I Wrote on LinkedIn for 30 Days Straight

There is a common misconception that LinkedIn is only for finding jobs, flaunting your career accomplishments, and posting “professional” content.

LinkedIn is more than that; it’s actually one of the most vibrant and dynamic platforms for creating online content. You can post articles, videos, photos, and status updates. You can even create polls and image carousels.

It’s ideal for online creators, especially for those just getting started.

And best of all, it’s not nearly as crowded and saturated as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Medium, which makes it easier to stand out.

I spent 30-days in a row posting on LinkedIn as part of a 30-Day LinkedIn Sprint Cohort — below are my takeaways.

11 Lessons Learned Posting on LinkedIn Every Day.

1). Posting every day is easy and powerful.

Publishing an article on Medium every day is impressive. Filming, editing, and publishing a YouTube video every day seems downright herculean. Posting to LinkedIn is a much more feasible endeavor. And compared to Twitter where most creators are tweeting multiple times a day, on LinkedIn you only need to post once. In fact, many algorithm experts claim that unless you have a massive following, posting more than once per day can actually derail the “juice” of not only your original post but of all of them in the feed.

2). LinkedIn is a great test lab for content.

Publishing daily was tremendously valuable in helping me craft my own voice and style by allowing me to experiment with different ideas and topics. This served as a test run for my content. The feedback I received has helped guide me on what topics to go deeper on, what to refine, and what to lay off of for the time being.

Plus, the mere act of every day sitting down, working through an idea, and publishing that idea is valuable all by itself — as it becomes an exercise in improving your creativity and clarity of thought.

3). There’s a science to creating the ideal LinkedIn post.

As part of the cohort, post templates were provided that were examples of some of the most successful posts on LinkedIn. They were valuable for seeing what type of writing works well on LinkedIn, how to best structure your posts, and ways to improve your online writing chops in general. However, I didn’t use them; I only referenced them for inspiration. Maybe in the future, I will play around with them if they make sense for the message I am trying to convey.

In general, though, setting aside time to research posts from popular creators on LinkedIn is a great way to learn.

4). LinkedIn is the breath of fresh air of social media.

Compared to other platforms, it is much easier to grow on LinkedIn. In one month, I more than 10X my average post views and gained over 100 followers. Whereas growth on platforms like Twitter or YouTube can be like watching paint dry.

Also, the LinkedIn audience is more engaged and demands content of real value. As a creator, this is awesome — if you spend the time to create genuine, valuable content, it has a great chance of making its way to people who will resonate with it.

5). Tell stories. Lots and lots of stories.

Telling personal stories is an art, and LinkedIn is all about telling stories. This is definitely one of my biggest takeaways. Forcing myself to include stories in my posts throughout the 30-day sprint pushed me as a writer. Instead of always trying to lecture or pontificate, posts that tend to attract the most eyeballs are the ones that share a story and weave in a lesson at the same time.

Just having the thought of telling a story in the back of my mind when crafting a post has changed how I create content. Moving forward, this is something I am going to continue working on.

6). LinkedIn will make you a better blogger.

As a blogger, writing within LinkedIn’s character restriction is a challenge. But this has made me more intentional in making my writing succinct and tighter. If you’re used to writing on Medium, posting daily on LinkedIn becomes a practice of “getting to the point” and not repeating yourself which are two of the most common pitfalls for many bloggers.

Also, posting every day made it easy for me to repurpose my most popular posts into pieces for Medium and other platforms.

7). Don’t cave to the allure of going viral.

Since LinkedIn is not as crowded as other platforms, there is a temptation to try to “hack” the algorithm so you can go viral. This is a matter of staying true to your unique writing style, which I told myself early on. As much as before and after posts of celebrities and pics of famous people do well on LinkedIn, it’s not my thing no matter how many views or likes it can generate.

Like every other platform, the best strategy on LinkedIn is to play the long game by showing up every day and providing valuable content. That’s the only way to find your creator-audience fit.

8). Yes to selfies. No to stock images.

I had a ton of fun each day trying to come up with interesting selfie pics that would enhance the message of my posts. The few posts I did without images or used stock photos didn’t get as much engagement. Not sure if there is a big correlation with this, but stock images, while they work well on Medium, tend to make LinkedIn posts look generic in the feed. LinkedIn is a very personal platform, using photos of yourself goes a long way in enhancing your branding.

9). Connection with the creator community.

By being part of a cohort, you are essentially writing every day with a community of fellow creators which is a phenomenal experience. The benefits of the ongoing support, camaraderie, and sheer insights you get from reading your fellow creator’s posts are invaluable. I learned a ton from everyone and by connecting with them during our weekly office hour calls. Many of us have continued posting every day and supporting one another in the comments. If you never created within a community before and have the chance to do so, I highly recommend it.

10). Comment. Comment. And comment some more.

As part of the community, we would each spend some time every day commenting on everyone’s posts. While I never spent so much time commenting in my life, I learned being a creator is the art of giving and receiving. It’s not just about your posts and message; it’s about supporting and connecting with others. A pretty awesome thing about the LinkedIn algorithm is that commenting on people’s posts can actually help you get in front of that person’s audience. Besides just through the display of the comment but the algorithm shows your posts to the followers of whichever posts you comment on. Commenting is truly a win-win for everyone.

11). Weekend posting?

The weekends were the toughest to keep the daily streak going. Also, the weekend seems pretty “quiet” on LinkedIn, probably because most people aren’t working. I’m debating if the juice is worth the squeeze on the weekend. Moving forward, I will try posting Monday through Friday and use the weekends to plan and batch write my posts for the upcoming week. This will hopefully eliminate the mad dash to write something and get it published each morning.

The Verdict: would I do it again?

Funny you ask, I haven’t stopped posting since the first cohort ended and I recently completed another 30-day sprint a few weeks ago.

If you love to write, posting on LinkedIn every day is exciting. It will give you that instant hit of dopamine we creators love because you can ship something of value relatively quickly and then go about the rest of your day.

If you have any questions about joining the next cohort, let me know in the comments.

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Hi, I’m Anthony Lombardo, a blogger, and online creator and if you enjoyed this post, I’d love for you to join my weekly newsletter on everything self-development and spiritual growth.