17 Content Mistakes Founders Make On LinkedIn

Hello hello!

Welcome back to, 1, One, 1. This newsletter is the place founders come to learn how to get leads from their social—and I’m so glad you’re a part of it.

Coming off a pretty hot week at the agency. Amid inevitable client fires, we just brought on a massive client I’ve personally been working since October of 2024.

I’d love to tell you who they are, but…you know.

Regardless, as promised, here’s your 1 winning hook template, 1 post breakdown, and 1 content tip :

Winning Hook Template

Most times, I can’t get you social metrics data for these. This time, I can. I texted Nick before writing this newsletter and asked if he could share for this post, because I was highlighting the hook. He graciously agreed.

As of writing this newsletter, Nick’s post with this hook has 92K impressions (119 likes and 61 comments).

Why Does This Hook Work?

There are three key reasons that you can replicate effectively across any AI / SaaS use case you want to highlight.

1/ The implication is that ChatGPT will save you hundreds of dollars if you read the post. Not much more to add there. People like saving money.

2/ People love AI use cases (if they’re actually practical/tactical). Remember when ChatGPT came out and all of those twitter accounts were growing by 5K+ followers/week with AI use case curation threads? No? Just me?

3/ The contrast of “hundreds of dollars” and “free” makes you stop and think. That’s intentional.

How Can You Replicate It?

Think of all the ways you use AI in your day-to-day. This will differ person-to-person and company-to-company.

We use it to help clarify info clients gives us with the right context, to help draft post prompts, some proofreading, etc.

Regardless, pick your most novel use case—the one people would be most impressed with.

Write the same or similar hook (you just need to highlight the hundreds of dollars vs FREE) and break down the use case. Add a video or screenshot of it in action, and you’re golden.

Post Breakdown

Today’s winning post is by Dan Lee, CEO of Nooks.

This one is fairly low lift, but extremely high-reward. Why?

1/ Proprietary data. If you have this, in any form, use it. In this case, Dan’s team surveyed 500 users (presumably Sales, GTM, RevOps, Demand Gen, and Growth folks) to find out how much time they spent prospecting each week.

This is relatable and curiosity-inducing to anyone in similar roles. If I was an SDR in that space, I’d want to know how much time my peers are spending on prospecting. And that’s the point—Dan wrote this with “me” in mind.

2/ Strong element of “we listen to our customers”. Notice the next couple of lines after the hook. It touches on tedious parts of being an SDR, before going into how Nooks is solving the problem.

Do understand, though, that if Dan simply posted “we want to make SDRs’ lives easier”, this wouldn’t have performed as well. Leading with the proprietary data hook was the right play.

3/ Simple social proof segue. After highlighting the issue and level of pain it causes their prospects, Dan shares Nooks’ fix—their AI prospecting Assistant. This alone is good, but the next line is where Dan “wins”.

He shares a real case study figure, complete with quantifiable results driven by Nooks. If you’re making a product-focused post like this, social proof is your best friend.

4/ CTA for live demo. Again, I would not do this on every post. This was tactical. It’s a lower-funnel, product-focused post, so it makes sense. And Dan used it the right way. (I’m just saying not to put webinar / live demo CTAs on TOF posts - you’d be surprised at how many people do).

5/ Survey data in graphic. Yes, the hook makes or breaks the post. But the media is a close second. There’s a level of authority and trust layered onto the post by way of having actual survey data included as the media. It’s also more curiosity-inducing than a simple demo (which there is a time and place for).

Breaking the 4th wall a bit here—this breakdown will 100% be a LinkedIn post of mine soon 😂 

Content Tip - 17 Content Mistakes Founders Make On LinkedIn

Oh boy. Bookmark this one in your email inbox and come back to it when needed.

I’ve personally written 3,500+ LinkedIn posts for over 50 B2B founders. More than that, my agency ships ~75/week.

This is, quite literally, my life. And every day, I see founders on the timeline, in my DMs, or on our calls, make these mistakes. Let’s get into it:

1/ Weak hook. This is the main culprit for most under-performing posts. Your post needs a strong hook like you need air.

I have a full issue coming out on how to write a great hook. For the time being, read through these – I talk a lot about them.

2/ Wrong media choice. This is like a bad hook’s ugly, less-talked-about cousin. Media choice matters. I can also write a full guide on this. The Spark Notes rankings of highest-performing media, though, is:

• Pic of you with face showing

• Pic of your team with faces showing

• Impromptu pic of you and/or your team

• Infographic / cheatsheet (must be value-dense)

• Carousel (also must be value-dense)

• Screenshot (article, result, product, etc.)

