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I’ve written 10,000 LinkedIn posts. Here’s what I learned.

I’ve written 10,000 LinkedIn posts. Here’s what I learned.

40 simple pieces of actionable LinkedIn tactics you can apply right now

Tommy Clark
March 03, 2025

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

Hope your week is off to a good start. I spent the weekend catching up on sleep (back-to-back sleep scores over 95 - lfg) and reading.

Now, today’s essay. I’ve written a lot of LinkedIn posts. I’m talking 10,000+.

Kind of embarrassing to admit. But, it’s brought in a nice amount of revenue for myself and my clients. In this essay, I’m sharing 40 specific tips you can just steal. Should help you grow your audience faster, and close more deals.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

I’ve written 10,000 LinkedIn posts. Here’s what I learned.

40 simple pieces of actionable LinkedIn tactics you can apply right now

I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time on LinkedIn. I don’t even want to know how many posts I’ve written—for myself and clients. It’s probably somewhere in the 10,000+ range.

Now, at Compound, myself and my team consistently publish ~150 posts per week across our clients. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s working, and what isn’t.

Thought I’d share a massive list of insights with you today. No fluff.

Here are 40, actionable strategies that you can apply to your LinkedIn playbook right now to:

Break through that annoying growth plateau
Start actually getting demos booked from LinkedIn
Finally becoming the thought leader you were meant to be (half kidding)

Shall we?

I. Platform Strategy

(1) Commit to the platform for 6 months. Minimum. LinkedIn will change the course of your business, but not if you “post” for 2 weeks then dip. I was posting for 5 years before starting Compound. The five-year period of building trust is why we went from zero to $1M ARR in less than two.

(2) Answer the Golden Question. Why should someone in my target audience follow me on this platform? If you cannot answer this in one, concise sentence…you’ve got work to do.

(3) Look for Content-Market Fit. Founders who struggle on LinkedIn don’t have CMF. There are 3 pieces to it:

Is the topic related to your product?
Is the topic relevant to your target customer?
Is the topic something you have credibility & experience in?

Example: Austin Hughes is building Unify, a SaaS in the GTM tech category. Sells into other founders and revenue leaders. He posts about GTM strategy and he also documents his learnings from building Unify - both topics relevant to founders and revenue leaders. His credibility comes from his experience running growth at Ramp (where he had the idea for Unify).

(4) Pick the format that works for YOU. Not the format that’s “hot” right now. You can grow on LinkedIn with writing. You can grow on LinkedIn with video. You can grow on LinkedIn with design and infographics. I’m a writer. I love it. I’d write every day, even if I wasn’t paid for it. So, a lot of my content leans into writing. One of my friends loves video. Gives him energy (can’t relate). So he does a ton of short form video. Both of us have growing businesses.

(5) Chase customers, not clout. If you're reading this, you're likely building a software company or some other B2B startup. You might not even want a huge audience on social. Good news. You don’t need one. Use LinkedIn to get in from of the right people. Leave the clout chasing for Instagram influencers.

(6) That said, you should not pitch in every post. A lot of founders read “chase customers not clout” and just start spamming product demos. Wrong. You get customers from content by positioning yourself as a go-to resource for your ICP. You do that by posting valuable content day in and day out. Once you build that good will, you can cash in on it.

(7) Focus on founder-led content first. If you're a recurring reader of Social Files, you already know this. If you're new around here, understand: personal content performs better for early-stage companies. Don’t post into the void from your company account.

(8) Build a balanced Content Funnel. You’ll want a mix of top, middle, and bottom of funnel content on your profile. This way, you’ll bother grow your distribution and convert those new followers into actual leads. You can learn more about this idea in this three-part essay series.

(9) Post 5x per week if you're serious about getting distribution. No, it’s not too much. No, your audience won’t get annoyed (you don’t have one yet). No, you won’t run out of things to say. Consistency and repetition reinforce your status as an authority in your category.

(10) Write for one, specific person. I want you to visualize your target customer sitting at their desk, between meetings, reading your content. What’s going to make that one person stop scrolling? What’s going to make that one person share your content with a coworker?

II. Profile Strategy

(11) Treat your profile like a landing page. When people find your content in feed, a percentage of them will end up on your profile. A percentage of those profile visitors will turn into followers. Your goal is to drive that conversion rate up as much as possible. The next few tips will be focused on that.

