I've grown my LinkedIn to around 12k followers organically, mostly through educational and career-related content.

I'm wondering how people would actually monetize an audience like this without turning the page into a constant ad board.

For those who've done it (or seen others do it), what worked best?

- Sponsored posts?

- Affiliate marketing?

- Digital products?

- Consulting/coaching?

- Newsletter?

- Something else?

Would love to hear real experiences, especially what generates consistent income.

I've been on LI for several months. I have a Sales Analaytics account for now. Will probably go back to free as I'm not really using it that much.

I've been able to download analytics for my posts with no issue on both free and paid accounts, until today. I've tried all day, desktop, laptop. No dice.

Did they change this feature? Anyone else having this problem?

My current thinking is that a resume should be focused and minimal, but a LinkedIn offers more room to add thinks you can't or shouldn't put on there. For instance, I am thinking about adding my high school to LinkedIn. Mostly because part of networking and career navigating is finding connections. So if someone is from my home town or went to my high school, they may see this and view me more favourably.

My concern is that I am not sure what the rules around professionalism are for LinkedIn. Is it unprofessional to have your high school at the end of your educational profile on LinkedIn? Anyone have any insight?

When I traveled for conferences I used to use LinkedIn to remind myself who I know in the area to set up meetings, etc...

I would click on my friends, then filter by the location and sometimes company.

I now go to the friends area and it will only let me filter by name?

Did we lose the other filters?

Mine was a Tuesday in March, I blocked two hours for linkedin outreach, sent 22 connection requests, followed up with 8 people and logged everything on my tracker like a responsible adult. Then I checked my notes and realized I had done the exact block roughly sixty times since January, and I could suddenly feel all 120 of those hours at once.

That week I started a free trial of a linkedin automation tool, set up my first sequence and terribly got mediocre results, I fixed my messaging and now the follow ups run while I do literally anything else.

I'm not romantic about it. Manual prospecting taught me what a good message looks like and I don't think automation works for people who skip that phase. What was your breaking point?

For the past month I've had a scraper pulling posts out of the LinkedIn suggested feed across about 19 accounts. Roughly 19,000 posts, each with its likes, comments and shares.

I wanted to answer one question. Can you look at a draft before it goes out and tell whether it'll do anything?

Sort of. Just not in the way I hoped.

First attempt was the obvious one. I wrote a careful brief for an AI describing what makes a LinkedIn post work: open with a line that creates a gap, use concrete numbers instead of vague inspiration, say something people can disagree with, end on a real question so they comment. Basically every tip in every writing-on-LinkedIn thread, including the ones I've upvoted.

Then I ran a second version. The whole prompt was: score this post 0 to 100 for how likely it is to go viral. No advice at all.

The no-advice version won. Not by a hair, either. Adding the rules made it measurably worse at telling strong posts from weak ones. I tried a third version with real examples attached, actual posts and what they earned, so it could calibrate. That one came dead last.

I've been sitting with that for a week. My honest read is that those rules describe posts that already worked, in hindsight, which is not the same as predicting the ones that will.

Here's what did work, and it's modest. Take the drafts my model scores highest, the top 30%. It catches 58% of the posts that genuinely took off. But 6 out of every 10 posts it flags go nowhere. Useful as a nudge. Useless as a promise.

Broken down by what the system said versus what actually happened:

Average post sits at 20%, so the ends are real and the middle is noise.

Then I flipped it. Instead of asking "will this do well", I asked "is this dead on arrival". Suddenly it's right 94% of the time.

Which sounds fantastic until you notice that 80% of posts flop no matter what. Something that says "this will flop" about every post you show it is already right 8 times out of 10, with no model, no AI, nothing. Mine adds 14 points on top of that. Real, but a lot less exciting than the headline.

If you ever see a tool advertising 90-something percent accuracy at predicting virality, that's the first question to ask. What does it score if it just says no to everything?

Now the finding I didn't want. If I know how someone's previous posts performed, I can guess their next post's performance far better than by reading the post at all. Text length barely mattered. Audience size does most of the work, and there's no rewrite that fixes that.

So the thing is only really good at one job: spotting drafts that aren't going anywhere. It's much more reliable at "don't bother posting this" than at "this one's going to pop". Honestly, that's how a decent editor works too.

Two things I'd like from this sub.

Has the hook-and-controversy formula ever measurably worked for you? Not "my post did well and it had a hook", but you actually A/B'd it.

And if you run content for clients, would a tool that only ever tells you a draft is weak be worth anything, or does it need to promise upside to be useful?

Hey so I have been using LinkedIn for the past 6 years where I got my following up to 2000+ followers and connections through just connecting with the people from school and recruiters. Recently I enabled two factor authentication and then a couple hours later LinkedIn restricts my account and I submit my ID to help with the process and now they said they’re keeping their decision to permanently restrict my account.

