I'll be honest with you. I wanted it. It was on my vision board. For…
The post I almost talked myself out of publishing
A hotel sales manager once told me, with a straight face, that the brand would probably never hire someone who looked like me.
My hair.
That was the reason.
I sat with that comment for a long time. Long enough to feel the familiar pull of “I’m not good enough.” Long enough to consider whether I should change who I was, and what I looked like, in order to be accepted.
And then I wrote a LinkedIn post about it.
Not a polished, on-brand, carefully-pillared LinkedIn post. Just the story, exactly as it happened.
I almost didn’t hit publish. It had nothing to do with my content pillars. It wasn’t about LinkedIn strategy or visibility systems or personal branding. By every “content calendar” rule I teach, it probably shouldn’t have gone up.
But I hit post. And then it happened.
The comments weren’t just “wow, that’s awful.” They were “this happened to me because of my tattoos.” And “I was passed over because of the way I speak.” And “I’ve been hiding this part of myself for years because I thought it was unprofessional.”
A micro-community formed around a shared experience I didn’t even know was that common. People I’d never connected with before showed up in my DMs. New followers arrived who felt seen before they’d even read another word of my content.
That post didn’t fit my pillars. But it built something my pillars alone couldn’t: belonging.
So what do you do when a story like that lands in your lap – one that feels important, but doesn’t fit neatly into your content strategy?
Here are three questions I now ask before I decide:
1. Does it reveal your values – even if it’s off-topic? Your audience doesn’t just follow your expertise. They follow you. A post about your hair, your experience with bias, your unconventional path – these humanize your authority. If the story reflects who you are and what you stand for, it belongs.
2. Does it create genuine connection with the people you most want to reach? Content pillars attract the right audience. But unguarded stories keep them. If a post has the potential to make your ideal person feel less alone, that’s never a wasted post.
3. Is this a one-time story, or a slow drift? There’s a difference between “I shared something real and human today” and “I’ve quietly become a completely different brand.” One is healthy. The other is worth noticing. Ask yourself: if I posted like this every week, would I still be speaking to the people I most want to serve?
One off-pillar post that sparks real conversation? That’s not a brand crisis. That’s visibility working exactly the way it’s supposed to.
Your content pillars keep you credible. But your stories keep you human. And in a feed full of polished authority, human is what people remember.
See you next week.
Cheers,
Leanne
PS – If this kind of conversation sounds like your people – the ones who want a sounding board before they hit publish, who want to stop second-guessing whether their story is “on brand enough” – there are spots open right now in the Next Chapter Visibility Collective. It’s where we share these moments with each other, the almost-didn’t-post ones, the ones that surprised us, the ones that reminded us visibility is bigger than a content calendar. 👉 Grab your spot here
P.P.S. My real-life newsletter goes deeper – more insights, more goodies, and more of the good stuff you won’t find anywhere else. If you want in, you can subscribe right here. I’d love to have you.
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