07:19Tommy Clark · Tutorial
Give Me 7 Minutes and I'll Give You 7 Years of LinkedIn Advice
A LinkedIn agency founder compresses seven years of platform lessons into seven numbered rules, backed by real post screenshots.
July 1stThe argument in one line.
Getting seen on LinkedIn now depends less on writing better tips than on stopping the scroll in the first three lines and pairing every post with real outbound, since the organic algorithm alone can no longer be trusted to find the right audience.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A B2B founder or exec who already posts on LinkedIn but sees flat engagement and no leads coming from it.
- Someone responsible for getting a CEO or executive posting consistently without eating 10+ hours of their week.
- A content marketer who wants concrete hook levers and repeatable angles instead of vague 'just be consistent' advice.
SKIP IF…
- You're building a personal brand outside B2B or founder-led content; the examples and platform mechanics are LinkedIn-specific.
- You want a done-for-you content calendar rather than the underlying principles behind what performs.
The full version, fast.
A B2B content agency founder distills seven years and 10,000+ LinkedIn posts into seven lessons. The first one to three lines of a post are the single biggest lever, since they decide whether anyone clicks 'see more' at all, so every post should stack two or three hook levers: specific numbers, a narrative open loop, a hot take, or a news tie-in. Visual creative acts as a second hook by claiming more scroll space. Generic tips get replicated by AI in seconds, so every take needs a personal story attached, and safe, sanitized messaging kills distribution even though it feels safer. Winning angles should be repeated deliberately instead of avoided out of fear of sounding repetitive, personal interests double as proof a human wrote the post, and because the organic algorithm is unreliable right now, outbound work (list-building, steady connection requests, and engagement-based lead tools) has to run alongside content, not instead of it.
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00:00 – 00:31
01 · Cold open
States the promise: seven years and 10,000 posts of trial and error, compressed into seven lessons for founders whose posts disappear into the void.
00:31 – 01:44
02 · Advice #1: Prioritize the first 1-3 lines
The hook before 'see more' decides whether the post gets read at all; stack two or three levers (numbers, narrative open loop, hot take, newsjacking). Example: Adam Robinson's $24M ARR post.
01:44 – 02:42
03 · Advice #2: Creative is your second hook
Images and video claim more scroll space and create curiosity, giving a second chance to stop the scroll. Example: Ludwig at Fessions' ThinkPad photo.
02:42 – 04:18
04 · Advice #3: Pair every take with a story
Generic tips can be replicated by AI in seconds; personal stories and anecdotes can't. Reframe 'how to' into 'how I.' Example: Ali at Tabs' sales-travel story.
04:18 – 05:54
05 · Advice #4: Say the thing you think you cannot say
Sanitized, safe B2B content is boring and undistributed. Turn up the intensity on a hot take by ~20%. Example: Adam Robinson's all-caps 'founders' rant. Closes with a mid-roll pitch for a free content-strategy document.
05:54 – 07:59
06 · Advice #5: Collect winning angles like infinity stones
Repeating a winning angle isn't cringe; it's how an audience learns what someone is known for. Includes the current 'measured, feel-good AI take' angle that's overperforming.
07:59 – 09:15
07 · Advice #6: Use personal interest to humanize yourself
Personal interests act as 'proof of human' against AI-written content. Example: Gary Vaynerchuk's recurring bits about the Jets and blueberries.
09:15 – 12:31
08 · Advice #7: Bend the algorithm
The organic algorithm alone isn't reliable, so content needs outbound alongside it: build an ICP list in Apollo, send ~15 connection requests/day via HeyReach, and use Traxy to find and import already-engaged leads. Closes with a recap and a pitch for the next video.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The first one to three lines of a LinkedIn post determine everything else, because a post no one clicks 'see more' on never gets read.
- A compelling hook stacks two or three levers at once: specific numbers, a narrative open loop, a hot take, or a trending news tie-in.
- Ending a hook with an unresolved line, like stating a big result and then 'here's how we'll get there,' forces a click instead of just hoping for one.
- Images and video aren't decoration, they're a second hook, because they claim more scroll space than a text-only post, especially on mobile.
- Generic how-to content can be replicated by ChatGPT or Claude in seconds, so a personal story is the only real moat left.
- Reframing a post from 'how to' into 'how I' turns generic advice into something no competitor can copy.
