Building your personal brand can be wildly helpful to your company.
In many ways, a founder’s brand is more powerful than their company’s brand.
It can be intimidating at first but with a simple starting plan, you’ll gain momentum and confidence quickly!
I’ve been posting on LinkedIn 2x/wk for several years.
I’ve made great connections, heard from hundreds of founders that appreciate the stories and tips, established credibility as a newcomer, and stayed “in touch” with thousands of people.
It would be impossible to get that reach through events or coffee meetings alone.
I have learned a lot along the way, including from folks WAY BETTER than me like:
If you want to get inspired, see different styles, or take notes on best practices, check out their content!
Shannan Brooks and Evie Lutz are two behind-the-scenes geniuses that have also been hugely influential.
Since LinkedIn is such a popular channel for business folks, it’s a starting place for many founders building a social presence or personal brand.
Here’s what to know about posting on LinkedIn so that you can effectively build your brand.
MOST IMPORTANT STRATEGY: Just get started.
After that, if you’re spending the time anyway, might as well know the tips and tricks.😉
Here are 7 straightforward strategies to maximize your impact on LinkedIn!
P.S. Who’s going to Atlanta Tech Week next week? What events are you going to? Lmk if you’ll be at the Founder Funder Jog or my Startup Summer School sesh on Building a Billion Dollar Business so I can look for you!
Okay, back to LinkedIn!
1. Your Opening Line (aka “The Hook”)
Seth Radman, with 20,000 followers, said he spends 70% of his energy on the first line of a post because it is 10x more important in driving engagement.
It’s called a “hook” and the best ones are usually controversial, surprising, or peak your curiosity!
If a post isn’t performing well, Seth will swap out the opening line. A/B testing in real time.
Go check out the opening lines of top influencers. They are SO good.
One of my favorite examples is “These women are drug dealers.” (Full credit to Lauren Goodell for that one!)
It was a recap of a biotech founders lunch that ended up with 16,000 views. 😉
2. Consistency
It’s better to post 1x/wk for 6 months, than every day for 2 weeks and then go dark.
Why?
You stay “top-of-mind” with your target audience over time
LinkedIn rewards consistency by showing your posts to more people
If you are going all in for maximum followers and views, posting daily is the gold standard.
But this is really hard to do for the long term unless you enjoy it, you have help, or you’re just a total animal (that’s a compliment!).
3. Visuals, Visuals, Visuals
There’s a reason I put cringe-y me-drinking-coffee photos with LinkedIn posts…people love photos and therefore “The Algorithm” does too.
Not ready to see your face all the time? (Trust me, I get it.)
Other non-selfie options include pictures from events, group shots, charts, screenshots, quotes, or other visual digital content.
You don’t have to have an image on every post but including them will usually increase engagement.
BONUS: if you have an image, you can now re-post to Instagram too!
4. Do More (Of What Works)
Here’s the secret from the content pros — have something that performs well?
Do it again!
Not the exact same thing.
Use the same opening hook with different content.
Do more content on that topic.
Recreate that length or style of post.
You’ll notice the best creators do this frequently.
They’re also looking at other people’s content and riffing off their top posts. Nick Maggiulli shares good examples (and a critique) of this strategy.
Piggybacking on a recent trend is another common content strategy. Do your version of the trend or share thoughts on a topic everyone is talking about (tariffs, anyone?).
5. Engage With The Audience
Reply back when someone comments! Comment on other people’s posts!
And for goodness sake’s, keep it positive.
I follow the golden rule:
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all…because you never know who is a potential customer or employee!
Once you’re a regular LinkedIn-er, it’s common to ask a question or two at the end of a post to encourage engagement and comments.
6. External Links In Comments
You know why people do that annoying thing where they put a blog post link the comments section instead of the actual post?
LinkedIn *hates* external links. It wants as much on-platform content creation as possible.
I read this in their documentation:
You’re blogging on Substack?? Yuck. No thank you. Bring that to LinkedIn and we will reward you generously by showering your posts with views and engagement.
I also saw this weird sign:
DON’T NEVER LEAVE. -Hotel California & LinkedIn Algorithm
7. Algorithm Changes
You know how I said photos and avoiding external links improves performance?
That may not be true forever.
As consumer behavior evolves, so too does the LinkedIn algorithm.
Recently, video performance shot up as LinkedIn added more video features (thus, encouraging video content).
How do you know what the LinkedIn algorithm likes?
Track your own performance metrics
Periodically review LinkedIn “best practices” via marketing gurus or other influencers
Read the code base (Seth Radman, engineering whiz, got insights from this!)
That’s it. Go out there and do it!
You’ll figure it out as you go.
The best way to do LinkedIn is to…do LinkedIn!
Post something today (and tell me) so I can give it a like and a comment!
Do you post regularly on LinkedIn? What advice do you have for those getting started? Any key strategies that I missed? If you want to post more but haven’t, what’s getting in the way??
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