Why LinkedIn matters (or not): 5 strategies you can use to thrive on LinkedIn
They all work + practical how-tos
Dear GTM Strategist!
If you have a mini-anxiety attack whenever you open LinkedIn and see a fortune cookie wisdom leadership post getting 5000 likes while your analysis of RAG database architecture barely broke 10 likes after you encouraged your team on Slack to engage…
…then this Substack is for you.
Demand generation on LinkedIn became a go-to playbook for what is called “founder-led growth.” But is it really worth spending 2-4 hours a day “value-commenting” on LinkedIn?
I always say to myself:
“My clients are not idiots.”
Most of them rationally understand why and how to post on LinkedIn.
For those who do not, you can try any of these:
Invest 90 minutes in reviewing Richard van der Blom’s LinkedIn Algo Report study featuring data from the largest non-official machine learning study run by Ivana Todorovic, co-founder of AuthoredUp, and you will understand how to play the game.
You should post 2-3 times a week and write 5 comments to posts from opinion leaders in your space before you post yourself. It is best to ask your ICP who they follow, ring a bell at their profiles to get notifications when they post, and be one of the first people who comment on their posts in a value-adding way. It takes about 30 minutes a day, but you have to do it at least 5 times a week. It is best to book a calendar slot for this.
You probably already have knowledge assets in your company - webinars, podcasts, ebooks, and presentations that an AI or an intern can repurpose into at least 50 LinkedIn posts; you just need to schedule them and show up let’s say 3 times a week to engage in comments and clean the DMs. It would cost you up from $0 (chat GPT) to $800 - part-time social media managers to get this done decently well. Hack: ChatGPT can even do a content plan for you, so all you have to do is schedule some posts, show up, and engage a little.
But you will not do it.
Your time has HUGE opportunity costs.
If I cannot demonstrate to you immediately what is the value you get - why should you?
So the right question to ask here is not HOW to create demand generation on LinkedIn but if it really is the right GTM motion for you to allocate your resources to.
While Inbound (LinkedIn content generation) was one of the winning GTM motions that helped me get 3000 signups for the launch of the GTM Strategist in 2-3 months by posting there daily and continues to be the biggest demand generation channel for my products and consulting services, I fully acknowledge that it is not for everyone.
A founder in my network told me the other day:
“We sell 50-100K deals and posting daily on LinkedIn will have a much lower ROI than if I go and visit three industry events, shake some hands, and secure meetings there.”
Fair.
For him, having a decent and updated LinkedIn profile is good enough, and he can add connections to kickstart business development conversations there (optionally).
He could reflect on how the supply chain is undergoing digital transformation.
He could announce that he is in Cologne and open for meetings.
He could be sharing photos from the event.
But he does not have to.
His business is alive and well without LinkedIn.
The #1 rule in GTM is to go where the audience is.
The #2 rule is that there are 2-3 GTM Motions that will work well for you.
LinkedIn may or may not be one of them.
But if your target audience is active on LinkedIn and you have researched that LinkedIn is a part of their buyer journey or even found some competitors who are killing it there, you might want to look into this.
If LinkedIn turns out to be relevant for your target audience, it still does not mean that you should book 30 minutes a day to “congratulate Boris for being promoted.” You have to develop a workflow that will guide you towards your business objectives.
FOMO is real.
But do not let it fool you that it works for everyone. It really does not.
In this Substack, I will present you 5 Strategies of LinkedIn activity and give you examples, tools, and walkthroughs on how to execute them.
🎶A little bit less conversation, a little more action, please.
Let’s rock & roll! 🎸
Shape your game plan: What are you trying to do on LinkedIn in the first place?
LinkedIn can play many roles in your GTM blueprint. You can use it to create content there, buy ads, engage with communities, explore partnerships, do outreach, or even embed it into your product as a content loop. Here is how I think about which jobs LinkedIn can do for you.
But which one to choose and how many resources can you allocate there? We will dive into different strategies of LinkedIn activities later, but for now, I want you to think about one important thing:
What is your goal on LinkedIn?