- Sanitized, safe B2B messaging is a distribution tax: boring content doesn't stop scrolls, and unseen content generates zero leads no matter how good the advice is.
- Turning up the intensity of a hot take by about 20% is usually enough to get noticed without becoming an extremist.
- Repeating a winning angle isn't cringe, it's the only way an audience learns what a person is actually known for.
- A measured, feel-good take on AI performs well right now specifically because so much LinkedIn content about AI is fear-based.
- Personal interests function as 'proof of human' in an era where AI can write competent generic posts.
- A LinkedIn connection campaign converting above 50% acceptance is a strong signal the list was built from people who already engaged with the content.
- Content alone is no longer enough to reach the right audience because the organic algorithm has gotten less reliable at distribution.
- Sending around 15 LinkedIn connection requests a day, rather than maxing out near the platform's ~20 cap, leaves room for manual outreach on anything that catches attention.
Seven things about LinkedIn distribution, not just content
WHAT TO LEARN
Getting read on LinkedIn is decided in the first three lines, and staying seen long-term means treating outbound as part of the content system, not a substitute for it.
02Advice #1: Prioritize the first 1-3 lines
- The first one to three lines of a post decide whether someone taps 'see more' at all, so a technically good post with a weak hook gets zero readers.
- Effective hooks combine two or three levers at once: a specific number, a narrative open loop, a hot take, or a tie-in to trending news.
03Advice #2: Creative is your second hook
- Images, graphics, and video are a second hook, not decoration, because they claim more scroll space than plain text, especially on mobile.
- Before publishing, check whether an image or video could accompany the post; without one, reach is being left on the table.
04Advice #3: Pair every take with a story
- Generic how-to and tips content can be reproduced by ChatGPT or Claude in seconds, so it no longer differentiates one poster from another.
- Personal stories and specific anecdotes can't be copied, which makes them the real moat once AI can write competent generic advice.
05Advice #4: Say the thing you think you cannot say
- Sanitized, safe B2B messaging isn't neutral, it's actively boring, and boring content gets scrolled past regardless of how valuable the advice is.
- Turning up the intensity on a hot take by about 20% is usually enough to get noticed without tipping into extremism.
06Advice #5: Collect winning angles like infinity stones
- Repeating a winning angle isn't embarrassing, because most of the audience isn't tracking a person's feed closely enough to notice the repetition.
- Being known for one specific thing requires deliberately hammering a small handful of angles again and again rather than chasing novelty.
07Advice #6: Use personal interest to humanize yourself
- Sharing genuine personal interests, even small ones, works as proof a real person is behind the posts, not an AI one-shotting content.
08Advice #7: Bend the algorithm
- The organic LinkedIn algorithm is currently unreliable enough that content alone can't be the whole distribution strategy.
- Building an ICP list and sending a steady, moderate volume of connection requests (around 15 a day, not the platform's ~20 cap) compounds an audience over time.
- Tools that surface who is already engaging with a person's content let outreach prioritize warm leads, which is why a connection-acceptance rate above 50% is achievable.
Terms worth knowing.
- ICP
- Ideal Customer Profile: the specific type of person or company a business's content and outreach is built to attract.
- Open loop
- A hook technique that creates unresolved tension or curiosity, such as promising an explanation, so the reader has to keep reading to get closure.
- Apollo
- A B2B contact database and outreach tool used to build lists of prospects matching a defined ICP.
- HeyReach
- A LinkedIn automation tool that sends connection requests and outreach sequences on a schedule.
- Traxy
- A tool that identifies LinkedIn accounts engaging with a person's content and feeds qualified ones into an outreach sequence.
Things they pointed at.
05:30linkFree founder LinkedIn content-strategy document
10:11toolApollo
10:38toolHeyReach
Lines you could clip.
00:31
“the first one to three lines of your LinkedIn post are the most important by far”
04:45
“if your content is safe it is therefore boring and nobody's going to care”
07:16
“there's only a small handful of angles I need to hammer again and again and again for you to trust me on that”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
I've written over 10 ,000 LinkedIn posts over the past seven years. And the first few hundred were bad, like three likes, one comment, and no leads. The kind you find a year later and physically cringe at.
