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