If you’re creating LinkedIn content without a proper strategy, you’re making it 100 times harder to succeed than necessary. Seriously.

And while everyone tells you to “plan out your content” on LinkedIn, nobody ever tells you how to actually do it.

If they do, they’re giving basic advice that’s (most likely) not technically wrong, but not actionable enough to be valuable in any meaningful sense.

And that’s a gap I’m very excited to fill today: I’m sharing my strategy for maximum impact on LinkedIn—in any vertical, niche, or positioning.

This doesn’t just result from my 2.5+ years of constant posting to build 230,000+ followers—it results from building content strategies for 40+ B2B leaders, including venture-backed CEOs, agency owners, influencers with millions of followers, and more.

So, let’s dive in—step-by-step:

1. Laying Out The Facts

Before deciding what content to create, you need to consider the foundational facts of your business, which will define your content strategy as a whole.

High level, we’re talking about things like:

• The details of your business/offer

• Your professional persona and voice

• Your goals/most desired outcomes on LinkedIn

Without clarity on those elements, your content will inevitably lack focus and fail to resonate with the right people. At best, you’ll accidentally hook in someone here and there, but never with any real consistency.

Those facts are your content compass—they'll guide every piece you create.

Open up a blank document and make subheadings for the following sections:

• Offer description

• Ideal customer profile (ICP)

• Key competitive differentiators

• Key target market pain points

I’ll teach you what exactly to define for each next:

Offer Description

Write a clear, concise description of what you sell and how it helps your target market.

You need to include:

• Your core product/service

• Primary benefits and outcomes

• Pricing structure

• Delivery method

• Time commitment required

• Any unique aspects of your offer

This isn't just for your reference—it's crucial because every piece of content you create should relate to your offer in some way, directly or indirectly.

Here’s an example I created for a cold email agency focused on B2B SaaS:

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Define exactly who you're trying to reach with your content. This should cover:

• Job titles/roles they hold

• Company size and type

• Industry verticals

• Annual revenue range

• Key challenges they face

• Decision-making authority

• Professional goals and aspirations

• Budget for solutions like yours

This sort of information shapes your content's tone, topics, and examples—that’s why the more specific you are, the better off you’ll be.

When you know precisely who you're speaking to, your content naturally becomes more relevant and engaging to your target audience.

Your ICP details will also help you:

• Filter out unqualified leads early

• Speak directly to decision-makers' needs

• Create content that resonates emotionally

• Focus on problems you're best equipped to solve

• Identify which case studies to highlight

• Target specific industries effectively

…all cool stuff you don’t want to miss out on.

Let’s go back to our B2B SaaS cold email agency:

Key Competitive Differentiators

What makes your solution unique in the market? Or, to put it bluntly, “Why should I, your target customer, choose you over everyone else?”

Remember that you’re competing on LinkedIn—not just with your industry competitors (though that will certainly be the case), but with everyone posting on the platform for impressions in general.

It’s a zero-sum game; ~10% of the creators on LinkedIn will get 90% of the leads.

Why? Because they offer a unique appeal to their target audience that they haven’t found anywhere else—on LinkedIn or elsewhere.

PS: note that I say “90% of the leads,” not "90% of the impressions.” Viral-bait posters listing out the Top 10 TED Talks and a motivational quotes they found on Google may get more likes and comments than you, but it’s all ephemeral—they’re not building long-term credibility with a valuable audience like you are.

So, to find your “unique appeal,” outline:

• Your unique methodology or approach

• Proprietary technology or processes

• Special expertise or credentials

• Results and success metrics

• Customer service philosophy

• Speed of delivery or implementation

• Industry-specific knowledge

• Team composition and expertise

• Pricing model advantages

• Quality assurance standards

• Unique partnerships or affiliations

• Geographic advantages or reach

• Specialized tools or resources

• Client support systems

…these differentiators should be woven into your content naturally—not as direct promotional points (at least most of the time), but as underlying themes that demonstrate your expertise and unique value proposition.

Going back to our example:

Undeniable advantages like these are worth repeatedly emphasizing in your content.

But at the same time, the goal isn't to explicitly state these differences in every post, but to let them inform your content's perspective and insights holistically.

For example, if one of your key differentiators is your deep expertise in a specific industry vertical, your content should naturally demonstrate that expertise through industry-specific examples, relevant terminology (avoiding too much jargon), and nuanced insights that only someone with your background could know.

