The LinkedIn Ground Rules

Make your profile a shopfront, not a CV.

Your LinkedIn profile is the first thing someone checks after they read your post, see your comment, or accept your connection request. Before they follow you, before they DM you, before they even consider hiring you, they click on your name and look at your profile.

And what do most people find? A headline that says something like “Founder & CEO | Passionate about helping people reach their potential.” An about section that reads like a cover letter. A featured section that's either empty or has a random article from 2019 that nobody asked for. (We've all got one.)

None of that tells a potential client anything useful. Your profile needs to answer three questions within about 10 seconds: Who do you help? What problem do you solve? What should they do next? Think of it like a shop window. If someone walks past and can't immediately tell what you're selling and whether it's for them, they keep walking. Same thing happens on LinkedIn, except instead of walking past, they click away. You never even know they were there. This is the foundation everything else sits on. No amount of great content will help if your profile loses people the moment they check you out.

Pick 3 topics. Post 4 times a week.

This is the one that keeps people stuck for months. Not because they have nothing to say, but because they have too much to say and no way of deciding what to say when.

So you end up posting whatever crosses your mind that morning. Monday it's a motivational quote. Wednesday it's a tip about your industry. Friday it's nothing because you ran out of energy and the thought of writing yet another post makes you want to close your laptop and go for a very long walk. (Don't worry, I've been there too.)

Random content creates random results. When someone visits your profile and sees posts about 6 different topics with no thread connecting them, they don't know what you're about. And if they don't know what you're about, they're not going to follow you, and they're definitely not going to hire you.

This is where content pillars come in. That's just a fancy way of saying: pick 3 core topics that everything you post ties back to. These should be based on your expertise and the problems your ideal clients actually have. Once you have them, you never start from zero again because every post idea fits into one of your 3 topics. And you need to be posting at least 4 times a week. I know that sounds like a lot, especially if you're not posting at all right now. But consistency is what makes content compound. Post 1 doesn't get you clients. But posts 1 through 50 build the trust that makes post 51 the one that gets someone into your DMs.

Hook them in the first line.

You've got about 1.5 seconds. That's how long someone takes to decide whether to read your post or keep scrolling. And the only thing they see in that window is your first line. (LinkedIn cuts off the rest behind a “see more” button, so if your opening doesn't earn the click, the rest of your post might as well not exist.)

In the LinkedIn world, your first line is called a “hook,” and it's the single most important part of any post you write. This is why “I'm excited to announce...” gets scrolled past. This is why “5 tips for better productivity” gets ignored. These hooks are so generic that your brain files them under “seen it before” and moves on without thinking twice.

The best hooks do one of two things: they make someone curious, or they make someone feel seen. Ideally both. If you're a fitness coach, something like “My client lost 15kg in 4 months. But that's not the part that changed her life.” works because it sets up a tension your brain needs to resolve. You have to click “see more” to find out what the actual point is. That's a hook doing its job.

Your hook isn't decoration. It's the door. If the door doesn't open, nobody sees the room. And this is a skill you can learn, not a talent you're born with. It just takes practice and a few structures to work from.

Don't be afraid to ask.

This one is tricky because on the surface it feels like you're doing everything right. You're sharing useful insights. You're teaching your audience things. People are commenting “this is so helpful!” and “saved this!”

And then... nothing. No DMs. No calls booked. No clients.

Educational content builds trust, but on its own it doesn't create urgency. If every single post teaches someone how to do the thing you sell, you're essentially training them to do it themselves instead of giving them a reason to work with you. (Which is generous of you, but not great for the business.)

The answer isn't to stop teaching. It's to balance your educational posts with content that does other jobs. Posts that show proof: client wins, before-and-after examples, results you've helped people get. Posts that name a problem so specifically that the reader feels like you've read their mind. And posts that make a direct, clear invitation to work with you.

Most people are terrified of that last one because they think any mention of their services is “being salesy.” So they post 40 educational tips and zero calls to action, and then wonder why nobody's buying. You're allowed to tell people you can help them. They actually need you to, because most of your audience is sitting there thinking “I wish someone would just sort this out for me” and they don't realise you offer exactly that.

Engage before and after every post.

This is the one almost everyone misses. You could write the best LinkedIn post ever written. Perfect hook, genuinely useful content, clear call to action. And if nobody sees it, none of it matters.

Most people think posting is the whole game. It's not. Posting is maybe 40% of it. The other 60% is what you do before and after you hit publish, and it's the part that most people either skip entirely or don't know exists.

Before you post: spend 20 minutes commenting on 5 to 10 posts from people in your space. Not “great post 👏” comments, but actual, thoughtful comments that add something to the conversation. This does two things. It gets your name in front of their audience (some of whom are your ideal clients), and it tells LinkedIn's algorithm that you're an active user whose content deserves to be shown to more people.

After you post: reply to every comment on your post within the next hour. The algorithm watches what happens in that early window. If people are commenting and you're replying and a real conversation is forming, LinkedIn decides your content is worth pushing further.

I know this sounds like a lot on top of actually creating the content. It gets faster once it's a habit, and honestly, it's the difference between your posts being seen by 50 people or 500. Four posts a week with a solid engagement routine will outperform daily posting with no engagement routine every single time.

Connect with buyers, not bystanders.

LinkedIn's algorithm learns from who engages with your content. If your posts are mostly getting likes and comments from other people in your industry who will never hire you, or from engagement pod members going through the motions, the algorithm starts showing your content to more people like them. Not to your actual ideal clients. Not to the business owners who would pay you money.

This is how you end up with a post that gets 200 likes and zero leads. You feel like it's working, but nothing actually changes.

Being intentional about who you engage with changes everything. When you send connection requests, send them to your ideal clients, not to other people in your industry. When you comment on posts, choose ones your ideal clients are actually reading. When someone who is clearly never going to buy from you comments on your post, don't spend 20 minutes in a back-and-forth with them. Thank them and move on. Every interaction you have on LinkedIn is training the algorithm on who to show your content to next. Make sure you're training it well.