LinkedIn has evolved into one of the most powerful tools for design professionals looking to build visibility, credibility, and meaningful connections. Yet many architects, engineers, and operations leaders aren't leveraging the platform to its fullest potential. During our final EDConnect25 session, marketing strategist Josh King—founder of Tinderbox Marketing and instructor at Whitworth University—shared practical, actionable guidance tailored specifically to professionals in the A/E/C industry.

Why LinkedIn Matters More Than Ever

LinkedIn is no longer just an online résumé—it's your digital storefront. It's often the first place clients, colleagues, future employers, and industry partners go to learn who you are and what you do. A strong LinkedIn presence helps design professionals:

• Communicate their expertise
• Showcase meaningful work
• Strengthen firm visibility
• Build lasting industry relationships

In today's competitive landscape, a well-managed profile isn't optional—it's a core part of building both personal and firm-wide reputation.

About Josh King

With a career spanning digital media, brand strategy, and corporate marketing, Josh King brings deep insight into how creative and technical professionals can communicate with clarity and impact. His session focused on simple, sustainable steps anyone can take to strengthen their LinkedIn presence—no marketing or social media background required.

1. Build a Strong Personal Profile

Your profile is the foundation of your professional brand. Josh emphasized several essentials that design professionals should update immediately:

• Professional Photography: A clean, high-quality headshot provides an immediate boost in credibility. Skip the selfies and casual crops.
• Meaningful Headlines: Move beyond job titles. Use your headline to communicate your role, specialty, or what differentiates your work.
• Updated Contact Information: Make it easy for people to reach you—especially clients, partners, and recruiters.
• A Clear, Third-Person Bio: Your About section should function as both an introduction and a professional summary. Write it in the third person to make it easy for others to share, reference, or repurpose when needed.

A polished profile builds trust and sets the tone for your interactions across the platform.

2. Post Content With Intention

You don't have to post every day, but consistency matters. Josh recommends posting two to three times each week, focusing on content that:

• Highlights recent projects or milestones
• Offers behind-the-scenes insights into your process
• Shares lessons learned or best practices
• Responds to industry trends
• Elevates colleagues or celebrates team achievements

For those unsure where to start, even short audio notes, project reflections, or meeting takeaways can be transformed into posts using generative AI tools. The goal is progress, not perfection.

3. Strengthen Your Firm's Presence

A firm's LinkedIn presence is often one of the first touch points for prospective clients and talent. Josh encouraged firms to:

• Assign ownership of the company page to designated staff
• Maintain branding consistency, especially across visuals and messaging
• Encourage employees to engage, share content, and amplify company updates
• Repurpose long-form content into shorter posts to extend reach

A cohesive firm presence reinforces brand identity and showcases the human side of your work.

Quick Tips You Can Put Into Action Today

• Start your morning with a 5–10 minute LinkedIn check-in. Engage with posts, comment thoughtfully, or share a quick insight.
• Ask a colleague or leader to record a 30-second voice note about a recent project—turn it into a post.
• Review your headline and About section. Updating these two areas can dramatically improve your profile in minutes.
• Consider a weekly "LinkedIn Power Hour" where your team posts, shares, or updates profiles together.

Small, consistent actions create momentum and make the platform feel manageable rather than overwhelming.

4. Track What's Working

LinkedIn offers valuable metrics—profile views, post performance, follower growth, and engagement trends. Reviewing these regularly helps you understand what resonates with your audience and refine your content strategy accordingly.

Your Next Step: Refresh Your Presence

Josh's message was clear: your LinkedIn presence deserves intentional care. A few small updates can dramatically improve your visibility and impact in the A/E/C community. Whether you're a marketer, business operations professional, emerging designer, or firm leader, your profile is one of the easiest and most effective ways to strengthen your professional voice.

Want to Learn Directly From Josh? Share the Full Session With Your Team

This article only scratches the surface of the insights Josh delivered at EDConnect25. If you want to explore his full strategies—including live examples, profile walk-throughs, and deeper implementation tips—you can purchase the complete session recording here. SDA Member Price: $59 (be sure to log-in for member pricing).