That sort of authenticity is way more powerful than simply claiming expertise.

It shows rather than tells, building credibility organically through your content rather than through explicit statements about your qualifications.

PS: Some telling is okay—you should be repeatedly emphasizing the results your work creates for the sake of crediblity, but all things in balance. Sometimes it should be implicit, sometimes it should be explicit.

Key Target Market Pain Points

Understanding your market's challenges—as specifically as possible—is non-negotiable for creating content that converts with any sort of meaningful consistency.

List out your target market's primary pain points, like:

• Lack of clarity on ROI measurement

• Difficulty scaling operations efficiently

• Limited access to reliable market data

• High customer acquisition costs

• Inefficient internal processes

• Challenges with team coordination

• Resource allocation issues

• Technology integration problems

• Compliance and regulatory concerns

• Time management struggles

These pain points should form the core themes of your content strategy since they represent the key problems your audience is actively seeking solutions for.

Again, going back to our B2B SaaS cold email agency example:

If you can effectively address pain points like these in your content, you'll naturally attract the right audience and position yourself as a solution provider.

Because, ideally, each piece of content should either:

• Directly address one of these challenges

• Offer practical solutions or frameworks

• Share relevant case studies

• Provide actionable insight/knowledge, or

• Demonstrate your understanding of the problem

And while there will be some exceptions (personal posts, for example), the key is to ensure that most of your content directly addresses these fundamental pain points.

Through maintaining this focus, you'll build a content library that consistently resonates with your target audience and demonstrates an increasingly-deep understanding of their challenges.

That gives you infinitely more leverage in your industry—not just through the benefits of LinkedIn directly (though there will be plenty of that), but through being a recognized thought leader in general.

Your prospects will Google you, and having them land on your high-value LinkedIn profile consistently sharing genuinely actionable information is one of the best credibility-builders you can possibly have.

For example…

2. Defining Your Persona

It’s extremely crucial to be intentional with how you present yourself to your audience.

While many might just say, “Be yourself,” that's not always the best approach for business content.

Your professional persona should be carefully crafted to resonate with your target audience while remaining authentic to who you are.

The balance is key—you want to be relatable and genuine while maintaining the level of expertise and professionalism your audience expects. Think of your persona as the bridge between your authentic self and your professional brand.

You don’t need to be overly specific with rules, but you should have clear guidelines for how you'll present yourself.

Think about things like:

• Your communication style (formal vs. casual)

• The type of language you'll use

• How much personal information you'll share

• Your stance on controversial topics

• The balance between educational and entertaining content

• Your visual branding elements

• Formatting rules (e.g. no emojis, line breaks every 2-3 sentences, etc)

For example, if you were a wealth manager at Merrill Lynch, your persona might be more formal and conservative. You would focus on professionalism and expertise, avoid controversial topics, and keep personal sharing minimal.

In contrast, if you're a tech startup founder, you might adopt a more casual, transparent approach. You might share behind-the-scenes glimpses and personal experiences while maintaining professional credibility.

The key is consistency—whatever persona you choose should feel natural and be sustainable long-term. At the fulcrum of that, of course, is authenticity.

Your persona must be genuine enough that you can maintain it consistently across all your content without feeling forced or artificial.

This means choosing characteristics and communication styles that align naturally with your personality while still serving your professional goals.

3. Defining Your Goals for LinkedIn

Clear goals are essential for any content strategy, and LinkedIn is no exception.

Each post you publish should explicitly exist to accomplish one (or more) of the objectives that got you on LinkedIn in the first place.

Some of the most common LinkedIn content goals might include:

• Building thought leadership in your industry

• Attracting potential clients or partners

• Growing your professional network

• Establishing credibility in your field

• Driving traffic to your website

• Generating leads for your business

• Increasing brand awareness

• Recruiting talent for your organization

• Sharing company culture and values

• Engaging with industry peers

Your goals probably fall within one of those, more or less. And even if they’re a bit more nuanced, the core principles remain the same.

For instance, if lead generation is your primary goal, your content strategy might emphasize demonstrating expertise and providing value-added insights that naturally lead to business conversations.

Of course, you’ll also want to be sharing lots of case studies and client results—not just as a vehicle for booking calls (though that will certainly be effective for compelling case studies) but also for demonstrating your track record of success and building credibility with your audience (which could be a secondary goal).

