Executive & personal brand development
in Munich

A personal brand built for German-speaking readers runs into rules and habits that a generic playbook ignores. Some are legal. Some are simply about tone. Both show up on the first page a visitor opens, so they belong in the plan before any design work starts.

Start with the legal notice. German law requires a so-called Impressum on websites that are run in a business-like way, and a personal site that sells consulting, promotes a practice or invites paid enquiries usually counts. The rule now sits in the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz, the act that replaced the old Telemediengesetz in 2024. The wording changed. The practical obligation stayed much the same.

What goes into it is fairly concrete. A full name, a postal address where documents can be served, an email address and a fast way to make contact. A VAT identification number if one exists. Members of regulated professions, such as lawyers, tax advisers or architects, add their professional title, the chamber they belong to and a reference to the rules that govern them.

Placement matters as much as content. The notice has to be easy to find and reachable from every page, which in practice means a clear link in the footer labelled Impressum. Hiding it behind a menu labelled About does not help. A privacy notice under the GDPR sits alongside it as a separate page, because the two answer different questions.

Profiles on social networks raise the same question. When a founder uses a profile to win business, German courts have treated that profile as a business-like offer too. The usual fix is simple. Add a link to the Impressum of the website in the contact section of the profile, with the word Impressum visible.

Then comes the choice of network. LinkedIn is where international contacts, investors and most English-language conversations happen. XING, the German-language network, still matters to some people in some sectors, especially older recruiters and regional firms. Look at where the actual target readers keep an active profile. Running both at full effort rarely pays off.

A light approach works when the answer is mixed. The main profile gets the posts, the articles and the replies. The secondary profile carries a complete, current summary and a link to the main one. It stays tidy. It does not pretend to be busy.

Language is often the hardest decision. German distinguishes the formal Sie from the informal du, and a personal brand has to pick one for its posts, its site and its newsletter. Start-up circles, tech and creative fields lean towards du. Law, finance, medicine and industry usually expect Sie, at least in first contact.

Mixing both looks careless. A site that says Sie on the homepage and du in the newsletter reads as two people. Decide once, write the choice into a short style note, and give that note to anyone who drafts on behalf of the founder. The same note should say when English is used instead of German, and whether posts appear in both languages or one.

Before a first meeting, most people type the name of the person they are about to meet into a search engine. They look at the first screen of results and form a view in under a minute. That screen is part of the personal brand whether anyone planned it or not.

Begin with an honest audit. Search the full name in a private browser window, logged out, on a phone and on a laptop. Note every result on the first two pages. Mark which ones the person controls, which ones they could influence, and which ones belong to someone else entirely.

Namesakes are the most common problem. A founder may share a name with a footballer, a novelist or someone with an unfortunate news story. Trying to outrank a famous namesake is usually a waste of effort. Distinction works better. A middle initial, a consistent professional descriptor, or the company name next to the personal name gives search engines and readers something to separate the two people.

Consistency of the name itself matters more than it seems. If the site says Katharina, the speaker bio says Kathi and the company page says K. Weber, the results scatter across three identities. Pick one form. Use it everywhere a person can be listed, from conference programmes to podcast show notes to the imprint of a book.

The strongest single asset is a site on a domain with the name in it. It is the one result the person fully owns. Give it a clear title, a short description that states what they do, and links to every profile they keep active. Search engines tend to reward a page that other trusted pages point to, so the links from profiles back to the site matter too.

Old material is a separate job. A dormant blog, an abandoned profile on a network nobody uses, a speaker page from a previous employer with an outdated title. Most of these can be updated or removed by asking. Log in, close what is dead, update what is stale. Where a third party hosts the page, a polite email with the correct wording often does the rest.

Negative results that are accurate cannot be wished away. Newer, relevant material pushes them lower over time, but only if it is genuinely useful and published on pages that get linked. A steady rhythm of articles, talks and interviews does more than a burst of profiles created in one week.

Repeat the audit every few months. Results shift as new pages appear. A quick check before a funding round, a job change or a big launch catches surprises while there is still time to act on them.

Most personal brand plans are about publishing. Posts, articles, a newsletter, a talk. Yet a large part of how a professional becomes known happens under posts written by other people, in the comments. It costs less time than writing and it reaches readers who have never seen the person before.

A good comment is a small piece of writing with a job. It adds a fact the author left out, offers a counter example, or asks a question that moves the discussion forward. Praise on its own does nothing. Great post, thanks for sharing is invisible. A comment that says what went wrong the last time the idea was tried gets read.

Choosing where to comment is a strategy in itself. Make a short list of people whose readers overlap with the audience the person wants. Include a few large accounts, several peers of similar size and some smaller voices who reply to every response. The mix matters. Large accounts bring reach, peers bring conversation, and small accounts bring relationships.

Timing changes the result more than wording. A comment in the first hour after a post goes live sits near the top and collects replies. The same comment the next day is buried. Turning on notifications for a handful of accounts on the list is a practical way to catch that window.

Length should match the thread. Two to four sentences usually work. A long essay under a post by someone else looks like an attempt to take over the stage, and readers notice. If the thought needs more room, write a short reply and turn the longer version into a post of its own, crediting the original author.

Disagreement is allowed and often useful. Keep it specific and polite, address the idea rather than the person, and stop after one exchange if the author clearly does not want a debate. People scroll past arguments. They remember a clear, calm correction.

Replies under posts the person wrote are part of the same habit. Answering every serious comment in the first day signals that there is a human behind the account. It also keeps the post visible for longer. A generic thanks to each commenter wastes that chance. A real answer, or a follow-up question, uses it.

Delegation is where commenting often breaks. An assistant or agency can suggest threads and draft ideas, but comments posted under the name of the person should be read and approved by them. A comment feels personal. When it sounds like a template, readers can tell, and the damage is larger than the benefit.