(12) Clear profile pic. Usually shoulders and above works well. No selfies. Nothing too zoomed-out. Leave your artistic vision for another platform.

(13) Your headline should communicate your answer to the Golden Question. Why should someone stick around.

Simple formula for this: [ROLE] + [COMPANY] + [VALUE PROP]

Example: CEO @ Compound | Building a social media agency for B2B companies

(14) Make sure your link-in-bio is going to the right place. For most SaaS & AI founders, you’ll want your link to direct people to your home page. If you have a newsletter or lead magnet set up, you can also send people here. I send folks to my newsletter. Might be how you ended up here.

(15) Take advantage of the Featured Links. I recommend picking 1-2 featured links. More than that, and it gets confusing to your audience (the Paradox of Choice). A few options for you to consider: demo page, a case study with your best customer, your lead magnet.

(16) Use the imagery on your Featured Links like a YouTube thumbnail. YouTubers use thumbnails to support the title, and get more people to click on the video. You can use this strategy with your featured links to increase CTR. Check out my profile for a few examples.

(17) Don’t overthink your About section. I don’t know why people feel the need to write novels here. All you need are a few lines. Quick 1-2 lines about your product. Quick 1-2 lines of social proof. Quick 1-2 lines about what to expect on your profile. That’s all.

(18) Headers are also overrated. You can have a nice, branded header if you want. I don’t.

(19) Use UTM links in your bio to track web traffic from LinkedIn. You’ll want these set up in the following locations:

Main link in bio
All Featured links
Profile button link (the one that appears next to your profile picture on the timeline)

(20) All of this should take you 1 hour, max. Run through this checklist and make sure your profile is on point. Then, you should spend most of your time creating A+ content. More on how to do that in a second.

III. Post Strategy

(21) Spend more time than you think you need to on the hook. The hook is the first 1-3 sentences of your post. If this falls flat, the reader will not click “see more.” They’re gone. Obsess over the hook. Write at least 3 variations of each one. It’s worth the time. Plenty of great content gets buried beneath a bad hook.

(22) Use narrative in your content. Shift from “how to” to “how I.” Your stories are your moat. Nobody can copy them. Stories also establish credibility. “5 lessons I wish I knew before scaling Hubspot’s content program to 5M impressions per month” is more compelling than “How to use content to get customers.”

You can use my templates if you need more examples.

(23) Use monetary figures and relevant metrics in your hook. This one’s a classic. People see big, impressive, specific numbers and stop scrolling. You don’t need to overdo this, but it is a lever you should lean on often if you have numbers to use.

(24) Credibility jacking. Use popular figures and company names in your content. People might not know who you are, but you can “borrow” credibility from big names to get around this. For example, I recently made a post about Ramp’s social strategy. Ramp is a well known company in tech, so using their name in the hook can help stop the scroll.

(25) Negativity bias. Humans are wired to pay attention to negativity. Like it or not, it’s reality. You can (tastefully) use this in your content to get more engagement. This post is an example of Negativity Bias in action. Notice how it’s not over-the-top, but it does use negative language in the hook to grab attention.

(26) Tag bigger accounts in content. When someone comments on your post, it gets amplified to their audience. So, when you can get bigger accounts in your niche to comment on your content, you expose your content to their audience. Easy way to tap into this is by tagging these accounts in your content, when it makes sense. This will usually pair well with Credibility Jacking.

(27) Look for templates. Again, you’ve gotta use this one with finesse. But there are often patterns in the content that performs well. On LinkedIn, specific hook templates tend to work well. For example, the whole “I was talking to a $25M CMO last week…” hook style had a generational run in late 2024.

(28) Think in Slack groups. Create content that your target customer will share with their boss Slack. If you genuinely run every piece of content through this filter, you will grow faster on LinkedIn.

(29) Use relevant media whenever possible. Text-only posts can work. But I am seeing posts with relevant photos and graphics overperform. For example, if you're doing a write-up after an offsite, include a team photo from that offsite with the post.

(30) Build your Content Playbook. When you find a winner, use it again. And again. And again. Until it doesn’t work anymore. So many founders are afraid of repeating themselves. The truth: reusing winning angles fast-tracks your growth. Wrote about this phenomenon more here.

