LinkedIn isn't over. You're just bad at it.

How I turned LinkedIn into my single best acquisition channel

👋 Hi, it’s Kyle Poyar and welcome to Growth Unhinged, my weekly newsletter exploring the hidden playbooks behind the fastest-growing startups. Subscribe to join 73,451 readers who get Growth Unhinged delivered to their inbox every Wednesday morning.

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Ignore what you might’ve heard about the LinkedIn algorithm working against you. Ignore the lazy advice about how links kill your reach. LinkedIn isn’t over. It’s the best B2B growth channel hiding in plain sight.

I don’t usually share my LinkedIn hacks, but here’s what I’ll say: I’ve put in my 10,000 hours (say 👋 if we’re not connected yet), and it’s paid off. My following has grown 62% year-on-year to 90,000+, my posts hit 14 million impressions in the past year and all of that reach cost me exactly $0.

LinkedIn is by far the #1 growth channel for Growth Unhinged, bringing in 14,000 (!) subscribers. That’s 3x more than Google, 30x more than Twitter and 300x more than ChatGPT. And that’s before accounting for dark social.

The top traffic sources for Growth Unhinged

LinkedIn works for B2B brands, too. It’s the biggest source of pipeline for Pylon, which raised a $17M Series A from a16z last August. It was pivotal in allowing lemlist to bootstrap to $20M+ ARR with 40% EBITDA margins. And it helped Keyplay reach $100k+ in ARR without a website or an app — just 100% community hand-raisers.

Why it’s so uniquely valuable:

• LinkedIn is the single largest gathering place for B2B buyers.

• It’s an equalizer. Great content can still reach a big audience even if you don’t already have an established brand, massive following or a ton of ad $.

• It’s a place where you can engage with real people, which means you can combine inbound and outbound in the same place.

• It doesn’t need to cost anything besides your time.

Today I’m sharing my hard-earned advice for getting the most out of LinkedIn. And hopefully I’ll dispel a few myths along the way.

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1. Follow 5-10 thought leaders in your niche and engage with their posts.

Your first step on LinkedIn isn’t to post, it’s to comment.

Specifically, to authentically engage with posts from thought leaders in your niche ideally within the first hour of their posts going live. (You can set up notifications by navigating to someone’s LinkedIn profile, then toggling the notification bell to “All”.)

You might be surprised by how helpful this is in the early days — and how few people do it. Engaging helps you build your LinkedIn pattern recognition through osmosis, teaching you how to write for LinkedIn, how to craft a hook and what ‘good’ looks like. It lets you see which topics and formats resonate best with a wider audience. And, frankly, it allows your insights to be seen by borrowing from someone else’s following. (Even this throwaway comment attracted over 18,000 impressions!)

You can find thought leaders through creator databases like Favikon. Or you can just search for specific content keywords or hashtags in the LinkedIn search bar (but filter for “Posts” only).

Pro-tip: make sure these thought leaders are actual creators and that you genuinely value their perspectives. There are plenty of folks trying to game the system with ghost writers, engagement pods, bot armies and AI commenters.

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2. Original graphics go a LONG way.

When I look back at my top-performing LinkedIn posts, almost all of them include an original graphic. (These graphics are usually repurposed from this newsletter 🤫.)

The original graphics could be first-party data or research, screenshots that get marked up or just frameworks that communicate a point visually.

Why this matters: a great visual ‘stops the scroll’ and gets folks to pay attention. In my experience, dwell time is highly prized by the LinkedIn algorithm, which helps your posts get seen by more people.

My advice is to think about your visuals as infographic-style even if they’re not really the polished infographics you might see in a magazine. By infographic-style, I mean that they draw folks in, tell a story and ultimately allow viewers to come to their own conclusions. (Pro-tip: Sankey diagrams are always 🔥.)

Images don’t need to be overly fussy and too polished of a look can easily backfire. Original and authentic beats corporate and glossy. I make almost all of my own visuals using Google Slides. (Sometimes I’ll use Canva if I’m feeling fancy or want their background remover tool.)

For inspiration, I recommend following Peter Walker, an incredible data storyteller and Head of Insights at Carta. I also take inspiration from data-heavy media outlets like The Economist or The Upshot by the New York Times.

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3. Don't worry so much about putting a link in your post.

Lots of folks obsess over whether to include a link in their post. They might resort to the link in comments strategy or the thirst trap-style comment for link approach. My two cents: don’t worry so much about it — as long as you have a native graphic.

What matters is that you write zero-click content, i.e. the post has standalone value and folks don’t need to click on an external link in order to appreciate it. If the content of the post is good, people will inherently click on the link to go deeper.

To be honest with you, about 50% of my posts now include links. I’m always pushing folks to Substack! If the post is strong, it doesn’t really hurt overall engagement. (By the way, you can now see link engagement within your LinkedIn post analytics.)

Pro-tip: If you are worried about potentially being penalized by the algorithm, let your post bake for an hour. Then click “Edit post” and drop in the link. You’ll still get plenty of clicks without sacrificing your reach.

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4. Keep to a consistent schedule of ideally 2-3+ posts per week.

I’ve seen too many so-called LinkedIn experts encourage folks to post every single day. I think that’s bad advice. Who has that much new to say, anyway?

I aim to keep a fairly consistent schedule of about two or three posts per week. The typical recommendation is to post on weekdays between 8am and 11am local time, which corresponds to when your audience will be most active on the platform.

Sunday mornings around 11am actually work best for me. I have no idea why! Perhaps it’s a less competitive time, which makes it easier for folks to stumble upon my posts.

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5. Find your counterintuitive perspective.

LinkedIn is social media. Look at start a conversation with your posts.

What is nobody else saying that you will go to your grave defending? What’s your pet peeve that folks are still doing? What’s the outdated approach that no longer works?

For me, it’s usually about finding hidden insights that might be overlooked. This could mean calling out what people think of as marketing problems are symptoms, not the underlying issues. Or highlighting Typeform’s unusual approach to auto-upgrades. Or showing data that annual plan upgrades happen way earlier than people think.

You want to find your own counterintuitive perspective. This doesn’t need to be a hot take. Usually it isn’t. But it should challenge an existing point of view.

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6. You can repurpose your greatest hits.

I spent several years with zero content recycling. Boy do I regret that.

Odds are that most of your audience won’t see a given LinkedIn post. Even if they do see it, only 1-2% will meaningfully engage with it. And even if they do engage with it, they’ll probably forget about it after a couple of weeks. (Sorry to be a downer!)

When you find a topic that resonates with your audience, double down on it! That will become your calling card, allowing you to build a personal brand as the expert.

And look for ways to repurpose your greatest hits to extend their shelf life. I try to refresh top-performing posts on a roughly six month cadence, but keep an eye out for times when a post becomes topical again or if I can re-craft it with a better hook. In many cases, the repost outperforms the original one!

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I hope this advice helps you tap into the power of the algorithm! If you have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to drop a comment or reach out over (you guessed it) LinkedIn.