So, outline 3-5 of your main goals in your content strategy document and prioritize them in order of importance. This will help guide your content creation process and ensure that every post serves a strategic purpose.

Here are some example goals from our hypothetical SaaS agency:

Remember that your goals may evolve over time as your business grows and market conditions change—it’s perfectly fine to come back and tweak this (encouraged, actually)

For each goal, establish specific metrics to track progress. These could include:

• Engagements from your target market

• Inbound connection requests from industry peers

• Profile views from decision-makers

• Direct messages from potential clients

• Website traffic from LinkedIn

• Conversion rates on calls-to-action

• Growth in follower count (controlled for targeted content)

Each of these metrics should be monitored regularly and analyzed against your goals. This data-driven approach will help you refine your content strategy over time, allowing you to focus more on what works and less on what doesn't.

If you don’t have clear metrics to track, you'll struggle to optimize your content strategy effectively. Make sure to set up a simple tracking system—even a basic spreadsheet will do—to monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs) monthly.

Data is by far one of LinkedIn’s most valuable assets for publishers on the platform. It offers a level of granularity wholly unrivaled by any other platform—enabling you to measure your goals with remarkable precision.

You can track engagement metrics and audience demographics, including industry, seniority level, and company size.

Test specific topics, see who they resonate with (demographic data) and by how much (engagement data), and double down on what seems to be working.

For example, here’s the engagement and demographic data of a post that did exceptionally well in creating visibility from my target market:

This data tells me I’ve found an angle I need to double down on and continue to optimize.

That’s a perfect example of how this sort of in-depth information helps you understand exactly who's engaging with your content and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Not using that means giving up one of your biggest competitive advantages.

PS: If you want to get ultra-granular in tracking your data (which I recommend you do), I recommend using either Shield or Aware, which are leading LinkedIn analytics tools that honor LinkedIn’s ToS (unlike many other LI tools out there).

4. Outlining Your Content Pillars

Content pillars are the core themes or topics that form the foundation of your LinkedIn content strategy.

Without them, your content can (and will) feel scattered and unfocused. Most successful LinkedIn creators stick to 3-to-5 main content pillars that align with both their expertise and their audience's interests.

Your pillars might include:

• Industry insights and trends

• Professional development tips for your industry

• Behind-the-scenes looks at your work (building in public)

• Case studies and client success stories

Those are broader examples, however—you should narrow down your pillars to be more specific to your niche.

For instance, if you work in SEO, your pillars might include technical SEO strategies, content optimization techniques, link-building methods, and Google algorithm updates.

Whatever your industry, each pillar should represent an area of deep expertise in which you can provide valuable insights based specifically on your direct experience (that’s where credibility comes from).

So, in your content strategy doc, outline your 3-5 main content pillars. Under each pillar, list 5-10 specific topics you can write about. This creates a content bank you can draw from when planning your posts.

To show you what I mean, I created pillars for our B2B SaaS agency example referenced above:

But no matter your niche, remember that your pillars should:

• Reflect your expertise

• Address audience pain points

• Be distinct from each other

• Allow for regular content creation

• Support your broader goals

Overall, they should feel natural and sustainable. This will allow you to consistently create valuable content without running out of ideas or deviating from your core message.

Furthermore, when developing your pillars, also think about how they intersect and complement each other. You wouldn’t want them to be completely isolated topics.

The most engaging content often emerges from the overlap between different pillars, creating unique perspectives nobody else has combined before.

For example, if you were following someone in the venture capital space, you wouldn’t want them to suddenly switch to posting recipes or travel tips.

Instead, their pillars might include startup analysis, investment strategies, market trends, and founder stories—all interconnected topics that serve their audience's interests and expertise.

When your pillars align naturally, you can create content that flows seamlessly between topics while maintaining relevance and authority.

This intentional, strategic coherence builds a strong personal brand and keeps a high-quality audience engaged over time—the opposite of someone going from topic to topic based on whatever they feel will get the most engagement.

Implementing Your Strategy & Following the Data

Once you've established your content strategy, the key is consistent implementation while remaining flexible enough to adjust based on performance data.

Start by creating a content calendar that maps out your posts for at least two to three weeks in advance.