• Fake tweet or notes app screenshot

• No media

Hope that helps.

3/ Bad topic overall. Topic choice matters. A lot. And too many people pick the wrong ones. Lucky for you, I wrote a whole guide on it—available on this newsletter’s home page.

4/ Ugly formatting. Formatting can make or break a post. Don’t over-do the “LinkedIn optimization”—excessive line breaks, really. But, make sure it’s formatted in a way that’s easy to read. Guide on that here (this is old but still good. lol).

5/ AI-generated copy. Once your eye gets trained on what copy is AI-generated vs what isn’t, a lot of LinkedIn gets ruined for you. Even if you think you’re “beating the system”, you’re not. In fact, you’re losing credibility.

6/ Obsessing over each post’s performance. No single post will make you. No single post will break you. If a post flops, note the hook, topic, media choice, and formatting, and dissect what went wrong. Do not get discouraged. Every top account you see had 1,000 failed posts before they “made it big”.

7/ Only posting product updates. You need these. But they can’t be the only part of your content strategy. You need clear TOF, MOF, and BOF buckets to attract, nurture, and convert your audience.

8/ Only posting TOF to get engagement. If your entire post history is takes on remote work, AI, culture-building, and other LinkedIn-sexy topics, you’re not gonna make it. You’re giving up leads for likes. Use those as levers, but not pillars of your content strategy. Understood?

9/ Not leaning on authority. Every founder has some form of authority. Number of customers, number of inputs, time spent on XYZ. You must lean on that repeatedly, in your hooks and posts in general.

Go back and read how I started this section. Before I get into this list, I layer on authority, by saying how many posts I’ve written. That’s no accident. Those are for bad drivers.

10/ Expecting engagement to just come to them. Yes, you must make great content. You also should spend time—even 15-20 mins/day—leaving thoughtful comments on peers/ICP’s posts each day.

Aside from telling the platform you’re actively engaging, you can generate serious profile visits with thoughtful comments. If you’re retargeting profile visits via social signals, you’re golden.

11/ Lack of a content system. You don’t build a great content engine by waking up every day and thinking of a post idea. You need a system.

• Block X amount of time each week to write

• Create a log of your ideas / prompts, so that you never don’t know what to write

• Create a swipe file (Slack channel or Google Sheet)

If you’re a CMO or Head of Marketing trying to get your CEO to do this, but they don’t have a ton of time to do so, follow this process instead.

12/ Lack of term in content experiment. You can’t post for a week and complain you aren’t getting leads. It took me a full 90 days before getting 1 inbound lead.

But that lead closed without a call—because he’d been reading my content. It directly led to ~$30K in revenue, and they referred us way more than that, too.

Imagine I stopped posting after week 1, 6, or 10?

In short: Evaluate on a 90-day time horizon before making any rash decisions.

13/ Being terrified of repeating a post topic. Think back to your favorite accounts on LinkedIn. What did they post two weeks ago? Hell, what did they post 2 days ago?

Chances are, you don’t know. If you posted something a few weeks ago, but can spin it a new way or have new add-ons to make, don’t be shy. Run it.

(especially if your account is growing…there are people who didn’t see the original!)

14/ Claiming you “don’t have post ideas”. Hogwash. There are post ideas everywhere.

• You should keep a swipe file—pull on that.

• Think back to every client and prospect conversation you had in the last two weeks…you must have an anecdote that prompts something.

• If you’re an agency owner, click here. If you’re a SaaS founder/marketer, click here. Follow those, and you won’t run out of content ideas for a year. Literally.

15/ Refusing to hop on trends. Trends are not a bad thing. They just can’t be abused (see No. 16). Providing a take on something topical is actually a great way to get reach—as long as you’re saying something novel, and not copy/pasting. Don’t be scared.

16/ Exclusively hopping on trends. Okay, also don’t exclusively hop on trends. Like I said, you need a more sound strategy than that—one that spans the top, middle, and bottom of funnel. Use trend-talk as TOF, but only TOF. You must nurture down-funnel with more industry/product-specific material.

17/ Trying to optimize for useless stuff. I could go on for days about this. Posting times, commenting times, etc. You’re wasting brain power. General rules of thumb to follow:

• Post before 10am local time

• Answer all comments within the first 60 mins of the post going up

…and get on with your day!

That was a long one! I hope you loved it.

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Last Thing

Thank you for reading. Truly, it means a lot to me that you take the time out of your busy week to do this.

Just wanted to say that my agency, Hat Tip, has availability for more founders like yourself if you want support with content.

See if you’re a fit here.

I’ll be back next week,

Christian