How will you measure the success in 2-3 months of investing in growing the channel?
It is not the only game to play.
When I asked founders and experts in my network why they are willing to invest 4-10 hours weekly on LinkedIn, their answers were various:
PM from Supply Chain from Germany: “I want to reach 1 million impressions so that I can start making money from content—it is just a personal challenge.”
Go-to-Market Agency from Canada: “We want to attract different types of clients who would pay more for our services. This would be great for our positioning and, ultimately, lead gen.”
A brand manager from a 36 billion corpo from the Netherlands: “I want to raise my professional profile so that I can get better speaking gigs, invites to teach at universities, and climb the corporate ladder.”
IP counsel from the US from a 3.1 billion company: “LinkedIn is where I get the best knowledge from the community. I love to engage in comments to support my peers and attract new opportunities by adding value.”
VC from the US: “I am building awareness for my VC found so that we can generate more relevant leads. We compete against Y Combinator, a16z, and Sequoia Capital for the best startups.”
100K LinkedIn influencer with origins from India: “I genuinely just want to share knowledge and help people. I had it hard. Let’s make it a little easier for young people who want to take this journey.”
CTO from Poland in the AI space: “I say to myself that I post there to attract new talent and partners, but truth to be told - it flatters my ego that I am an opinion leader in the space. It has a lot of intangible benefits.”
What do all these great answers have in common?
They are business or professional goals. Their why.
What is your why?
LinkedIn is a tool to get something.
What do you truly desire?
That something can be an emotional benefit (status, ego, feeling of belonging, altruism - to help other people) or even an intellectual challenge such as:
“Ha, all the LinkedIn content creator bros are telling me to post selfies. Can I create a post with 1000 likes without sounding like Ryan Gosling in the Notebook movie?”
I am not saying that this is the best business motivation, but one of my colleagues really wanted to prove that there is hope for an “intelligent life” on LinkedIn.
It will be difficult to gather a critical mass of energy, creativity, and time to get the ball rolling without your strength.
It is much like going to the gym.
You will do it if you are motivated to do something.
Overcoming the obstacles
Apart from knowing the “why” and motivation, what prevents very intelligent people from stepping up their LinkedIn activity are the course of knowledge and imposter syndrome. That often reflected in statements like:
“I do not know what to write about.”
Well, ask your colleagues what are 3-5 things that you are absolutely best at and write about that. Or you can start by commenting on LinkedIn or sharing useful posts and articles by others. C’mon, I know you are subscribed to 10 other amazing newsletters.
“Eh, everyone knows that.”
How do you know that? Have you tried posting about it, and someone commented, “Tell me something I do not know?” Look, give it your best shot. Here is a tool that will give you insights into what is going on in your fields of expertise or interest. You can absolutely comment on that and present your point-of-view.
“I have a writer's block.”
I mean… I can let you go with excuses and cut you some slack, but that is not good for you.
Believe me, I know what writer's block is. I was sitting in my home for a year working on my book GTM Strategist for 4-6 hours a day, including weekends. The only cure to beat the writer's block is to sit down and write anyway. Sometimes you have to read something else or talk to someone because you need information and need to do more research. But really don’t wait for some magic moment of inspiration. Half of the win of LinkedIn is just to show up and do the work - comments, posts. You win by being consistent so suck it up and do it anyway, no matter how uninspired you may feel.
Oh, have I mentioned that my team compared my motivation style to Winston Churchill?
Well, guilty as charged. My way of loving people is helping them to get things done.
After you know your why and human-up to show up and actually do the work, the next action point is to select your LinkedIn strategy and execute it like the boss you really are!
5 Strategies of LinkedIn Activity: Choose the one that fits your goals and the resources available
There are 5 different strategies of LinkedIn activity.
They all work. For each I will share an example you can analyze and estimate the resources needed to do it properly. But before we dive into the LinkedIn playbook, let’s get one thing straight - strategy 0 is to have a decent LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn page and to know your ICP. Starting without this is like spraying and praying that your posts will go viral. Not GTM Strategist style. Let’s gear up.