But somewhere in those 10 ,000 posts, I finally figured out what makes someone stop, read, and engage on this platform. And honestly, it comes down to a pretty short list. So I'm gonna give you the version that took me about seven years and 10 ,000 posts in just about 10 minutes.
If you're a founder who knows they should be posting on LinkedIn, but everything you write seems to just , these are seven things that I wish someone told me on day one. First things first, perhaps the most - important piece of advice i can give you is that the first one to three lines of your linkedin post are the most important by far this is the hook so everything before the see more button your entire goal with those first one to three lines is to get someone to click the see more button if they don't they're going to keep scrolling and that post was pretty much pointless a lot of times when you feel like you're writing good valuable content but it's not getting any engagement the reason is your hook is not compelling enough so no one's even seeing the content in the first place getting very tactical what i recommend here is using two to three hook levers in that first one to three lines.
So specific numbers and metrics, a narrative base hook, hot takes and opinions of polarizing and negativity bias, newsjacking, tapping into a trending story that people are already talking about. You want to use these levers very intentionally to get someone to stop scrolling and create an open loop. So look at this post, for example, from Adam Robinson.
Within two years, we'll bootstrap molt sets to $24 million in ARR with less than five full -time employees. I recently sat down to sketch out the math, see a screenshot. Here's how we'll get there.
So at the very end, that last line in the hook, here's how we'll get there, creates a physical open loop that you have to click see more to understand how they'll get there. He also uses specific monetary figures, like $24 million. Stuff like that tends to grab attention.
And you see how there's multiple different levers in this one hook alone. You can't ignore this if you want your content to do well. Now, the second lesson here is that creative is your second hook.
So it's not just the text that determines whether or not someone is going to click see more and keep reading your content. Your media, so images, graphics, videos, also serve as a second opportunity to hook the viewer in ideally your media should create some sort of curiosity and also it takes up a lot of screen real estate so as someone scrolling a text only post might look very thin on screen especially on mobile but if there's a video or an image it takes up more space and makes it more likely that someone's going to give your post the time of day you also want to make sure your image creates curiosity so this is a great example ludwig at fesson's made this post about how they are thinkpad maxing how a lot of their team uses thinkpads instead of a macbook like most startups would do and this is because they want to really learn to empathize with their customers and the type of laptop that they're using.
And the copy alone is quite compelling, but it does very well because of this image of the laptops lined up on the couch. It creates curiosity. So my recommendation for you is whenever you write a piece of content, do not press publish without first asking yourself if there is an image, a video, or a graphic that can go with that content piece.
If there truly isn't, then post text only, that's fine. But in 2026 on LinkedIn, you're really missing out if you're not using creative as your second. Third on my list of hard -earned lessons is pair every take with a story.
In 2026, basic generic how -to content and tips -based content doesn't do that well unless it's very counterintuitive or novel, or there's a personal story or anecdote paired with it. Because generic how -to content can be replicated by Clod or ChatGPT or your LOM of choice within a few seconds, but nobody can copy your personal stories and anecdotes.
For example, nobody can copy the fact that I have posted 10 ,000 times on LinkedIn that I've spent the past seven years trying and testing what's working on the platform. If I were to just title this video or this post, here's how to grow on LinkedIn, it wouldn't be that compelling.
So here's another great example from Ali at Tabs where he's making a post about the idea of his salespeople getting on a plane, going to see customers during the sales process. He could have just said, salespeople, you should probably get on a plane and go see your customers live if you want to close more deals. Maybe it would have been fine.
That's probably not going to do that well as a post though. It's quite generic and there's no moat that makes it specific to Ali. But instead he packaged it as a story and uses very specific.
specific examples of his reps at tabs going getting on a plane and closing very large deals. Also quick callback to point number two, he uses this picture of him on a plane to get attention on the timeline as well using creative as that secondary hook. So as an action step for you, anytime you find yourself giving advice, ask yourself if you can pair it with a story.
Is there an anecdote from your last week or even earlier in your career, your company building journey that you can tie into the post to make it stronger. Another quick frame I love here is switching from how to to how I don't just give generic tips and tricks.
Use specific anecdotes from your experience to illustrate those tips. Fourth up on my list and one that a lot of founders watching this are going to ignore because they're scared or too nervous to actually listen to this advice is say the thing you think you cannot say. Sanitized content is a plague and so many B2B founders tend to make their messaging sterile and safe and they're very nervous that people are going to get mad at them or they're going to find their content cringe or it's going to end up in some industry group chat with people making fun of it.
