14:23Diandra Escobar · Essay
I made $1m on the most BORING platform
A 14-minute case against TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube — and a clear argument that LinkedIn is the last underpriced attention market for professional buyers.
June 17thThe argument in one line.
On LinkedIn in 2026, personal founder content beats company pages, AI has killed generic value content, and the accounts that win treat repetition, IRL photos, and comments as deliberate growth levers rather than afterthoughts.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A B2B founder, CEO, or executive who wants to grow a personal LinkedIn presence that drives pipeline, not just vanity metrics.
- A marketer or social media manager responsible for a company's or executive's LinkedIn content strategy.
- Someone already posting on LinkedIn who has plateaued and wants a structural reason why, not just more tactics.
- A founder currently investing time into a company LinkedIn page instead of a personal one.
SKIP IF…
- You're building a B2C or consumer-audience brand -- this is B2B/founder-brand specific advice.
- You're looking for a step-by-step content calendar template rather than underlying principles.
The full version, fast.
A LinkedIn agency founder argues that in 2026 two old assumptions are dead: company pages outperforming founders, and generic 'how-to' value content standing out. The fix is founder-led 'how I' content built on personal story or proprietary data that AI can't replicate. He adds five tactical rules: write every hook for a cold reader, treat repetition as reinforcement rather than risk, use real IRL office photos over branded graphics, spend time commenting on ICP accounts and the influencers they follow, and balance a weekly posting cadence between a couple of deep thought-leadership posts and several low-lift 'easy win' posts like new-hire announcements.
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00:00 – 00:25
01 · Intro + credentials
Tommy states his track record (7-figure business, 45k followers, 30+ founders coached) and promises 7 compressed lessons.
00:25 – 00:51
02 · #1 Company pages are dead
Personal founder content outperforms company pages; shown via ZoomInfo vs. CEO Henry Schuck engagement comparison.
00:51 – 01:42
03 · #2 Value content is dead too
AI commodified how-to content; the moat is 'how I' content paired with personal story or proprietary data.
01:42 – 02:43
04 · #3 Assume everyone reads cold
Hooks must be written for cold readers; save inside jokes and callbacks for the post body.
02:43 – 03:41
05 · #4 Repetition is a tool
Most of the audience won't notice repeated ideas, and repeating a winning idea reinforces it and reduces creative burnout.
03:41 – 04:52
06 · #5 Turn your office into a set
IRL photos outperform branded graphics; build a bank of behind-the-scenes photo/video assets in advance.
04:52 – 05:36
07 · #6 Comments are content
Commenting on ICP accounts or influencers your ICP follows drives impressions independent of the algorithm.
05:36 – 06:22
08 · #7 Take the easy wins
Not every post needs to be deep thought leadership; simple formats like new-hire highlights consistently perform well.
06:22 – 07:19
09 · Tactical cadence + CTA
Recommends 5 posts/week (2 in-depth, 3 easy wins) and points to a longer 'New Rules of LinkedIn' video.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Company LinkedIn pages consistently get outperformed by posts from a founder or executive at the same company.
- AI has commodified generic how-to content, so the only durable content moat left is a personal story or proprietary data a model can't replicate.
- A hook written for a cold audience will still work on a warm audience, but a hook written for a warm audience won't convert a cold one.
- Repeating your best one to three ideas over and over is a deliberate growth tactic, not a mistake to avoid.
- IRL office and behind-the-scenes photos consistently outperform branded graphics as a LinkedIn media asset.
- Commenting on the accounts your ideal customers follow can generate 5,000 to 20,000 impressions per comment, rivaling an original post.
- A sustainable weekly LinkedIn cadence is roughly five posts: two in-depth thought-leadership pieces and three low-lift 'easy win' posts.
- New-hire announcement posts paired with a real photo consistently overperform more polished, planned content.
Founder-led, cold-hook, repeated content beats polished company posts.
WHAT TO LEARN
Personal, story-driven content written for a cold reader and repeated deliberately outperforms company-page polish and one-off value posts on LinkedIn in 2026.
- Personal accounts consistently outperform company pages on LinkedIn because the algorithm and audience both favor a real person over an institutional voice.
- Generic instructional content lost its edge once AI made it trivial to produce, so a personal story or proprietary data is now the main differentiator.
- Every hook should be written assuming the reader has never seen your content before, since a cold-tested hook still works on a warm audience but not the reverse.
- Repeating your best one to three ideas reinforces them with your audience instead of diluting your credibility, and most readers won't even notice.
- Real, unpolished photos from an office or event consistently outperform branded graphics as a content asset.