Strategy 0: Indexed
Let’s do some housekeeping. Before you start, you need to:
Have a decently looking LinkedIn profile
Have a company page with at least a logo
List of your ICP & opinion leaders with whom you will engage
Just do not overthink this.
You can get there in a couple of hours this weekend if you are motivated to do this.
Here are some good resources that can help you nail this:
LinkedIn moodboard of perfect profiles if you are a perfectionist
Do not know whom to follow on LinkedIn? Ask your audience and observe with whom competitors are intersecting, and as you start writing and engaging on LinkedIn, your feed will improve and become a constant source of inspiration and new discoveries. If you do not like what you see on your LinkedIn feed, here is how you can curate it to get better. Hit the bell on their profiles and engage when they post new stuff - you can start by ringing a bell on my profile - I promise to be nice in comments 🤠- Great, now 19 more follows - go, go, go!
And we are ready.
Let’s get some work done now.
Strategy 1: Founder-Led Growth
Now, the fun part.
That is you, posting smart content and engaging with other opinion leaders and potential clients in the comments.
MVP (Most Valuable Player) in 2024: Adam Robinson
Result: Grew RB2B by posting organically on LinkedIn to $2 million ARR in 22 weeks using a LinkedIn-first approach.
Secret weapons: 50K payrolls for content LinkedIn consultant (before, he had a ghostwriter), spends 40 hours a week doing LinkedIn and engaging in comments, huge on building in public. I loved his recent post on LinkedIn thought leadership ads - Adam shares numbers.
Start here: At least 1-2 hours a day for publishing content and engaging in public. Book a permanent slot on your calendar for daily engagement and posting—30 minutes if you will be posting content and 2-4 hours for content creation if you will be creating content. Consistency is the key. Try posting 3-4 times a week. At least one of these posts should be “built-in public.” It will help if you have a designer or at least invest in Canva Pro and develop some tool templates. First impressions matter when it comes to LinkedIn posts, but great content still triumphs over cosmetics.
Here are more examples of how Adam and other experts use this strategy and a deep dive into Adam’s strategy.
Bottom line: add value.
Do not simply reshare the company’s posts.
Develop your unique PoV and engage in conversations a lot.
How about if you do not want to do it or find it too risky or time-consuming?
Well, others can do it.
Strategy 2: EGC (Employee-Generated Content)
Maybe the founder cannot or does not want to do founder-led growth. Here is some good news for you: by activating 3-10 employee profiles in your company and encouraging and empowering them to comment or post on LinkedIn, you can achieve great results really fast.
Based on my samples, when done right, posts from personal LinkedIn profiles get at least 10x more reach than company pages. Now multiply that by 3-10x and imagine the power of EGC.
MVP in 2024: Clay + external + internal influencers
Let’s review some of them:
Bruno Estella (CMO) is the mastermind behind this approach
Patrick Spychalski, Head of content, does amazing video tutorials and often speaks at webinars/events. They even organize weekly webinars now. They are killing it.
To grasp the full genius behind their approach, let’s view another profile. Alex Lindahl and his team are pioneering the term GTM Engineering, which is super interesting. In our brief conversation, he mentioned: “I have a strong PoV that GTM should be differentiated just like a product and that the best companies do this well and is a significant reason why they succeed.”
Yes, Sir! The best GTM Strategy is a priority and you provide a shiny example of it by “inventing the category” and writing your Substack (http://clayautomation.com/).
Result: We see Clay everywhere. They popularized a new category and communities + incredible hype when they got to $500 million validation.
Secret weapons: Carefully observe Clay’s positioning in the space. You will learn a ton, paired with external influencers, and incredibly responsive partnerships.
Unfortunately, I do not have much insight into Clay's internal engagement strategy just yet, but I will try my best to get it. For now, Adam will help.
I want to give an additional shout-out to Laura Erdem, Sales Manager of Americas at Dreamdata. I very much respect and appreciate her work as well. I could totally feature their team at Dreamdata in the EGC section too, but I went with Clay because they run a very interesting combination of internal + external influencers.