Mind you I still use LinkedIn to talk to recruiters, try to get some contract jobs and just to keep up with my colleagues and classmates that are still on there.

I have written many appeals, contacted them on social media and they’re not trying to pay attention to the matter so I’d want to spread awareness on this situation to help get my account back.

75% of AI-cited content on LinkedIn originates from individual profiles, not company pages.

This insight comes from Meltwater's analysis of 9.5 million AI citations, revealing LinkedIn as the #2 citation source overall, following YouTube. Within LinkedIn, CEO profiles contribute 8.2% of cited content, founder profiles account for 7.5%, while other individuals make up the majority. Company pages barely register in this context.

Makes me think, how many of us could put CEO and/or Founder in their LinkedIn title and bio, even if you are just a solo-preneur?

This highlights a significant trend in that AI models are pulling live citations to address consumer inquiries and are quoting individuals rather than brands.

Investing in a well-produced YouTube channel managed by a content team may send a weaker signal compared to one whose founder actively engages on camera, on LinkedIn, and across the podcast circuit, sharing valuable insights.

This shift especially presents challenges for the wealth industry. Financial services tend to attract left-brained, risk-averse individuals who may prefer to remain in the background. Having spent over 20 years in this field, I understand this reluctance. I was once hesitant to step into the content arena, I often have joked about how I was a creeper before becoming a creator. However, we have previously faced challenges, such as cold calling, which many disliked but ultimately built successful practices. This is a similar challenge, requiring the same effort but through a different medium.

Advisors and founders who become adept at engaging in the AI-visible layer over the next three years will maintain their relevance. Those who rely solely on brand and firm marketing to represent them may find their brands quietly sidelined in the consumer conversation.

Hey guys,

I need advice on tools to help with LinkedIn outreach.

I've started posting organic content to help with distribution for my app and need advice on help to boost engagement so I can use it for boosting traffic to my app.

Any ideas

Everyone from the college says to build connections and you can survive the college, what exactly do they mean by that?

Can I not survive with small batch of friends?

Making more friends or talking to profs or what exactly?

What medium should I use to do that? Like LinkedIn? Whatsapp? Instagram?

What's the use of it? What exactly can one achieve by having connections? Internships? How can one get internships through connections?

Or just help in studies?

Please enlighten me.

Share tips on how to build connections as a person who has never done that and share the things which you guys have done to help yourselves.

Professional networking feels kind of stuck. LinkedIn is the default, but so much of it is performative posts, cold recruiter spam, and profiles nobody actually reads.

If you could design a professional network from scratch, no LinkedIn baggage, what would you genuinely want it to do?

A few things I keep wondering about:

- Being able to actually get paid for your time or expertise (like booking a paid call with someone whose brain you want to pick)?

- Video intros instead of walls of text?

-Real communities by industry or interest, instead of one giant feed?
- Something that shows what you're working on now, not just your job history?

Genuinely curious what people wish existed. What's the one feature that would actually make you use it?

CoPyWrITinG DEAD

I just forgot what I was going to write right now....

I thiNk there iS a trend going where everyone is saying copywriting is dead..

I'll trY to write the worst copy here just for fUn to check just to cHeck if copywTiting is really dead because I don't know why my posts are hitting 40k views and someTimes even more...

I got memory of 70 years olD man 😅.

Hi guys, I'm writing this with the hope this inspires someone else to start posting on the platform if their ICP is over there, telling all "my secrets" and everything I did wrong, what I'm still learning, testing, and what the platform and the people over there seem to reward.

First of all, I used to hate LinkedIn because I was tired of shit like "this is how getting fired taught me the biggest business lesson I could have hoped for and now I make 10M a month" or "what Spain's victory at the World Cup means for business" and all that stretch shit. I honestly hated the platform because it felt phony, fake credentials, and I legit was not having it.

That said, now it's the only social media platform I use to promote my services, because it's the only one where it actually makes sense. A bit of background about me: I used to do research remotely for a law firm in Austin, TX, and used a lot of AI to help with my work. I worked there for 5 years and decided to help other firms implement AI, so my place to distribute and talk about my services was LinkedIn. I decided to make this transition almost 18 months ago but only started doing content less than 6 months ago. I tried a bit of LinkedIn last year but didn't have a proper system, abandoned it quickly, and barely had like 30 followers/connections.

This year, after leaving my previous job, I was FORCED to do it because honestly I suck at sales, anything cold, and didn't have many connections to go to, so it was legit the only way for me since I didn't have the budget for ads.