- Commenting on the accounts your target customers follow can generate impressions comparable to an original post, without relying on the algorithm.
- A sustainable content cadence mixes a small number of deep, effortful posts with several low-effort but reliably strong formats like team or milestone updates.
Terms worth knowing.
- ICP
- Ideal Customer Profile -- the specific type of person or company a business is trying to reach with its content or sales efforts.
- How I content
- Content framed around a creator's own specific experience or story, as opposed to generic instructional 'how-to' content that AI tools can easily replicate.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
00:25
“Company pages are dead. It's 2026.”
01:30
“You wanna shift from how to content to how I content.”
05:36
“Comments are content.”
Word for word.
Read-along
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metaphoranalogy
00:00Most people spend months, sometimes years trying to figure out LinkedIn. They post, get some likes, but nothing turns into actual business. I built a 7 figure business almost entirely through LinkedIn content and built my own personal audience to over 45,000 followers.
00:11And I've also helped over 30 other founders do the same. And in that time, I figured out the handful of things that actually matter for growing on LinkedIn. So here's the deal.
00:18If you give me the next few minutes, I'll give you everything I wish I knew when I first started. The first lesson is that company pages are dead. It's 2026.
00:25If you're trying to build a company account on LinkedIn, you're gonna have a really difficult time. The algorithm hates company pages. Personal content, especially from your founder, outperforms by far.
00:35Just look at the difference in engagement between these two posts from the ZoomInfo company page and their CEO, Henry Schuck. The post from Henry outperforms by far.
00:43And this dynamic isn't unique to ZoomInfo. Look at pretty much any tech company on LinkedIn, and you'll see the same relationship occur. The company page is drastically underperforms when compared to executive content.
00:53So if you're gonna start posting on LinkedIn now, I'd recommend starting with your founder or some other executive on your team versus pouring all this time and energy into a company page that's not gonna grow that much. Now the second lesson is that value content has died too. The reason's simple.
01:06AI has commodified value content. Anyone with a Clawd subscription can enter in a prompt and come up with a pretty okay post in a matter of seconds. So when everyone can create content, how do you stand out?
01:17The only way to really stand out at this point on LinkedIn and is to pair every single post with a specific story or unique proprietary data. You need to include elements in your content that AI cannot copy. And again, these are personal narratives or unique data that only your company has access to.
01:34Essentially, you wanna shift from how to content to how I content. This type of content comes from unique personal experience that can't be replicated by LLMs. Now, the third lesson, this one's really important.
01:43Assume everyone reads your content cold. Now, this tip seems like common sense, but I'm surprised by how many founders consistently get this wrong. They'll make posts under the assumption that the person reading has seen their content before when if your content is doing its job well, you're gonna get in front of new people, and then assuming that the person who is cold has read your stuff before is gonna cause them to keep scrolling and not end up reading your stuff in the first place.
02:04One way I see this manifest is founders will often include callbacks to other content they previously posted or inside jokes that only their recurring readers or listeners would understand. And sometimes this is helpful from a community building standpoint. I understand why people do it, but you can't lead with this in the hook.
02:19Especially in the hook, you have to assume the person reading has never seen your stuff before. It's because a hook designed for a cold audience will still attract a warm audience, but a hook written for a warm audience won't always attract a cold reader. So you want to include or use the hook that's gonna have the highest probability of success.
02:35And if you're gonna include any inside jokes or specific references that only your recurring readers would understand, include them in the body once you've got someone hooked in. Lesson number four, repetition is a tool. So many executives who are posting on LinkedIn are terrified to repeat themselves.
02:49They think their audience is gonna criticize them or call them out when most of the time they're not even gonna notice, and if they do notice, who cares? To drive this point home, think about when you have to train your team on how to do something in their job. How many times do you have to repeat yourself before the point actually lands?
03:02And you have to apply the same type of thinking to your content. A lot of marketing on LinkedIn and marketing in general is repeating the same one to three ideas over and over and over again. For example, look at my content.
03:12If you look back through my content, you'll see me repeat the same points again and again and again. This is on purpose. Partly, it helps me get more out of each content asset.
03:19Like, if I've come up with a winning idea once, I wanna run that into the ground and not have to force myself to come up with brand new ideas every single day. That gets exhausting. But also, repeating the same ideas helps to reinforce those ideas with my audience and makes me known for something specific.
03:32And if you do happen to have someone in your audience who picks up on you saying the same thing over and over again, that's probably a good thing and it means they're paying super close attention to your content. Lesson number five, . Looking at the content going out across all of our active clients right now, by far the winning media type is the IRL photo.
