LinkedIn makes it very easy to see how many people saw a post. It gives you much less help working out what that attention did for the business.
I know the feeling because I spend more time there than I’d like to admit. I publish something, keep up with people, get a reach number back and still have to work out whether the time was worth it.
That was where I started the latest Millennial Masters Live with Melanie Goodman, Cory Blumenfeld and Taylin John Simmonds . We kept coming back to what happens after somebody notices you, because that’s where the visible numbers stop helping.
LinkedIn looks most useful as the place where someone first encounters your work and decides whether you’re worth more of their time. 👇🏻
The follower count doesn’t tell you enough
Melanie started with the number LinkedIn makes easiest to see.
“The value of a follower is small unless they are taking another step.”
A growing audience can help more people become familiar with you, especially when your profile gives them a clear route to continue the relationship. The count itself doesn’t tell you whether they did.
Cory sees a narrower use for the number. His work includes helping people with content, so a visible audience and a consistent body of posts help support his credibility when a potential client checks him out.
He has also spoken with people who had more than 400,000 followers and were still struggling in business. In those cases, the content people saw had little connection with what the person was trying to sell.
That makes the follower number useful when it backs up the work you claim to understand. It can’t tell you whether the person who saw your profile ever became a client.
A reach number has the same limitation. LinkedIn can tell you that a post travelled without telling you what the people who saw it did afterwards. If you stop at the number, you’re measuring the part of the process the platform happens to show you.
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Your profile is part of the sales process
Taylin uses LinkedIn mainly for cold outreach, so his profile has a specific job.
“My LinkedIn is more of a DM platform.”
He expects anyone considering his proposition to look at his profile before replying. His job is to make sure they find enough evidence to take him seriously.
Taylin runs a newsletter agency, so he puts his LinkedIn newsletter where a prospect can find it quickly. The writing gives them a sample of the work he sells. He also said he should publish more client proof and explain more of the way his agency works.
When he sends somebody a message, he assumes the profile check is coming.
“The first thing they’re gonna do if they’re considering working with me and taking my proposition seriously is look at my profile.”
Taylin judges the post by what happens when the person he contacted arrives there and decides whether he is worth replying to. Wide distribution matters less in that setup.
Melanie checks profiles carefully too. She looks at the headline and whether the person has taken the time to fill in their work history. She previously wrote for Millennial Masters about LinkedIn becoming part of your AI footprint because it gives people another place to check who you are.
A profile can do useful work before a sales conversation has started. It can answer some of the questions somebody has after your name appears in their inbox.
Attention needs somewhere to go
Melanie has built much of her business on conversations in LinkedIn DMs.
She uses the notifications people tend to ignore as reasons to get in touch. If somebody changes role or has a birthday, she sends a personalised message instead of pressing LinkedIn’s automatic congratulations button.
“It’s a complete conversation starter.”
A message is enough to count as progress when it begins a relationship that develops over time. Melanie also uses her LinkedIn newsletter to point readers towards longer writing on her Substack. She wants people to move from a social platform into a place where she can keep the relationship going.
Cory spent years focused mainly on LinkedIn. A couple of months into running a newsletter, he was already kicking himself for waiting.
“I’m already kicking myself saying, ‘Why didn’t I do this before?’”
A newsletter gave him direct access to the people who subscribed and control over what landed in their inbox. He could keep reaching them after the original LinkedIn post disappeared down the feed.
A post can introduce you to somebody. The next part depends on whether they have a reason to keep going.
Long-form gives people more time with you
For Taylin, the reason long-form matters is time under attention.
“You need them to consume as much of your content as possible in the shortest amount of time.”
He estimates that somebody who follows you on LinkedIn may spend only an hour or two with your posts across a whole year. Followers miss some posts and skim others.
An article or podcast can concentrate much more time into one sitting, with the podcast also letting people hear how you think without the compression of a short post.
Taylin saw the commercial effect in his own business. He said his sales increased significantly after he added a podcast, even though newsletters remain the centre of his work.
Melanie sometimes hears from people who remember an article she published months earlier even when they never liked or commented on it. They remembered enough to bring it up later.
Visible engagement can miss the reader who remembers an article months later and comes back when they need the work you sell.
Long-form also gives you room to prove more than familiarity. Taylin’s LinkedIn newsletter works as evidence for a prospect because writing newsletters is the service he sells. Melanie can show how she thinks through the articles she publishes. The content gives somebody more material to judge before they decide whether to spend money.
What counts as a result
Melanie’s test for personal content was whether the detail helps the reader understand something. Taylin’s strongest lead-generation example did exactly that.
His business went from making around 70k a month to a point where he couldn’t pay himself within 45 days after one mistake while he was away. He later wrote about what went wrong and what he changed after coming back.
He called it his best lead-generation post. Some of the attention became leads, which gave him a result he could trace back to the post.
When I look at my own time on LinkedIn, that gives me a more useful test. I still want a post to reach the right people. Once it does, I need to see whether anyone gives me more of their attention and whether that relationship produces something useful for the business.
If the number goes up and nothing happens afterwards, I still haven’t answered whether the time was worth it.