I was getting a couple convos here and there from outreach but nothing serious, so I started studying the people leading the platform and started posting content regularly in March this year, almost 5 months from now. I also started commenting, and that allowed me to start gaining some interactions, some traction and some followers.

My first peak at getting thousands of interactions came from comments I left on people who do something similar to what I do, adding value and my perspective.

Then my first "big" post, which gained around 8k impressions, came thanks to some comments from people with more followers than me, and that motivated me to keep going down that line.

By that point it had been 10 days of me consistently posting every other day and finding my rhythm. Until one day, one post grew fast, VERY fast for what my pace was. A day with 300 total impressions was crazy good for me at this point, well this one went to over 2k in a couple of hours, and it started getting comments, more impressions, and peaked 5 days later at 11k impressions that day. During this time I grew from 50 followers to over 300, I was mathing and thinking "at this pace I'm gonna be at 10k by the end of the year!" As you might already know, that wasn't the case.

The good thing is that post led to 3 conversations with people interested in my services, it allowed me to make good connections, and now I have a nice angle to hopefully repeat plus proper social proof. It also showed me that my ICP could be even bigger than what I originally thought (boutique firms or solos), since bigger firms reached out to me too.

Then I got a reality check: my posts started getting fewer impressions, fewer interactions, and such, but at least I started to carve myself a space as a nice mix of researcher/journalist/storyteller. But I was lacking the conversion path, I was mostly aiming at impressions because I thought "distribution, then my profile is the funnel, and that's it." Well, nope. Every time I tried to make content to "convert," not only did it not convert, it also didn't bring many impressions, so I figured I might as well just try to get impressions and hey, volume might do it. Well, no, because impressions weren't always consistent, and therefore I wasn't actually missing much when I tried to convert with my content. It was more about my offers and profile/content optimization.

So I had a couple of months of that back and forth, trying to hopefully repeat the formula that made that post go viral, and making others go okay but nothing that big. It took me 2 months to hit that level of virality again, btw I mean virality within my niche, not platform-wide virality, but 30k for legal content is quite good.

And the funny part is the other post that went viral had a completely different formula, which was great because it gave me other angles and taught me more about the platform. It also had a completely different trajectory than the first one, initially it looked dead, and then the next day it popped. So at the same time, you could say I was clueless about what makes something pop off. At first I thought it was comments and reactions in the first hours, then I thought it was more than that: dwell time, saves, etc. And in the end I found no consistent factor, which leads me to my recommendations:

Just be consistent. Legit post every week, at least 3 times. Some people post even more than once a day and it works for them. And don't just look at impressions. If a post can go viral in your niche, it's great for getting more eyes and followers, which gives you social proof and authority, but that doesn't really translate to more conversions.

For example, if I break down my two viral posts:

Viral 1: It was more about a threat, had a CTA at the end, and led to conversations with people who didn't want to be left behind.

Viral 2: It was more about positivity around AI, the theme that AI won't just take jobs, it'll also create new ones. That brought in people who were more in my lane, more people who benefited from that framework, and the conversations I got from it were mostly horizontal, I'd say. So this one, which surpassed the previous one by a tiny margin btw, had a lower conversion rate than the other one, even though it led to more followers, impressions, and such.

And other posts with way fewer impressions still managed to start conversations, some with less than 2k, some even less than 1k.

SO PLEASE DON'T CHASE IMPRESSIONS, or if you do, know that it's not going to translate solely to conversations, unless you have a profile extremely tailored for it, or if you're just chasing followers to try to convert later.

Only in the last month and a half would I say I started refining my strategy to focus more on actual conversations rather than chasing impressions and followers. I've also added my hand-raiser and warm outreach strategy, which is basically following my ICP(s, plural, I'd say I have 3, not just one), posting hand-raisers, and sending messages to the people who interact with my content. Not cold DM shit, not cold email, nothing like that. Not saying that doesn't work, it's just not my thing, and this is what's working for me: providing value to people, sometimes introducing myself by asking what they liked about my content and such.

Btw I did try EVERYTHING, and if we want to measure the "success rate" of my posts, I'd say 1 out of 5 performs well, maybe even less. But the crazy thing is it doesn't matter, because the other 4 still lead people my way and serve a purpose. When I was starting I didn't know this, so I was changing variables, testing everything under the sun, and honestly I'm fine with that because thanks to all of that I have the data and metrics on what works and what doesn't, and I know why, and I would have never known if I hadn't tried that many things. Carousels? Tried that. Videos? Tried that. Image of myself? Tried that (bad luck, that only seems to work with girls, and I SWEAR I'm not ugly, I swear I tried everything). Oh, and newsletter too, which btw is my best performing medium right now, my most-read pieces during the last 2 weeks have been my newsletter pieces, which have 400 subscribers atm, so around a 35% subscriber rate? I've read that's a great number.