If it does, who cares? But also I want to frame this in terms of results if your content is safe it is therefore boring and nobody's going to care nobody's going to stop and scroll nobody's going to engage and you're not going to get in front of your customers you are sacrificing distribution for the sake of keeping yourself comfortable and out of the public eye which is crazy considering you started a company potentially raise millions of dollars you've built a team of 10 20 30 sometimes 50 plus people you manage these people yet you're afraid to publish a piece of content on LinkedIn because it might end up in an industry group chat do you realize how silly that sounds I think someone who's gotten over this fear a great job of being a bit polarizing on linkedin is adam robinson he's probably the most extreme example i've seen of this but it works quite well for him one of his polarizing beliefs that he'll often repeat on his linkedin profile is that he believes that most founders should be bootstrapped and he's very against most founders raising vc and this post is a great example of this in action with the hook in all caps founders what kind of effing moron signs up for this with exclamation points and a bunch of question marks this post has almost 800 likes i'm not saying you need to get this
I think most founders probably shouldn't. But my recommendation here is whenever you're going to post a hot take that is maybe a little bit too sterile, ask yourself if you can turn up the dial on the intensity by about 20%. You don't need to go crazy.
I'm not telling you to be an extremist. Get yourself out of your comfort zone and share the take that feels a little bit nerve wracking to share. I think you'll be surprised by how well it's received.
Now, real quick, if you're a CEO who wants to post more on LinkedIn or a head of marketing at a tech company who wants to get your CEO or execs posting more on the platform, but you can't seem to find the time. i put together a document that might help you using the same frameworks and systems that we use at compound across dozens of clients in the b2b tech space to help their ceos post on linkedin in just about an hour or two of effort and time per week it's not totally hands off but it's far less than if you're going to spend 10 15 plus hours a week writing your own content the document's free it's linked in the description and i think you'll find it helpful now on to lesson number five you want to collect winning angles like their infinity stones another one of those weird behaviors that a lot of founders fall into when they start posting is they're terrified to repeat themselves.
They find a post that does well on an idea or a format or a media type that does well and overperforms and they don't want to use it again because they think that their audience is going to ridicule them for repeating themselves. Even if you post about the same thing every single day, nobody's going to care because nobody is paying that close attention to your content, which actually exemplifies why you need to be repeating winning angles and using the same angles again and again and again.
If you scroll through my content, you'll see I talk about the same things over and over and over again. And that's because I want to be known for a specific thing. I want you to know me as the guy who is great at founder branding and building personal brands for tech founders.
And in truth, there's only a small handful of angles I need to hammer again and again and again for you to trust me on that one angle I'm seeing do very well right now on LinkedIn on my profile and across our clients is this genre of AI feel good posts where you make your ICP feel good about their standing in the current state of AI.
A lot of people are feeling fearful that their jobs are going to be replaced. And a lot of people on LinkedIn are very loud about the fact that they're trying to replace designers and marketers or outbound people or whatever with AI. So if you can sort of take the opposite approach and take a measured but feel good approach to AI with your ICP, they're going to see it and identify it and engage.
And I've identified that this angle has worked really well on multiple occasions. So I'm going to keep running this again and again and again until I see it stop working. Now, next up is one of my favorite lessons in this entire video, which is using personal interest to humanize yourself.
And this is honestly a great excuse to talk about a lot of things that you find interesting outside of work or tech or whatever category you're in. And the thought process behind this is that personal interests sort of serve as proof of human.
It's one of the modes that you can surround yourself with that help people understand that you are not AI. You did not just use Clod or ChatGPT to one -shot your content. This is a real person behind your posts.
And this isn't new. If you look at one of the best examples of personal branding ever, Gary Vee, he's been using this sort of angle for a while now, talking about how he wants to buy the Jets and how he's a big New York sports fan. And also like even little niche things that seem inconsequential, how he likes blueberries or something like that.
If you scroll through my profile, you'll see it often. talk about reading and writing fiction, I'm working on a novel right now, I incorporate that into my business and marketing related content. And I tend to use those personal interests as supporting anecdotes or examples.