Any longer could defeat the purpose of being flexible—you don’t want to plan out two months’ worth of content only to realize in week two that you’re going in the wrong direction (once you’re good an idea of what hits, sure, but not starting out).

Your content calendar should include a mix of post types across your defined pillars, with specific topics, posting times, and formats planned out.

Monitor engagement metrics closely during these first few weeks to identify patterns in what resonates with your audience.

Pay attention to:

• Which topics drive the most meaningful engagement

• Which content formats perform best

• Which posts generate quality comments and discussions

• Which posts create the most leads

Use this data to refine your approach, doubling down on what works while phasing out underperforming content types (performance defined by ICP visibility).

The goal is and will never be to accumulate vanity metrics but to build genuine connections and drive real business results.

Stay consistent, track your results, and adjust as needed.

Closing Notes

My entire approach to content strategy centers around my undying belief that success on LinkedIn isn't about creating “viral” posts. Instead, it’s about building a sustainable, long-term presence that establishes you as a trusted voice in your industry.

Focus on delivering consistent value through well-crafted content that speaks directly to your target audience's needs and interests. We’re running a marathon, not a sprint.

As you analyze your metrics and refine your strategy, you'll develop a deeper understanding of what resonates with your actual target market.

This will lead to more meaningful engagement, yes, but it’ll also lead to a deeper understanding of what sort of messaging resonates with your target market as a whole.

That kind of insight is, obviously, incredibly valuable. If you knew exactly which positioning creates the most interest from your target market, you’d promote it through every channel you could for maximum impact.

This is a key aspect of my pitch to B2B leaders when discussing creating LinkedIn content on their behalf—you won’t only get results from LinkedIn itself, but the data you gather will also enable you to perform better on every other channel.

So, if you’re a business owner who’d like to leverage my experience growing my own profile past 230,000 engaged followers and creating results for 40+ B2B leaders, book a call with me here, and let’s chat about how I can help you.

With that said, if you’re not a business owner and still want my help, book a coaching call with me here—I’d love to do whatever I can to level up your LinkedIn content strategy.

And no matter what, make sure you’re subscribed to LinkedUp for more insight like this in your inbox:

Subscribe now

See you next time.

LinkedIn is currently the highest-leverage content marketing channel on the face of the earth. And I mean that in every sense of the word.

It’s scalable, undersaturated (seriously, you’re early), creates results quickly, is easily repurposable, and has an incredibly high presence of B2B decision-makers. And it’s super easy to contact them, too—just send a connection request and/or a DM.

If you have a LinkedIn account — no matter where you are — you are staring at an absolute gold mine of potential, more than any other platform can offer you.

Almost nobody realizes this yet (again, you’re early). And even if you do realize, there’s a good chance you don’t know where to start.

This newsletter will solve that.

In this post, I’ll teach you how to add $25,000 in revenue to your personal income/company pipeline using the highest-leverage platform in the world (LinkedIn!).

Selling Something People Actually Want

If you’re going to make money with LinkedIn, you have to sell something.

This “something” has to be something people actually want because a scarily large number of people do not understand that there’s no amount of marketing that can sell something nobody wants.

I repeat: if your offer (the thing you’re trying to sell) sucks, nobody is going to buy it, no matter how much credibility you have or how good your copywriting is.

Imagine I offered you these two cars for $20,000:

Offering the first car for that price—a junker—would be insulting. You would accuse me of being a con artist, and be offended that I’d think you’d be stupid enough to pay $20k for something that’s worth, at most, $500.

I could assemble the greatest sales team on the planet in one room, give them enterprise subscriptions to Sales Navigator, Smartlead, and Apollo, offer them a $10,000 commission,* and 0% of them would be able to sell the car.

*No, offering the prospect part of their commission to buy the car wouldn’t count.

But the second car—a Ferrari LaFerrari?

You’d jump through flaming rings of fire for the opportunity to buy it for $20,000. Even if the salesperson showed up drunk, in their pajamas, and insulted your mother, you’d do whatever it took to get your name on the dotted line.

Why? Because the value is immediately clear to you.

Even if you didn’t know the exact value (somewhere between $3M and $5M for those who are curious), you’d understand the immense potential in the deal. Even if you had no interest in the actual car, you’d know you could sell it for a minimum 150x return.

And that’s fundamentally the exact same reason people will buy things from you: they expect to get more money out of it than they paid for it. It’s literally that simple.

