant to HQI's goals. As that audience grew more senior, engagement followed: impressions nearly tripled and reactions roughly doubled between year one and year two, with reposts giving way to more direct engagement typical of senior executives. Together, these tactics built a credible presence among the audience HQI needed to reach.