Start here: Empower 3-5 people in your company to form an EGC program. Educate them on LinkedIn and make sure they have the interest, time, and resources to do it. Weekly or biweekly meetings work best. We started to work on this with one of my clients. One of the business developers 10x-ed her reach in a week, went viral on X, and developed the first two relevant prospecting conversations in week 1 - she is incredible. You can expect the results really fast when this strategy is implemented properly.
I am working on an EGC playbook with some of my companies. If you need help with this, reach out to me. Please describe the challenges in detail so I can help or refer you to another field expert who can.
Strategy 3: Value Commenting Wiz
“Do not post and ghost” is the first rule of a sustainable LinkedIn strategy. The real magic happens in the comments. This is where you can reach a much larger audience and get additional exposure to your profile and quality at PoV. The key is to really provide value in comments. People these days on LinkedIn hate AI-generated content. If you have a semi-decent lookup of Engage AI that summarizes the post in comments, you can now unlock the full benefit of applying this powerful strategy.
MVP in 2024: Have you ever seen a dinosaur on LinkedIn?
I have - in comments. 🦕
Mac Reddin and his team at Commsor. Commsor makes it possible to tap into your network of executives, advisors, partners, customers and more to find warm paths to deals.
Commsor’s team members walk the talk. Their vivid branding, high-quality assets, and lively approach that not only adds value but also brings smiles to peoples’ faces is a really clever approach. I asked Mac to share his blueprint with you directly. He kindly agreed.
Result: “Results-wise, it's not purely because of comments, but so far this year 52% of our revenue has been sourced through LinkedIn presence of our team,” says Mac.
You see, it works best in combination with value posting.
Secret weapons: “I don't have any screenshots that necessarily prove the value of commenting, but some anecdotal bits that might be helpful:
We've closed a deal that came inbound because someone couldn't remember our name, but remembered the dino emoji and found a team member via that.
I've had single comments get more than 100 engagements, and often times comments drive more new followers for me than posts.
Good comments bring attention to you, which drives more people to see your posts.
Our company page has been called out multiple times recently for having the best comments. The trick here is to treat the company page like a person, not a brand. Ben on our team runs that and does a great job.”
Start here: Select 10-20 profiles that your ICP follows, ring a bell at their profiles and be one of the first people who comment. Comment at least 5-10x before you post. When you start doing this, be careful that you are not just spamming the links there but seriously adding value. You are penetrating to someone else’s community. Behave. 🤠
To nail this one, you need to really carefully select your ICP, engage early, and add value in comments. The good thing however is that once you do that, this type of content that landed well as comments (see your activity section on the profile) can be repurposed as a post. It is practically tested. Credits for explaining this approach go to LinkedIn expert Jasmin Alić.
Strategy 4: Repurposing Growth Machine
Here is the good news—finally! You do not have to reinvent the wheel all the time.
What works - just works, and best-in-class content creators leverage that.
I have experienced the same image going viral 3 times on my LinkedIn, but there are people who take this the next level.
And one of my favorite people to watch is
MVP in 2024: Rubén Domínguez Ibar
I was lucky to meet Rubén in Madrid and he explained to me how he put this logic on steroids. He shared some data with us.
Result: In a single year, Rubén went from 3K to 130K followers on LinkedIn. In 6 months he also grew his Substack from 0 to 38K subscribers. He is simply incredible - really in it to win it.
Secret weapons: Consistently posting every day (at least 2 times per day), actively answering comments in the first hour after publishing, trying to find the best content possible out there to repurpose it, and giving credit. Rubén is sourcing newsletters, news pages (sifted, axios, pitchbook), and LinkedIn feed. He says: “LinkedIn does a great job showing me only Startup/VC content.”
Start here: Hit the “Save” button and revisit saved posts on a regular basis (set yourself a weekly reminder if needed). You will learn a ton. Test sharing visuals of other content creators and credit them. Do not just repost; try to post natively because the reach will be much better. Doing that does not make you a parrot; it is a smart thing to do, and OG creators will likely engage too. Do not fix what is not broken.