If your offer sucks—specifically, if people don’t see a way in which the thing they’re paying you for is going to create a minimum 5x ROI—your life is going to be so much harder than it has to be.

Bad offer, hard life. Great offer, easy life. Great offers create lots of leads, and it is really hard to be poor when you have a lot of leads.

What Should You Sell?

This newsletter isn’t about sales as a whole, so I’m not going to pretend otherwise and try to include every piece of sales knowledge I have.

However, to get you started, you’re probably best off building an offer around your prior experience. The reasons why are simple:

1. You’re experienced. You wouldn’t be building your systems from scratch.

2. You have credibility. Your prospects know you have experience in the thing that you’re doing.

For example, if you’re a Head of Content at a venture-backed B2B SaaS, you’re likely only 4-6 months away from $10,000/month (and beyond) as an independent entity delivering fundamentally the same service.

You could pitch developing content strategies and fulfilling them (using a team of freelancers) to the exact same market you currently serve.

Since you’d deliver said services as an agency, you could pitch them reduced costs (your retainer would cost less than a full-time employee, most likely) at the same (or higher) level of quality.

Since you already have experience to point to, it would be a no-brainer for the prospect.

And, of course, there are many more ways to add value beyond simple cost savings.

Side-Note: Total Addressable Market (TAM)

By the way, it’s really important that there exist at least 1,000,000 people/businesses on earth who are capable of purchasing your service. In marketing, this is called TAM, and it completely defines the way you market your services.

Marketing a service with a large TAM is relatively straightforward because, at its core, it’s a numbers game. Assuming you have a good offer, the only barrier between you and more revenue is the number of decision-makers who are aware your offer exists and the benefits it provides.

But if you have a small TAM, it’s only a numbers game to the extent that numbers are available.

Take, for example, Steinway Tower in New York City.

This is an apartment building, with its “cheapest” entry available at $15,000,000 and topping out at around $50,000,000.

The most generous TAM possible for these units is 295,450 people (the approximate number of people with a net worth of $50M+ in the world).

You’d then have to filter the number of people who are interested in property in NYC and further filter it for those willing to invest in a newer building that’s yet to stand the test of time (when they could invest the same money in proven real estate).

This is probably less than 10,000 people globally. Maybe less than 1,000.

Due specifically to the small TAM, this unit requires a highly intensive marketing process to sell—including highly personalized outreach, countless private tours, extensive awareness campaigns, months of negotiation, and much, much more.

Even then, there’s no guarantee. Many of Steinway Tower’s units remain vacant.

The developer most likely realized this would happen and is betting on Steinway becoming an iconic building over the years that UHNW individuals feel comfortable investing in. This is obviously not a viable strategy for the vast majority of people.

In contrast, consider a townhouse in a desirable part of Washington D.C. or San Francisco hovering around $1,500,000.

Units like these are much, much easier to sell since they not only have a large target market but also offer clear value to the client.

The takeaway here is that, assuming your offer is fundamentally worthwhile, TAM completely defines your ability to market and sell your service.

This is why you should not niche down too much. Be a B2B SaaS marketer, not a B2B newsletter marketer for health tech brands that are training to raise a Series B.

Proving Your Credibility

I’m probably going to have to reiterate this in many newsletters, but before you think about using LinkedIn to draw attention to yourself, you have to be ready to receive it.

Let’s start with your profile.

Your LinkedIn profile is your digital first impression, and it needs to prove your credibility to the amount maximum extent possible.

When people talk about “optimizing your profile,” what they actually mean (or should mean) is “making your credibility flagrantly clear and directing the resulting high-quality attention to a high-converting landing page.”

Here is Justin Welsh’s profile:

It’s very, very credible.

Not just because he has a lot of followers (that definitely helps), but because it looks professional and showcases prominent media features he’s received (Forbes, Insider, Vice, etc.).

After viewing this, you’ll then be directed to his landing page, which further showcases his credibility (a 4.98/5 rating from 25,000+ students).

While you won’t be selling courses*, you’ll still follow the same fundamental formula: offer something enticing, multiply the appeal of said enticement with your credibility, and transition the now-intrigued prospect to a channel in which they can convert.

*Why shouldn’t I sell courses?