(31) Formats reduce friction. Relying on inspiration to strike every time you sit down to write is dangerous. Inspiration is fickle. Instead, establish 3-4 repeatable formats you can lean on. For example, content case studies are a regular in my rotation. I find a popular company, share their content strategy, and 1-2 learnings for founders. If I have no other ideas, I can always lean on this. It reduces the friction of getting a draft on paper.

(32) Make up words. Not joking. Coining phrases is a great way to establish authority on social. You’ll also find that your prospects start using these terms on sales calls. You want to create your own language your prospects can use. These don’t have to be revolutionary, either. For example, I talk a lot about the Content Funnel in my content. This isn’t a ‘new’ idea, but I’ve framed it in a unique way and repeat it often in my content. Other examples: Adam Robinson and “inbound-led outbound,” Sparktoro and “zero-click content.”

(33) Scrappy graphics perform better. Overly branded graphics look like ads. Scrappy graphics (like a Notes app screenshot) communicate the same information in a more social-native way.

(34) Try a lead magnet post. One format that’s crushing on LinkedIn right now is the ‘lead magnet post.’ You have folks comment to get access to a resource. Drives a ton of visibility and potential leads for you to reach out to. Here’s an example.

(35) Build a Content Ecosystem. After you get Founder 1 active on LinkedIn, it’s time to expand. The entire founding team should be active on the platform. Then you can start to layer in other employees. The goal is to create an echo chamber on LinkedIn. Someone in your target audience should not be able to log into LinkedIn daily without seeing something or someone from your company. Here’s a deeper dive into how I’d approach building an ecosystem.

(36) Use Strategic Personal Content. Your personal interests humanize you. But, if you're like me, you don’t want to turn into a lifestyle vlogger. You don’t have to overshare. Instead, pick 1-3 “personal” attributes you can lean on in your content. Mine: fitness, reading, travel. I’ll use occasional examples and anecdotes from these spaces to add personality to my “B2B SaaS marketing” content. I talk about SPC in more nuance here.

(37) Early engagement matters. A lot. The first 60 minutes determine the trajectory of a content piece. You want to maximize the amount of comments and likes. So, if you have an important post (like a fundraise announcement), consider tapping into your network to amplify the content early. Don’t overdo this. And please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t join an engagement pod. But done selectively, this is a smart play.

IV. Outreach Strategy

(38) Spend 15-20 minutes per day engaging on other content. More commenting means more profile views. There are two types of accounts you’ll want to engage with: ICP accounts (duh) and influencer accounts. I recommend building a spreadsheet with 15-20 influencer accounts who your ICP also follow. For example, if I was trying to reach SaaS founders, I’d include people like Adam Robinson, Chris Walker, or Dave Gerhardt on that list.

(39) Send 20 outbound connection requests per day. When someone accepts your connection request, it’s a mutual follow. By this logic, you can manually build an audience full of ideal customers by sending these people connection requests. For example, if you're trying to reach CMOs at Series B companies, use Sales Navigator to build this list. Then spend 10 minutes per day firing off connection requests. These should be blank requests (they perform better).

(40) Use ICP profile views as a signal for outreach. Every day, spend 10-15min combing through your profile viewers. When you see someone who fits your ICP:

Send them a connection request if you haven’t yet.
Send personalized outreach. Doesn’t need to be a hard pitch. I like using a personalized 60-90 second Loom video where I give 1-2 pieces of actionable advice. I’ll end with a soft CTA, but nothing crazy.

(41) Bonus tip for you. I find that listening to either the Interstellar or Succession soundtracks while writing leads to better-performing content. Source: trust me bro. This one’s my favorite mix.

Okay. If you go through this list, one by one, and actually execute it…I would be shocked if you didn’t start getting customers on LinkedIn.

Remember: commit for 6 months, minimum. I cannot overstate how insane it is that 6 months of posting to LinkedIn can change the course of your company. You won’t get it until compounding starts to kick in.

Just trust me on this, please.

By the way, if you want a step-by-step playbook for how to launch your LinkedIn profile, check this essay out next.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

How to BEAT the new LinkedIn algorithm in 6 minutes by Tommy Clark 🎥
Customizing Your Character (Lecture #6) by Brandon Sanderson 🎥
n8n Masterclass: Build AI Agents & Automate Workflows by Nate Herk 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.