So for example, if I'm talking about how to build your personal brand as a founder, I might use some character building examples from fiction and books I'm reading to support my points, you don't have to share all of your personal interests or your entire life on your LinkedIn, you don't got to create day in the life logs, please, most people should not be doing that.
But you can use your personal interests again. to humanize you to your audience. And seventh on this list is bend the algorithm.
I cannot stress to you enough how important this is in the current state of LinkedIn and how the organic algorithm is functioning right now. The platform is quite volatile and odds are you're feeling. I hear this time and time again in most sales conversations I'm having, even looking across client accounts.
We've had to navigate this over the course of the past few months. And one of the ways we've done this is by sort of shifting the focus away from just content. Content is still important.
A lot of what we talked about up until this point has to do with the post that you're actually publishing. But you also want to be sending connection requests, engaging with other accounts, making it so you're not relying only on the organic algorithm to serve your content to the right people. Because right now it's not really the best at that.
So what I recommend you do is build a list of your ICP using a list building tool like Apollo or ZoomInfo or one of the several that are out there. I tend to use Apollo. And one of the cool things about Apollo is you can connect it to cloud using cowork and build your entire list in AI without having to do it manually.
And I have a prompt I use to do this. I'll put it up on the screen right now and also link it in the description. below as a document you can download for free once you have that list you'll want to enrich it with linkedin profiles and then pipe that into a tool like heyreach to automatically send connection requests every single day what i'd recommend is set harry's to send 15 connection requests per day you can technically send up to 20 and it varies a bit on a per account basis linkedin's a bit weird like that but i'd recommend doing 15 via heyreach gives you some room to send some manual ones if you see anything that catches your attention but that way every day you're feeding people into your audience because when they accept the connection request it's a mutual follow one other tool i love to help guide my outreach and make sure I'm getting in front of the right people is this tool called Traxy.
And what it does is a couple of things. One is on a per post basis, it'll actually identify what people in your ICP are engaging with that content. So you can export that list and then feed it into Heyreach and send connection requests automatically.
So for example, if I look at the leads dashboard in Traxy, I can see all the specific accounts that have engaged on my content. And it actually shows me exactly where they came from, which posts they commented on, which posts they engaged with. And then once I have enough signal that they're a good fit, I can pipe them into HeyReach and start that connection request campaign.
And one of the other cool things with Traxy is that aside from just seeing who's engaged with your content and being able to automatically feed them into HeyReach, it also goes and looks for ICP fit leads on LinkedIn automatically without you having to do anything via its agent. And this is not a paid sponsorship. I do have an affiliate link in the description below, but this is not a paid sponsored video.
I just genuinely use this tool and it's been very helpful for automating one of the key processes in making sure that I'm constantly. reaching out to my icp and staying top of mind with them and the performance of these connection sequences via traxi source leads tends to be pretty solid so if i go to hayreach and look at the performance of this campaign which is just people who have been found via traxi and fed into hayreach 73 connection requests have been sent total in the past seven days and 41 have accepted it's over 50 which is a pretty unheard of acceptance percentage and that's largely because the people who are getting these connection requests from me are either people who've engaged with my content or very obviously within my icp all right that's seven lessons from ten thousand posts if you only follow one of them make it that first one so dialing in your hook because if nothing else you gotta make sure that people are gonna stop and read your content and your first one to three lines of your posts are by far the most important if you want to see how i actually turn this content into pipeline and demos booked and revenue for my company i break that entire process down in the next video so click here to watch that one and then go write that post that you've been putting off i'll see you over there and good luck
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Ten thousand posts and seven years of trial and error, compressed into ten minutes: a founder walks through the seven things he wishes someone had told him about writing on LinkedIn from day one.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:31list
Seven LinkedIn Lessons
- Prioritize the first 1-3 lines
- Creative is your second hook
- Pair every take with a story
- Say the thing you think you cannot say
- Collect winning angles like infinity stones
- Use personal interest to humanize yourself
- Bend the algorithm with outbound
The full numbered structure the video is built around.
Steal forany founder-led LinkedIn content checklist
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
05:30link
“I put together a document that might help you... the document's free, it's linked in the description”
soft mid-video pitch for a free downloadable LinkedIn content-strategy doc, tied directly to the CEO/exec-posting pain point just discussed
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