Selling courses is an unproductive pursuit for the vast, vast majority of people. The reason is that “it’s not a real business” (quote from Daniel Fazio, an entrepreneur producing over $600,000 per month, with his income streams including a portfolio of educational products).

Courses only have one sales channel: your social media profile. No serious business can depend on a single sales channel because the lack of diversification massively exposes it to catastrophic income variation if (and when) the status quo stops working in its favor (even if temporarily).

That is not a real business; it’s a glorified lemonade stand, capturing and converting attention from passing cars in the neighborhood (yes, some people make tons of money this way, but 99.99% of people do not!).

Maybe if you become a gargantuan influencer who can afford to potentially lose money (I’m talking tens of thousands) on ads developing an alternative sales channel, you’ll have a chance at a slight amount of sales channel diversification. But even then, it’ll be a shadow of what you could achieve by investing the same energy into a proper offer.

Finally, the sporadic nature of the income—and this is perhaps the worst part. ~80% of your income will come from launches, meaning you may make $30,000 one month and have to live off of that—combined with whatever residual you collect in the following months—until your next big offer in 6-12 months. And that’s only if you know how to launch a product at all.

If you think I’m wrong, don’t take my opinion—take it from Justin Welsh and Nicolas Cole, the most successful course-sellers I know who aren’t grifters. Both of them will tell you that you’re much better off investing in a proper service and, maybe down the line, adding a course as a side-income stream.

Creating (Qualified) Leads

We’ve cleared the fundamentals. Now comes the fun part: creating leads.

There are two ways of doing this on LinkedIn:

1. Content marketing (posting)

2. Outreach (sending DMs)

The top performers will combine both—here’s how:

Content Marketing

Content marketing is marketing with content. In this context, that means posting.

I’ve done this quite a lot, and it’s lead to me building over 220,000 followers since beginning (seriously) in mid-2022.

Ironically enough, lead generation isn’t the primary objective of posting.

While it’s certainly an effect of it (among other things), the primary outcome of you hitting “post” is brand awareness. In this case, awareness of both your personal brand and the company you represent (if any).

Every time I hit post, both myself and Soleo itself occupy just a bit more real estate in the minds of people around the world.

Thanks to the compounding effect of doing that for a long time, it’s resulted in some rather wonderful outcomes—outcomes that are just getting started.

Yes, that outcome often includes qualified leads. But it also includes podcast invites, sponsored post offers (which I turn down most every week), real-life networking opportunities (or virtual ones), and many more.

But fundamentally, I’m creating brand awareness. Specifically, it’s awareness of:

• The service(s) I offer

• The expertise I’ve earned

• The credibility I’m building (case studies, prominent clients, etc)

…all manifesting in a variety of very cool things.

However, impressions don’t create brand awareness in a vacuum.

Engagement bait (e.g. posts like, “Bosses should be nice! I’m very smart and cool!”) doesn’t create admiration from decision-makers; expertise-driven content does.

Don’t post stuff like this:

Post stuff like this:

Or this:

Or this:

…or anything else that clearly defines you as a credible, high-value authority in your industry.

When abroad, no matter where they are, people generally opt for chain hotels—Hilton, Hyatt, Marriot, etc—because they understand they can be relied on to hold a certain standard, while local hotels are a wildcard.

People will opt to work with you for the same reason—you’ve convinced them you can deliver consistently where others can’t.

By the way, this newsletter is content marketing. I could do weekly releases*, but I release these more occasionally when a genuinely awesome piece is ready—this channel is best for deep dives (a weekly phone-in post would be a huge waste).

*Some people have great weekly releases, this isn’t a knock on them

The goal is to establish myself as an uncontested ultra-top authority on all things LinkedIn. That’s the goal of my posts, too, of course, but as a rule, they have to be more bite-sized.

Outreach

Outreach represents the most proactive way of cashing in on your credibility and creating leads.

If you’re cooking up something good, there’s no reason to just sit around and hope the smell wafts around the neighborhood, enticing random people to walk in the door and see what’s for lunch.

You should be proactive about making people aware of your cuisine. Otherwise, there’s a very high chance you’ll just waste your time cooking.

On LinkedIn, you do this “proactive awareness” with connection requests and direct messages. This dovetails extremely nicely with content marketing because the brand awareness derived from that will accelerate your outbound results.

Prime example: I recently converted a venture-backed SaaS (Series C) into a client through a relatively basic outbound sequence.