03:49So these will typically be photos from around your office, or if you're going to events, or dinners, or anything like that, just a real photo typically with you or another person in it. Those types of photos do the best on LinkedIn when compared to an overly branded graphic or something like that. So if you have an in person office, you have a competitive advantage because it gives you a set with which to capture all of those photos that you can then use in your content.
04:11If I were you, would task someone on your marketing team, whether it be your social media manager or even your CMO if you have a smaller team, to capture behind the scenes photos, b roll footage from your day to day. You might not need them in the moment, but it's gonna be really helpful to have that bank of photos and video that you could use to pair with LinkedIn content whenever it's relevant.
04:28Text only content can still work, but again, if I look across all our clients, IRL photos are winning. Lesson number six, comments are content. Leaving comments on other people's content is one of the best ways to get impressions on LinkedIn in 2026.
04:40When you do this, you're sort of taking back control from the algorithm. You're not just relying on the organic algorithm to serve your content in front of the right people, but you can go and seek out those people and make sure that your account is getting in front of them on a regular basis. There are two ways to do this.
04:53One is to actually go to ICP accounts. So if you have people in your ICP who are actively posting on LinkedIn, it would definitely be in your best interest to build a list of them and engage with them on LinkedIn every day. But if your ICP isn't as active on LinkedIn, what you can also do is find influencers or creators that your ICP follows and then be in their comments so that when people in your target audience are following and reading these other people's content, they're also seeing your comments.
05:16I've had comments lately that get 5,000, 10,000, sometimes even 20,000 impressions, which is the same, if not more, than a organic post that you'd post on your own profile. Simply spending fifteen to twenty minutes a day engaging with other people's content will go a long way.
05:29Lesson number seven, take the easy wins. It's kinda similar to the repetition idea I shared earlier. A lot of founders will overcomplicate LinkedIn so much and make things so much harder than they have to be.
05:39They wanna make every post a super in-depth thought leadership piece. And, yes, there is absolutely room for highly technical or nuanced in-depth thought leadership pieces, but when you make yourself have to do that for every single post, that can get exhausting, and you only have so many original takes or original ideas that can make it into that type of post.
05:57So if that's your bar, you're not gonna post as consistently as you need to on LinkedIn to get the most out of the platform. And I'm not telling you to post filler content, but there are some formats that are easy wins that you can post on a regular basis that are pretty easy to execute, don't require a lot of in-depth research, and they still get a lot of engagement and impressions.
06:13So an easy example here, if you have a new employee start, you should do a quick LinkedIn post highlighting them and sharing the story how you came to hire them. Those types of posts consistently overperform, and they're super easy to execute.
06:24That post could take you five, ten minutes to write. Pair it with the IRL photo like I talked about earlier of you and the employee that you just hired, and I guarantee that'll be one of your best performing posts for the week. And it's not some super in-depth nuanced thought leadership piece, nor does it need to be.
06:37So my tactical recommendation here is if you have five posts that you're gonna do every week, two of those should be more in-depth, sort of middle of funnel thought leadership pieces that require a bit more time and investment to put together. The other three to round out your calendar should be those easy wins. So those employee highlight posts, those company milestone posts, things that perform well on LinkedIn but don't require a lot of lift.
06:57This way, what you're able to do is you get a good balance of in-depth content that establishes you as a thought leader while also being able to maintain the consistency that's required to win on LinkedIn in 2026. If you want the full playbook not just a compressed version, click the video here. I break down the new rules of LinkedIn, everything that's changed, what's working now, and exactly how to build a content system that drives business results.
07:18I'll see you there.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Tommy Clark built a seven-figure business and a 45,000-follower personal brand almost entirely through LinkedIn content, and helped 30-plus other founders do the same. Here he compresses that experience into seven blunt, numbered lessons -- starting with the claim that company pages are already dead.
Named ideas worth stealing.
06:37model
5-post weekly cadence
- 2 in-depth thought-leadership posts
- 3 easy-win posts (new hire, milestone, etc.)
A balance of deep and low-lift posts to maintain both authority and posting consistency.
Steal forany founder or brand's weekly content calendar
04:52list
Two ways to use comments as content
- Comment directly on ICP accounts that are active on LinkedIn
- Comment on influencers/creators that your ICP follows and reads
A way to manufacture distribution independent of the algorithm by seeking out the target audience directly.
Steal forB2B distribution strategy when organic reach is inconsistent
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
06:59next-video
“If you want the full playbook not just a compressed version, click the video here.”
Soft CTA to a related longer video ('New Rules of LinkedIn'), positioned as the deeper version of what was just compressed -- low-friction, no hard sell.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
