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Yes, there are LinkedIn hotshots with 100k+ or even 500k+ followers. A round of applause for them — but their growth stories have already been written.

What about the smaller fish who are trying to “make it” with their own LinkedIn content strategy in 2022?

Well, in the days ahead I’ll be approaching six months of posting consistently on LinkedIn.

I’ve played around with different content ideas, crisscrossed awkwardly from one niche to the next, and had an unexpected viral post with over 147,000 impressions.

Want to see first-hand what the experience of a newbie LinkedIn content creator has been like?

Then this edition is for you...

I’ll break this thing into four different sections:

Analysis of the data — posting frequency, average impressions, follower count, etc
Diagnosis of why many people give up on LinkedIn within their first six months
The healthiest way to approach growing your LinkedIn audience
Actionable steps to scale sustainably on LinkedIn

My LinkedIn Content Strategy? 6 Months of Posting in Numbers

Let’s be honest. You want me to get straight to the juicy statistics. Right?

Your wish is my command! Let’s whizz through them.

Total number of posts since the start of February 2022:

96

Average weekly number of posts:

3.69

Average post impressions in my first week of posting:

443

Average post reactions in my first week of posting:

9

Average post impressions in my most recent week of posting:

2,602

Average post reactions in my most recent week of posting:

48

Follower count in my first week of posting:

1,846 followers

Follower count in my most recent week of posting:

3,185 followers

Viral post achieved after:

4.5 months

Here is a snapshot of recent data from my LinkedIn profile, showing profile views, post impressions, and search appearances:

Bear in mind that the data above presents in a somewhat confusing way.

When you click on them, you see that the 1,799 profile views statistic calculates over the past 90 days.

Whereas, 216 search appearances and 12,294 post impressions calculate over the past 7 days.

All in all, though, I’m delighted with this progression.

I want ALL the good stuff:

More reach from my posts
More search discoverability
More people visiting my profile for the first time (or returning to it)

I can see a clear progression in all three areas.

Now, here’s the surprising part. Most of the people that engage with my posts are writers and freelancers, rather than e-commerce business owners and founders. Yet, look at this:

I find this particularly interesting because there has been a noticeable uptick in inbound leads since May.

The vast majority of my leads fall into the e-commerce business owner or founder categories shown above.

90% of the time, they contact me via email or book a call on Calendly. I’m not privy to how they discovered me…

Could be LinkedIn.

Could be my website through Google search.

Could be word-of-mouth.

But to me, there's no doubt... posting often is boosting my lead generation.

Even if LinkedIn isn’t a lead's first source of discovery, just think about how we behave when we hear about someone for the first time. We look them up on social media to see how active they are, what they talk about, and what they’re doing in general.

So, LinkedIn is serving as an awesome secondary pillar to build trust and authority.

The final piece of data I want to show you is my average number of engagements over the past 365 days:

See how we’ve got a looooong flat line until I started posting in February.

Then, we’ve got the slowly increasing peaks and troughs.

And obviously that big boom at the end of May, when my personal story post about me and my girlfriend went viral.

Instead of letting this viral post get to my head, I told myself:

“Declan, this ain’t lasting man. Prepare for the fall.”

Things returned to normal pretty fast. This is the nature of social media. Nonetheless, it did result in a batch of new followers and great conversations with people in the DMs, which was a cool experience.

Why Most People Give Up on LinkedIn Within Their First 6 Months of Posting

From what I can gather, I believe there are five main reasons why people call it quits on LinkedIn before they gain real traction.

Here are the barriers that leave people feeling frustrated, disorganized, and disheartened.

They don’t develop a sustainable habit of posting
They fail to schedule ahead
They’re too scattered with their content topics
They can’t be arsed to spend time engaging with others
They don’t conduct audits of their strategy

With these common stumbling blocks in mind, what is a robust psychological approach and practical method to fuel your LinkedIn content strategy?

First, let’s discuss the psychological part…

The Healthiest Way to Approach Growing Your LinkedIn Audience

Accept the fact you’re going to want to reach LinkedIn superstardom right away. We all do. But know this:

Unless you have a huge following on another social platform that you can bring over to LinkedIn, it’s not realistic.

I don’t want you to post for a month, realize it’s not as easy as people make it look, and get distracted by the next shiny option to grow your personal brand.