Many firms use SDA recordings for:

• Team lunch-and-learns
• Marketing and business development training
• New hire onboarding
• Professional development credit
• Skill-building for emerging leaders

It's an excellent resource for individuals and teams looking to elevate their LinkedIn presence and strengthen their professional brand.

John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership teaches us that leadership ability is the “lid” on personal and organizational effectiveness. In simple terms, your leadership skills set the ceiling on your success and your team’s success.

A highly skilled engineer, architect, or accountant might be excellent technically, but if their leadership capacity is limited, the entire team’s performance will eventually plateau. On the other hand, when leaders intentionally grow, they “raise the lid”—allowing themselves and those they lead to achieve more than they ever thought possible.

The Lid in Action: A/E Industry Examples

• The Project Manager’s Lid
  A project manager may be brilliant with design and technical details but struggles to communicate expectations clearly. The result? Confusion, rework, and loss of profitability. The leadership lid holds back the team’s effectiveness, and not because of skill, but because of limited leadership ability.
• The Department Head’s Lid
  A department head who refuses to delegate keeps all decisions at their desk. The bottleneck creates frustration, slows projects, and prevents team members from developing. The lid isn’t a technical ability; it’s a lack of trust and empowerment.

A principal who invests in developing emerging leaders lifts the lid. By providing training, mentorship, and opportunities for others to step up, they expand the team’s capacity. That investment multiplies the firm’s effectiveness and strengthens its future.

Why This Matters for Design Firm Leaders

In the A/E industry, we pride ourselves on technical excellence — and rightly so. But the Law of the Lid reminds us that technical skills alone don’t scale organizations. Leadership capacity does. The way we communicate, empower, delegate, and influence determines whether our firms thrive or stall.

The CDFO Connection

The lack of leadership skills is where the Certificate in Design Firm Operations (CDFO) comes in. Preparing for and earning the CDFO is one of the most effective ways to raise your leadership lid.

The program doesn’t just deepen your knowledge of finance, contracts, and operations — it broadens your perspective as a leader. It equips you to:

• See beyond your department and understand firm-wide dynamics.
• Make better strategic decisions rooted in both numbers and people.
• Influence outcomes across the organization, not just in your lane of expertise.

In short, the CDFO helps you raise your lid and, in turn, raise your firm’s lid. Where might your own leadership lid be showing up today? And what’s one step you could take to raise it?

The best leaders are lid-lifters. They invest in themselves so they can invest in others, raising the ceiling on what’s possible for their teams and organizations.

👉 Apply for the CDFO today and take the next step in raising your leadership capacity — and your firm’s future.

SDA does not endorse any products or services mentioned, and SDA does not assume responsibility for any circumstances arising out of the interpretation, application, use, or misuse of any information presented. SDA recommends that the reader consult the appropriate legal, financial, or human resource counsel before implementing the information contained herein.

The SDA Fellows Program celebrates the best of the best, people who have helped shape the Society for Design and raised the bar for the business of design. These are the mentors, innovators, and big-picture thinkers who do more than show up; they make things happen. Becoming an FSDA means you have done more than contribute to SDA. It means you have made a lasting impact on your firm, your peers, and the profession itself.

Becoming a Fellow is a milestone worth aiming for. The process starts with a self-nomination, which is really an opportunity to pause and reflect on how far you have come and where you want to grow next. A panel of SDA Fellows reviews each application, looking for individuals who have shown leadership, dedication, and a commitment to advancing practice management. Along the way, you may find yourself inspired to pursue certification, take on new challenges, and continue developing your skills and confidence as a leader.

And here is the best part: the journey does not stop once you are named a Fellow. This group is always up to something good, mentoring members, leading programs, and creating spaces for meaningful professional growth. Their annual Path2Success series has become a fan favorite. It is part book club, part leadership lab, where SDA members dig into big ideas together. This year’s pick, Radical Candor, sparked great conversation about feedback, communication, and authentic leadership that truly changes workplaces for the better.

At its heart, being an SDA Fellow is not about a title. It is about belonging to a circle of professionals who lift others while continuing to grow themselves. Fellows are the ones who see what is possible and help the rest of us get there. If that sounds like you, or the you you want to become, maybe it is time to start your own Path to Success.