My experiment:
On January 2, I decided to post on LinkedIn for 30 days, using the free tools that come with any account.
In February I looked at my initial results, and extended the experiment to 90 days. I felt that would give me enough feedback/data to decide whether to keep posting permanently.
Why LinkedIn?
X has turned into a bin-fire of lies, insults, anger and baiting. Now that Facebook and Instagram have stopped moderating posts, I suspect they’ll do the same.
The advertising on all three channels means it’s much harder to reach a big audience without paying. Your posts are only being shown to a small number of your own followers, let alone reaching new people.
Obviously, if you already have a big audience and it’s still working for you – ignore me. But if you’re finding it hard to reach the same people you used to reach five years ago, please know that it’s not just you.
TikTok’s success has meant that other channels changed their algorithms, making it harder to build an audience or sell there.
LinkedIn might be a good alternative.
The channel has 1.1 billion users, but only 1% of them post every day. It needs new content, so it has an incentive to show your posts to a wider audience. For now, it also carries less advertising, making organic reach easier to achieve.
I’d noticed a sharp increase in creatives getting contracts, clients and freelance commissions via LinkedIn. So I have, for some time, been urging clients to beef up their LinkedIn profile and post more to attract work.
But.. I wasn’t using it well myself.
This experiment was about changing that.
The results are below.
But first, it’s important to say that social media isn’t compulsory. Creatives sold their work, found new clients and built an audience for hundreds of years before social media come along. And we still can.
Many of us still get most of our work via referral from our network. If that’s working for you, don’t feel you are somehow failing if you don’t use socials.
10 things I learned:
1: By traditional metrics, this experiment was a failure.
None of my posts went viral (or even slightly infectious). My total views in a week shot up to over 7,000, then settled back to a steady 2000 or so. Very few posts had more than a couple of comments as engagement.
Over the 90 days, my following went up from 1200 to 1400. (For context, a fellow coach who was posting only three times a week but using video added 800 new followers in the same period.)
2: I enjoyed it more than I expected.
I reconnected with some old friends and work colleagues I’d lost touch with. I met some interesting new people. I got a few new ideas, resources and strategies to try, too.
3: It was surprisingly good for business.
I always have a surge of people booking introductory coaching sessions with me in January. But the high demand continued in the following two months, so I checked more closely. A lot of these new session applications were from new followers on LinkedIn.
Several new followers also booked places on my workshops. Three have become new one-to-one coaching clients.
I estimate the income generated by this experiment to be about £9k. Suddenly, my little experiment doesn’t seem a failure at all.
4: Choose who you engage with carefully.
Seek out other creatives and people you feel aligned to, and your feed quickly becomes more interesting. If you engage with ‘hot takes’ and clickbait, that’s what you’ll get more of. This is all pretty obvious, but it transformed my LI experience.
When I started, my feed was full of tech bros shouting about cold showers, workouts and how to 10x my business. Now there are artists, writers, photographers, TV and film people, thoughtful posts on AI, creative business and marketing. There’s still a lot of noise, but I’d say 50% of my feed is now content I find interesting.
5: Commenting matters.
I was advised to engage with at least 10 posts daily, adding meaningful comments rather than just clicking the ‘like’ button. This definitely helped with my reach and engagement, and made my feed more interesting.
But it was much, much more time-consuming than writing my own posts. Finding posts to comment on and thinking of something useful to add took time and energy, though it got easier as I found and bookmarked people I felt aligned with.
6: Any social channel is a time-suck.
LinkedIn is nowhere near as addictive as Instagram or TikTok, but I still found myself scrolling more than usual, checking my phone first thing and dipping in while watching TV in the evening.
I’ve had to be strict about not touching my phone in the morning until I’ve written for at least an hour, and not checking the feed outside my work hours. I wasn’t always successful in this!
7: Posting on Saturday didn’t work for me.
I got behind, and ended up writing posts on the weekend. So I now post just a “Sunday celebration”, with three things I’d enjoyed or found inspiring that week.
I’m not sure how useful this weekly post is to anyone but me, but I’ve loved doing it. It’s quick, it got me looking for interesting things to share, and it’s also a record of what I’m watching, reading, doing. This is a keeper for me.
8: Personal stories did better than general statements.
Posts with external links (usually to my website) did much worse.
Some of my posts were polished and considered. But many were whatever was on my mind that day, written quickly. There were typos, mistakes. It doesn’t have to be perfect!
9: I didn’t run out of things to say.
Posting daily was a struggle, at first. But the more I wrote, the easier it got.
Several quick comments I made on other people’s posts later got expanded into new posts for me. I’ve formed the habit of capturing new ideas whenever they come, which makes it much easier when I sit down to write.
10: Views of my LinkedIn profile rose sharply.
And this has continued, even when views of my posts decreased. I don’t think I’ve got the profile itself right yet – it needs more thought.
If you only do one thing on LinkedIn, make sure your profile is up-to-date, attractive, and clearly states what you do, who you do it for, and how potential clients can get in touch.
I’ll be creating a step-by-step guide to help you do this as soon as I’ve got my own in better shape!
Conclusion:
- I will continue posting on LinkedIn for the rest of the year, but only 3-4 times a week.
- My next focus will be improving my profile, and honing systems to make it easier to post and comment consistently, in less time.
- Commenting on ten posts a day is challenging for me. So moving forward, I’m setting a goal of at least five comments, every weekday.
- I will now start to repeat some of the content I’ve already created. Posts that worked will simply be reused; posts that didn’t work will be edited, rewritten, or given new photos. Most people who are successful on social media seem to have a library of content, greatest hits that they recycle every 4-6 months. That’s what I’m aiming to build over the next year.
- It’s not about the number of followers you have. It’s about their quality. If you’re attracting the right people, you don’t need a huge following. Find your tribe, and serve them brilliantly.
- This is what worked for me. If you want to experiment with LinkedIn, start with a short commitment, track your results and adjust accordingly. Find what works for you!
Helpful resources
Want to follow me on LinkedIn? I’m here
I found two courses useful, on my LinkedIn journey. Justin Welsh and David Hieatt are masters of short-form, attention-grabbing writing and well worth following on LinkedIn.
Welsh uses his posts to promote his courses and to talk about building a business that fits your values and lifestyle; Hieatt uses it to share stuff he finds interesting and draw attention to his many businesses, from Hiutt jeans to the DO Lectures and books.
- The LinkedIn Operating System, by Justin Welsh is $200, but he runs regular offers (I paid $70). It’s very thorough and useful, though mostly aimed at people wanting to build a business online.
- Micro-blog System, led by David Hieatt. This is online, but he runs it in cohorts, placing you in teams of ten to help you stay consistent. I paid $350, but pricing for the next one (starting May 2025) wasn’t clear.There were lots of creatives in my cohort.
What do you think?