Instead, approach LinkedIn as a testing lab.

A place to experiment with ideas and hone your writing skills.

Also, only analyze your progress in three, six, or 12-month blocks of time. Not days or weeks.

When you can do these two things in tandem:

Approaching the platform as a fun content testing ground
Setting your sights on longer-term goals, rather than flying by the seat of your pants…

Your LinkedIn content strategy will be a lot more resistant to failure.

The goal I set at the start was to have 8k followers after a year of posting. It’s an arbitrary number. However, I thought somewhere between 5k and 10k would be achievable.

8k looks like it may be over-ambitious at this stage. But that was the point, in essence...

To give me a North Star to aim towards.

5k followers should be doable, though, if I keep on keepin' on. That would be a welcome increase from the 1.8k I had back in January.

Actionable Steps to Scale Sustainably on LinkedIn

This section may turn into its own dedicated edition one day. There’s a lot to unpack here. For now, I’ll lay out a shorter, more abridged version:

Step #1 - Commit to posting three times a week.

Consider anything more than that as a bonus.

I’ve found posting 3-4 times per week is ideal for me. I tried to up this to 5-6 per week and started to dislike LinkedIn because I was spending too much time on there.

Find the right balance for you. Ignore the "YOU MUST POST EVERY DAY OR ELSE YOU'RE DOOMED" crowd. It's utter B.S.

Step #2 - Experiment with posting days and times at the start.

I’ve posted on different weekdays at various times of the day.

Eventually, I landed on 12.20 PM (UK time), Monday to Thursday.

I should have stuck with consistent times sooner, in hindsight. Still, these days the people who actively follow me on LinkedIn know when new posts go live. It means they can engage with the posts earlier, which helps with reach.

A free tool like Buffer allows you to schedule up to 10 posts at a time. It’s what I use. I recommend you make the most of it too.

Step #3 - Choose three main topics to talk about.

Again, I should have done this from the get-go. I dabbled with different topics at the start:

Introversion
Confidence
Leadership
Management

I wanted to see what I enjoyed writing about the most, even though it was a little all over the place…

Over the past 2-3 months, I’ve committed to these three topics:

Writing
Marketing
Freelancing

Posts about marketing typically get less engagement but are important to attract ideal clients for my main service — freelance copywriting and email marketing.

Step #4 - For every 15 minutes that you spend creating new content, spend 45 minutes engaging with others’ posts.

LinkedIn has some in-built virality, though it has less viral potential than Twitter or TikTok at present. So, this means you need to be patient and play fair.

You can’t expect to post and expect people to flock in droves to your profile.

A successful LinkedIn content strategy is very much tied to give-and-take engagement.

Comment early on new posts from big accounts. Also, comment regularly on posts of those who follow and support you.

I’ve developed my own system of doing this with a day-by-day engagement strategy, Monday through Thursday.

I'm happy to share this if you would like me to discuss it in a future edition?

Let me know. It’s too in-depth to add to this one.

Step #5 - Ring-fence an hour to audit your content at the end of every month.

Doing this on a monthly basis prevents you from getting stuck in the weeds, and paying too much attention to metrics every day.

Take note of your best-performing and worst-performing posts from the month.

“Best” does not always mean the number of likes or impressions.

It could mean the:

Number of comments
Number of new followers
Number of leads

Etc.

After a couple of months of doing this, you’ll start to notice themes. You'll get a real sense of what’s working and what’s not.

It’s then up to you to adapt your LinkedIn content strategy as you see fit.

The data is staring you in the face. Embrace it, I say!

Where will I be another six months down the line...

Who the heck knows. PLEASE don’t let me become a content creator that only posts selfies though, m’kay?

You have permission to slap me with a wet fish otherwise. Two wet fish, in fact.

What's your LinkedIn experience been like these past six months?

Speak soon,

Declan Davey — Health Copywriter

P.S. Are you keen to be among the most successful freelance writers? Avoid these 5 writing traps.

P.S. Here are a few options you may be interested in...

1. Get my LinkedIn growth course.

2. Grab my free copywriting course.

3. See new content on LinkedIn by tapping the notification bell on my profile. I post at 12.20 pm UK time, Monday to Thursday.

Reviewing My LinkedIn Content Strategy: Lessons Learned From 6 Months of Posting