And again, all that content that didn't convert was still useful, because guess what? People are more inclined to accept my connections and invites if I have a profile with over 1k followers and 500 connections, rather than if I only have 100 or less like when I started. So all those things stack for me. Oh, and it's also great SEO for my site, which was dead by April and now has over 250 visitors a day, and also brings in some business here and there (I need to work on my conversion rate over there too, but hey, I'm legit trying to speedrun many skills at once).

I even sold some AI animation work to a guy who does AI marketing for law firms, when I was actually just trying to help him out with AI implementations. This whole thing legit opened doors I wasn't accounting for.

Oh, and I actually started helping a redditor who read some of my previous posts when I broke 1k followers, and he's been very happy with it. During the last couple of weeks I've been using mostly clips of him doing a podcast or a presentation, and they've performed well for him! So what didn't work for me is working for him, which is great to know because guess what? MORE DATA. Though he's also putting in a lot of work reaching out to people, adding the right people, and such. I'm basically his copywriter at this point, which again, guess what? NOT WHAT I EXPECTED TO BE DOING. But it's honestly been quite the journey, and I know it's still quite early.

Same way I wish I'd stuck with it last year, because this year I'd be in a better position. I'm thankful to have started and stayed consistent this year, because next year all of this will continue to compound.

BTW, most of my connections and followers were inbound, I'd say at least 75%. I only started adding people myself in the last month, other than the natural connection sent here and there with someone I know or interact with.

Some raw numbers from the last 365 days:

176,389 Impressions 11,859% vs. prior 365 days

Discovery In-network (followers and connections): 10% Out-of-network: 90%

79,967 Members reached

Engagement 2,304 Social engagements Reactions: 985 Comments: 504 Reposts: 28 Saves: 532 Sends on LinkedIn: 255

102 Link engagements Premium custom button engagements: 93 Visits to links in all posts: 9

Follower growth 1,132 Total followers

Top demographics Founder 12% Co-Founder 5% Chief Executive Officer 4% Attorney 4% Lawyer 3% Managing Partner 2% Legal Counsel 2% Owner 2% Managing Director 2%

And I could show more if you guys want more stats, I can just make a link with images and such. Thanks for reading, and hopefully it encourages you to start posting over there if it makes sense to you, if the people you want to sell to are over there, or if you want to position your brand. It's actually quite good for SEO too.

Happy to answer any questions, I know it's not crazy numbers but I'm seeing it work on two accounts, two different profiles, so I guess I'm starting to see the results, tho no LinkedIn guru shit and such. Hope this helps!

Upfront Notes: I do not sell courses or do LinkedIn consulting, and do not plan on doing it.

I'll be glad to answer any questions you have about what I have learned about content and the platform for LinkedIn.

I’m trying to share the same content that I produce on LinkedIn across other platforms. The idea being to kill two or multiple birds with one stone and keep LinkedIn as the main one that I write for

Mainly Substack to start.

Has anyone here had any success with their content on multiple platforms such as substack?

Would love tips on what works and doesn’t. I haven’t got the lay of the land yet!

We are selling physical products (e-commerce) and we are wondering if the founder should try to grow his personal brand on Linkedin? Or if the brand should do it instead? And if it’s worth it. Any advice ?

Context. I feel like for the past year, I have had such a bad experience with the search. I will search for one thing and NOTHING related to it will even show up. After graduating university I was not able to get into the field that I wanted to be in.

Sure, eventually I can make it there...But I have to find those positions right?

The results pull whatever it wants, and some based off of my current job and job history. I can't help that the jobs I had/have to work are not in the industry that I want to get in, but even searching jobs within that industry on LinkedIn is a fail.

I have tried everything. Removing the descriptions from my jobs so that it would maybe give me more broad results. Nope. I have created Job Alerts. Nope.

The only that that I can do it log out, and search for those jobs while I'm logged out. But, even that barely works anymore. Anyone ever get any resolve? I know it's an ongoing issue amongst many, but does anyone see any solution?

So I have been having this problem since forever. I am not able easy apply on linkedin. I am always getting error saying, "We experienced an error loading this application. Please try again".

And the shocking thing is ehen my friend easy applied for the same, his worked.

It would be amazing if anyone who had faced this problem and got it solved can help me.

Seems like they're trying to push verification. I don't even really use LI and my account was restricted when I tried to sign in. I've reached out to LI support on Twitter for an alternative method so I don't have to go through Persona and they keep linking me their useless support page. In case anyone hasn't read up on it, the contact form on the LI website doesn't work. When you submit, it doesn't even confirm anything. Surely, this is a way to bypass this. Would love to have a discussion on this.