What Should Your LinkedIn Engagement Routine Actually Be?

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.

The agency update this week is we’re heavily investing in operations help. Transparently, though clients get content and (most times) love it, the process behind the scenes to get it to them is less than perfect. That may be too nice.

In short, I’m not great at ops. Getting help ironing them out as we add clients and team members is the only way I don’t lose my hair in the short-term, or the business dies in the long-term. Enough about my ops problems.

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

Winning Hook Template

Why Does This Hook Work?

To be clear, this is borderline perfect—and that’s for a few reasons:

1/ Clear story

Todd using the story as a mechanism to share his tips as opposed to just sharing the tips should hold some weight with you. It’s one of those minor switches that make the hook hit way harder—increasing readers’ propensity to click “see more”.

He ties the story in further by saying he failed at his goal, before turning the post to be about how he’d hit it next time (which his ICP wants to know).

2/ Authority, Authority, Authority

This hook is an authority mine. There are layers.

→ VP of Sales – prestigious job title.

→ $20M ARR – Large monetary figure.

→ 70% YoY growth goal – high stakes (and another large figure).

This is often the difference between weak hooks and good ones. Authority makes people listen to what you have to say. A good exercise to illustrate this is imagining the hook without any authority:

I’ll tell you one thing for free—that won’t get clicks.

3/ Promise of listicle for desired benefit

Hooks are best made when working backwards from the reason the ICP should click “see more”. In this case, they should do so to get the promised desired listicle of 6 bets they should make to hit their sales number.

This might be obvious to some, but Todd’s ICP is sellers. Whatever yours is, swap out the desired benefit for something your ICP cares deeply about.

How Can You Replicate It?

1/ Tie a negative outcome in with a story.

Again, these work better when you have a story involved. I’m not one to promote making up lies, but I promise I won’t tell if you tie in a story that may or may not be made up.

(for the record: You can exaggerate missing your number in this case, but don’t lie about ARR or growth goals - those can easily be found out and traced back to you)

2/ Build in authority wherever you can.

Todd does this with his job title, the startup’s ARR figure, and large growth goals. You can follow a similar path.

Another way to build authority into hooks is borrowing it. For example, Todd might’ve mentioned big logos he closed while in the role.

The point is that the reader, after reading the hook, has a reason to click “see more” on LinkedIn. Authority + the next step are often good indicators of how well you’ve done that.

3/ Promise a listicle for your ICP‘s desired benefit.

Notice how Todd promises a list of six bets he’d make to “hit his number”—both him and his ICP’s dream outcome, and something Todd can credibly talk about.

My ICP—B2B founders and marketing teams—care more about generating leads from social than they do “hitting their number”. Plus, generating leads from social is something I’m credible on. Therefore I’d tailor my hook for that.

Unless you literally sell to the same group of people as Todd, you have no reason to mimic his promise here. And if you do, you better credit him.

The template you can follow:

NOTE: If you’re copying this template verbatim, credit Todd with the idea. Otherwise, you shouldn’t use it.

Post Breakdown

Today’s post comes from Danielle Messler, Head of Content at ExitFive - and it is sneaky good.

Why Does This Post Work?

To understand this, you have to think back to Danielle (and ExitFive’s) ICP: B2B Marketers.

1/ Industry-specific thought leadership

This isn’t thought leadership on AI or remote work or recruiting. It’s thought leadership on something Danielle is an expert at, and has an audience full of people interested in: B2B Marketing.

It’s a clearly stated opinion, or “flag in the ground”, per se, on B2B marketing. That’s not even remotely close to what makes this post so great though.

2/ Post is in defense of ICP.

There’s a bit of a running joke on LinkedIn that the easiest way to get reach is calling out totally normal job requirements/comp packages as too hard, unrealistic, or some other negative connotation.

I see this as a far more tasteful way of doing that – because I’ll never promote posting those.

But, seriously, the post is in defense of the ICP on a common issue they care deeply about—being heard and given permission to.

The posts works because the ICP feels this way. And when they feel that way, they comment in agreeance.

When they comment, your post gets more reach. Sometimes, it ends up on people’s feeds like mine, and I end up writing about it. Here I am.

How Can You Replicate It?

1/ Think of a common problem your ICP faces in their role.

Bonus points if it’s underrated, little-talked-about, or largely misunderstood. I joked about the Social Media Manager one in this newsletter, but I’ll use that as an example:

They commonly feel they have to wear a lot of hats and aren’t compensated properly for it:

→ Content strategist

→ Content writer

→ Content creator

→ Content editor

→ Marketer

→ SEO expert

→ Copywriter

I do think this trope is a bit overblown, but that’s just me. Regardless, I hope that illustrated the point well.

2/ State it and justify it.

Ensure you speak their language—as you always should—and reference job-specific scenarios or instances they’d “get”. For example, Danielle mentions someone saying “that’s not how we do it here”—which any in-house B2B marketer has heard before.

Whatever that is for you, do it.

Content Tip - What Should Your LinkedIn Engagement Routine Actually Be?

The bad news about LinkedIn is that posting really is only half the battle. The other half is ensuring your ICP sees your posts and engages with them. How do you do that?

That’s what this newsletter issue’s about.

To be frank: There’s no clear “best” way to do this. Engagement strategies are like diets—the best one is the one that works for you.

Regardless, I’ll share what I’d tell any founder to do, and if you want to copy it, feel free!

1/ Make A Spreadsheet with 3 Lists Of Accounts

→ ICP

→ Peers

→ Leaders

Aim for 25 accounts in each list. You can include more, but the method I’m about to share kind of bugs out about 28, in my experience.

Your ICP list should be 25 target prospects that post often.

Your Peers list should be 25 people in your space to some degree.

Your Leaders list should be full of the leaders of your space.

That’s 75 accounts, split among three groups, that you will engage with.

Make a custom feed with each list using this method.

2/ Each day around your posting time, open each list up.

Do this a few minutes before you post. Some people say it “warms up the algo”. I don’t know that I believe that, but you don’t lose anything by getting extra eyeballs from other posts around the time your post goes up.

With the three lists open, make sure they’re filtered by “latest”. Then, leave comments on 5 posts within each list. That’s 15 comments—5 to your ICP, 5 to Peers, and 5 to leaders in your space.

That’s 15 opportunities in maybe 20-25 minutes to get in front of people that will care about what you have to say.

Make a routine out of this. You can easily track the routine’s effectiveness by the amount of new profile visits AND the quality of them.

Plus, at the time of writing this, LinkedIn is rolling out impressions count on comments—so you can actually see each one’s impact.

3/ Once your post is up, get back to all comments early.

This isn’t black magic. It’s true. The first bit (~60 mins) of a post’s performance will determine the rest of the performance.

That means you want comments on it. To get those comments, respond to new ones as soon as they come in for the first bit (or have someone on your team do it).

Trust me, the accounts that simply post and get off LinkedIn do far worse than ones that actively comment and reply to comments on their own stuff.

If you can commit to this workflow each day, you’ll ensure your content actually gets in front of people who care to read it.

Anyway, that’s all for today.

Social Stuff I Found For You

📌 Great TOF post template

📌 Awesome post-call follow-up template

📌 90-second Exec intro blooper reel 😆 

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