I offered them a small sample of my service. They found it intriguing, spoke 1:1, and, after a brief deliberation, began working with me.

What made it work was, fundamentally, my credibility.

There’s no shortage of people offering some sort of done-for-you (DFY) LinkedIn service, but very, very few actually deliver. And pretty much nobody else has my level of credibility (followers, case studies, clients, etc). In many ways, I am in my own league.

So, once you’ve optimized your profile and started creating credibility-driven content, you need to start maxing out connection requests.

LinkedIn has a de facto limit of around 350-400 connection requests per month, which is a bit over ten per day. This is pretty trivial to fulfill manually—which you’ll need to do since LinkedIn is very sensitive to these sorts of automations.

How to Perform LinkedIn Outreach

Next, I’ll show you how to actually do the thing we’re talking about.

Building a List of Targets

First, purchase a Premium subscription. By default, you’ll be limited in your ability to view profiles, and LinkedIn will hard-limit you pretty quickly.

You’ll need a Premium Business subscription to get past this—but if you’re really serious about maximizing outreach, I recommend getting a Sales Navigator subscription.

Sales Navigator is a nice-to-have tool because it’s a pretty robust research platform.

You’ll need to build a list of targets, and using Sales Nav for LinkedIn outreach will be much more straightforward than using something like Apollo.

But Sales Navigator or not, start building your list of connection request targets.

I first recommend clearly defining your ICP (ideal customer profile). You can do so in a basic spreadsheet like this:

It’s nice to have this on paper—not just for your own benefit but also so a VA can build the list for you (if you don’t want to build it yourself).

Once you’ve defined your ICP, start building the actual list. The best research tool for this purpose is Sales Navigator, but other sales tools can work, too.

Whatever you choose, use a Sheet like this to track them:

Once you’ve filled it with 100-300 targets, fire away.

“Should I send a message in my connection request?”

In my opinion, you should only attached a message in your connection request in two instances:

1. You have something genuinely meaningful to say (e.g. you met them at a party, you really like a specific piece of content they created, you’re a user of their software, etc.)

2. You have zero connections in common

Otherwise, I find it hard to develop something meaningful to say, consistently, that doesn’t seem templated and off-putting. Trying to do so will slow you down too much, too, and really won’t help you all that much

If someone hasn’t responded after 3-4 weeks, withdraw the connection request (you can do this from the invites menu).

They’re unlikely to respond beyond this period, and keeping your pending requests as small as possible is considered best practice for maintaining your “sender” reputation on LinkedIn.

Sending DMs

Once somebody accepts your connection request, wait at least 3-5 days before sending them a message. This gives them time to look at your profile and have your content appear in their feed before sending anything out.

This is a good time to mention that LinkedIn is a quality-over-quantity outreach platform—or at least it leans that way.

If you DM someone you’re connected to (or send them an InMail, which comes with Sales Navigator), there’s a 99% chance they’ll see it if they’re active on LinkedIn at all. That’s really awesome coming from cold email where a 30-40% open rate is considered extremely solid.

But it’s counteracted by the fact that you can only realistically reach out to 100-200 people each month—LinkedIn's biggest weakness as an outreach platform (it’s really meant for recruiters, who generally have the upper hand in outbound, thus making the outbound limit inconsequential).

This begs the question: what should you actually say? How do you make the most of your limited chances with your target market?

There’s a prevalent school of thought that effective outreach on LinkedIn means becoming best personal friends with the person, traveling to their wedding, and buying them a new puppy before you ever think about selling them anything.

To be frank, if you feel afraid to pitch people your services, you probably feel unconfident in your offer. If this is the case, your offer might suck, or you have so few case studies that it may as well suck as far as your target market’s concerned.

If you appear credible and authoritative, people will respond to your outbound. Many of my outbound messages are pretty basic,* but they work—again—because I’m extremely authoritative.

*Basic doesn’t mean spammy. I send short, concise, and conversational messages, generally referring to a case study and offering to send a free sample of my service.

I’ve tried very personalized outbound where I reference something specific about their accomplishments, a recent milestone, or a nuanced aspect of their business.

It never seemed to affect the response rate much, and the reason for this is extremely obvious: mature business owners can always recognize when they’re being pitched, no matter what you say.