This one was hard for me to implement because I pride myself on being an original thinker, but then I started repurposing my own content. Experiments I ran clearly show that my best-performing visuals will continually outperform all others.
See my repurposing in action in my LinkedIn posting routine You can do this with any best-performing graphic or knowledge asset (whitepaper, ebook, slide deck, blog article, video) that you have.
Strategy 5: Outbound Ninja
Neither have time nor patience that the inbound would yield results? Just finding the idea of doing so much work and sitting around for leads to land in your inbox off? No problem: LinkedIn has got you covered for outbound, too.
MVP in 2024: Xavier Caffrey
Xavier's GTM agency, One Away, experienced explosive growth in the last year.
Secret weapons: Most recently, Xavier generated 75 leads for a client in 1 week using Clay, converting to 38 meetings in 48 hours.
Start here: Cold context LinkedIn outbound rarely works. The easiest place to start is warm outreach. If an ICP engages with your post, you continue the discussion there and then transition to your email or DM. Remember: the first job to be done is to engage them in a conversation, to start the discussion, do not directly send your Calendly virtual coffee networking link - that does not work. Build trust, likability, and context first. Would you go on a date with a person who shouts at you “Go out with me” on a street? Yeah, though so.
So what will it be, dear GTM Strategist?
Which LinkedIn strategy did you choose to step up your game in Q3?
The easiest place to start is value commenting, then transition to content repurposing and, later, more advanced strategies. And remember, half of the success is just showing up every day and making sure that your activity adds value and is centered towards ICP.
Small acts compound.
Most people will give up in <1month.
If you set a repetitive 30-minute daily reminder, you are probably already ahead.
In the end, do not do it if you think it does not make sense for you.
Choose your battles.
I recently learned that the opposite of the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is the Joy of Missing Out.
Instead of guilt-tripping yourself for why you do not do something, enjoy the fact that you will miss it. I am trying to practice this mindset for all the 80% of webinars that I do not show up for.
If after reading all these examples you still objectively think that the ROI of doing this is not convincing enough, you saved yourself hundreds of hours in the next 3 months by not doing it. That is still a win.
Before we say bye-bye, I would just like to share with you a couple of exciting updates from my business:
🔥 News from the GTM Strategist
Epic collab with Product leader Pawel Hurny - The Product Compass
I was amazed to work with Pawel on a recap of our most popular GTM concepts.
Pawel is a content machine and I mean that in the best way possible. His point of view on Product Management is world-class. He shares so many useful frameworks, and I was blown away by his knowledge and professionalism in his content creation and distribution process. What I respect the most about him is that he is, like me, still an operator. There is something magical about people who are authors and doers.
Job: Digital Marketer at Growth Lab
This weekend is the last chance to apply for a Digital Marketer role on my team. I will be working closely with this person on our content, digital funnels, and new knowledge assets. Learn more about the role.
We are blessed to have some really strong applications from LinkedIn, but I wanted to share this via my Substack there in case you missed the job opening.
On Monday, we will do the application screening and select candidates that I will interview. The role can be part-time or full-time.
Product update: FREE update to GTM Bundle: Gallery of my best-performing LinkedIn posts
Last but not least, to increase the value of the GTM Bundle ($47), I added one great additional asset to it at https://gtmstrategist.com/.
GTM Strategist Mental Models Gallery unites all the (non-memes and video) posts that I have published on LinkedIn since the book launch in November 2023. You can find almost 100 infographics, schemes, templates, and recommended tool lists. The posts are neatly organized in Notion to follow book chapters, so you can easily repurpose them for your posts and slides.
If you already got the bundle, I already sent you a free upgrade.
If you did not receive it, just let us know at order@gtmstrategist.com, and we will take care of it as soon as possible.
These materials will not be shared elsewhere.
In case you are new to our GTM Strategist squad, this is a product that we upgraded:
Until next time,
Maja
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Excellent and funny, I love your communicate style, you can #ChurchillMe any day 😀
I have your book, I bought it to help a friend, who is working on her idea. Now I have my idea to work on.
I did really enjoy this post! Very very useful and inspiring!!