Hey everyone!

It’s me, Dana - your LinkedIn data fellow, who tries to share valuable LinkedIn insights with you.

Let’s get into this, shall we?

Get the highest possible ROI from your LinkedIn time commitment

Before we dive in, I want to tell you that I’ve been feeling the pain of juggling time and tasks since, well, pretty much forever. But what changed for me in 2024 was that I took on a couple of really demanding projects.

This means some days I don’t even have time to log into LinkedIn.

I have debated whether this is just too much at the moment and whether I shouldn’t just drop it. After much internal conflict, I have decided LinkedIn is just way too important to me to simply put it on hold.

This is where having a system really helps. Here are the steps I’ve outlined:

1. Set realistic goals

Yeah, you’ll probably say this one is a no-brainer. Yet, I consistently see people who objectively don’t have time to post daily, yet they feel guilty that they’re not posting daily.

One of the most stubborn myths I’ve seen around LinkedIn strategy is, you guessed it, content consistency. But consistency doesn’t mean blasting out content every day. The truth is, posting daily is NOT The Bulletproof Recipe for success.

The guilt beast can be tackled only by systematizing through an honest review:

• Look at your calendar on Sunday

• Identify a few days when you’d have 30 minutes of free time at once

• Plan your content around these free blocks

It doesn’t have to be daily by any means.

Personally, I’ve found that posting every 3rd/4th day is a sweet spot. You’d post and engage on the 1st day, and only engage on the 2nd and the 3rd day. On the 4th you post again, and so on.

I didn’t come up with this number subjectively. In my experience, impressions start to drop massively on the 3rd/4th day of not posting (depending on how successful the last post was).

Use the allocated 30 minutes to engage with your network and send DMs.

Don’t feel bad about the days when you don’t even have time to write a single comment. There’s a good reason for this, and it’s probably your business/your family.

2. Identify the needle movers

This is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle. I’ve argued many times before that LinkedIn’s main “work” components don’t actually entail content creation. They entail taking action with regards to your needle movers.

A needle mover is something that has a defining impact on your business. Here’s a list of potential needle movers:

• Rethinking your strategy

• Expanding your network

• DMing existing contacts

• Engaging with ICPs

• Getting on calls with POI

• Developing an email list

A lot of the days when I haven’t posted, I’ve actually chatted with someone in the DMs and invited them for a call. Then, on the next day, instead of posting, I’d research a bunch of ICPs and add them to my network.

When you choose to pick only the needle movers, this automatically means dropping a bunch of things that you simply don’t have time for.

These things could be:

• Creating carousels and images

• Commenting for the sake of commenting

• Saying yes to everyone and everything

Naturally, if you’re a designer, carousels are your needle mover. But something else isn’t.

To recap, don’t do things that:

• Don’t get you closer to your target audience

• Don’t add considerable value to your reputation in your industry

• Take up too much time with little return

LinkedIn is largely occupied by copywriters-turned-influencers. Because writing content is what they do best, they spend every waking hour convincing us that content is the most important factor for success.

It’s not.

Content has two roles:

• Build authority

• Act like a magnet to get you connected to like-minded people

I know people who get leads and clients without publishing a single post. I’m not saying this is THE solution either. But these people have identified the needle movers - finding the right contacts to engage and DM with. This is the result of a well-thought-out strategy.

Bottom-line: focus more on the overall strategy than the content itself.

This seems like more than enough for 1 newsletter issue, right?

The 2nd part on how to stand out while staying true, will come out next week.

P.S. If I wasted your time with this newsletter, please unsubscribe. And then tell me on LinkedIn why you did. I want to improve.