With that in mind, you may as well get to the point. They’re either going to want your service or not. Outside of improving your offer, there’s really nothing you can do to change that.

Side note: the same rules don’t apply to long-term “dream clients” that would be life-changing if you were able to secure them as a client. There does exist a hyper-personalized mega value-add approach that is completely worth investing in, but that’s for another newsletter.

It’s the same way that a woman at a party knows that the men approaching her most likely aren’t making conversation for the fun of it—they perceive her as attractive and available and thus are pitching themselves as potential partners (even if they’re coy about it at first, opening with basic conversation).

Assuming they have basic respect and social competency, the woman is either going to be interested in a relationship or not, whether in general (general need for services) or with them specifically (interest in their services).

The “need” is almost completely out of their control—it either works out, or they need to move on. Sales is the same way in every medium (nobody runs ads expecting to convert everyone).

If you’re of the school of thought that success in sales depends entirely on your ability to build pseudo-social relationships with targets, you don’t need to be here. All you need to do is pitch your good friends and family on your services.

In this case, if the strength of the relationship is the “X factor,” you should have zero trouble in converting 100% of them to your services.

Obviously, that won’t happen because, most likely, 0% of them have a need for your services. There has to be a need. Welcome back.

The good news in sales is that everyone likes making money. If you offer a good service that offers your target market a transparently good chance of making more money, generating interest is not difficult, and people will respond to your outreach.

So just be respectful and to the point, knowing that your results almost completely depend on the strength of your offer and the authority you present with your profile.

For example, Sunny Bonnell.

Sunny is the co-founder of a world-renowned brand strategy agency that’s worked with Google, Virgin, the NFL, and other household names.

She also has 15,000 engaged followers and the blue Top Voice badge, as well as features on Bloomberg TV, Yahoo! Finance TV, and Cheddar TV.

If you’re the founder of a tech startup that’s just raised a Series A funding round and Sunny messages you something like…

Hey Jimmy Startup, congrats on the Series A. Just so you know, we started working with Unicorn after that same milestone, and thanks to the strategy and branding we built for them, they were acquired by Netflix for $40M five years later. Can I send you that case study?

…there’s a good chance you’re going to respond in the affirmative.

It’s overtly promotional, but because you recognize her authority, credibility, and ability to create an ROI an order of magnitude higher than what she invoices you for, you’re probably going to say, “Yes, I’d like to see that case study.”

She doesn’t need to send you a vicuña sweater from Loro Piana that includes a hand-written invite to The French Laundry coupled with a Delta One ticket to San Francisco, in which she’ll then mention the case study.

True, that probably would make you more likely to respond, but because of her credibility, it’s not necessary at all.

Now, keep imagining you’re that Series A founder. But instead of Sunny messaging you, it’s someone with a selfie profile picture, a low-quality portfolio, and no real case studies to speak of.

You wouldn’t respond. And even if they sent you the vicuña sweater, you’d probably assume it was fake. You surely wouldn’t go to meet them in the Bay Area.

This should be extremely comforting because it takes a load off the shoulders.

You don’t need to invest in the convoluted social selling processes many people cite as mandatory. You just need to not suck at what you do.

Unless you’re selling Park Avenue Tower units, competence and credibility are all you need to book calls with prospects—your sales skills are just an optimization.

Does your offer suck? Scroll back up and build a Ferrari LaFerrari offer.

Does your offer not suck? Then start sending messages—people will respond.

When people respond, get them into a 1:1 call. Then, pitch your services and convert them. Your revenue/added revenue will grow and grow and grow—to $25,000/month and beyond. Just keep putting in the work.

Yes, I’m leaving a lot of detail out, but this is a high-level overview of the process, and the little details of each part are best left for another day.

Rest assured that what’s written here is, fundamentally, all you need to do.

Conclusion

To reiterate, LinkedIn is the highest-leverage content marketing channel on the planet right now. It’s pretty darn good at outreach, too—as I mentioned above, I recently signed a Series C SaaS client through DMs.

That said, if you’re a leader at a business generating over $1M per year in revenue, you have zero time to devote to this with everything else on your plate.

And given that I’m extremely good at this, you should outsource it to me. If that interests you, please book a call with me here.

If that doesn’t describe you, but if you’d still like to work with me, please book a paid coaching call with me here.

In any case, I’ll see you in the next newsletter (coming when it’s ready).

Thanks for reading.