Another LinkedIn post? Really?

In this article I’m breaking down why your marketing team is right, and wrong, about posting on LinkedIn. I’m playing both sides of my target market you see… crafty I know.

We’ve all been there. You’ve barely finished your second coffee when someone from the marketing team casually asks, “any chance you could post something on LinkedIn this week?”

It starts as a gentle nudge. Then it becomes a weekly tap on the shoulder. Eventually, it’s a recurring calendar invite titled ‘CEO LinkedIn content’. And while it’s usually well-intentioned, it can start to feel like one more obligation in a long list of things you didn’t sign up for when you agreed to run a business, and in the end you just ask your exec to write the content on your behalf.

I don’t want to be an influencer

So let’s just get this bit out of the way, shall we: no, you don’t have to be a LinkedIn influencer. You don’t have to post daily thought leadership or narrate your life like a business memoir. But if you’re a founder, CEO, or senior leader in a professional or financial services firm, there is genuine value to creating content online. It’s just not the value that your marketing exec might be thinking of.

Posting on LinkedIn isn’t important because “everyone else is doing it”. That logic leads to bad marketing. The same logic that once gave us branded stress balls, QR codes on taxis and had your HR teams at sixth-form careers fairs with a trestle table and fruit bowls. Social media should be treated like any other marketing channel: it needs purpose, a clear role in your strategy and a high bar for quality. If it’s not going to meet those three basics, just put the keyboard down.

When it’s done properly, a personal presence on LinkedIn can, and does, do wonders for your marketing strategy, at pretty good scale too.

LinkedIn is one of the only places where a leader can speak directly to their market without going through a PR filter. And when done with thought and consistency, it becomes a long-term asset to the business: enhancing credibility and gently attracting the right kind of opportunities.

It works too, according to LinkedIn, content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by company pages. Not only that, 76% of buyers say they’re more likely to trust a company whose leadership is active on social media (Source: LinkedIn & Edelman B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report).

But there’s a really fine line here: the goal is not to sell. At least, not all the time. Instead, think of your personal brand like a social bank account.

Every time you share something valuable, something that your audience wants to read. Whether that’s a smart insight, a personal story or a genuinely useful tip, you’re making a deposit. Your social balance goes up. People start to think of your content, and you, as helpful.

Creating valuable content

Authority content: insights or advice based on your own expertise. This is what positions you as someone worth listening to.

Personal content: stories and reflections from your own experience. This is what makes people relate to you, trust you and root for you. And despite your inner cynic, most people want to see you succeed, so have faith.

Over time, those deposits add up. You build what we call social capital: a sense of trust and familiarity that opens doors long before anyone slides into your inbox.

But as with any bank account, withdrawals are part of the deal. Those withdrawals are your sales content: posts about what you offer, how to work with you, client results or new service launches. These aren’t bad. In fact, you need them. But they draw on the goodwill you’ve built. If every post is a pitch, you’ll burn through your balance fast. Perfect examples of industries that run a negative social bank account are recruitment agencies and estate agencies. Take a look at 100 corporate pages and they’ll all have next to zero engagement because all they do is sell, all day every day without building up their balance with useful content.

People hate adverts. Remember the days before Netflix and you used to skip recording the adverts or go and make a coffee when the adverts were on? I can assure you that if you’re sat force-feeding sales messages to people on social media all day, you’ll be getting the exact same results.

But on the flipside, if you never sell and all you ever do is hand out free advice, you might be well-liked, but you’ll never sell anything. Helpful doesn’t always convert.

So what’s the right mix?

Broadly speaking, I recommend a ratio of 80–90% value content to 10–20% sales content. That balance gives you space to build trust without vanishing into the friend zone. It also gives your audience enough clarity to know what you do, and how they can engage if they want to.

And it pays off. The same LinkedIn and Edelman study found that 64% of B2B decision-makers say thought leadership content has influenced them to award business to a company they hadn’t previously considered.

Done well, a personal LinkedIn presence can:

• Attract ideal-fit clients (without begging for them)
• Support your business brand through association
• Create opportunities for partnerships, media and hiring
• Build long-term brand equity that pays off over time

But done poorly, it can do the opposite: confuse your audience, undermine your credibility or simply waste your time and money. The latter being the most common.

So yes, your marketing team is right: LinkedIn matters. But they’re also wrong, because the goal isn’t to post for the sake of posting.

The goal is to build the kind of reputation that makes the right people come to you.

Content themes

The easiest and most effective way to structure your content is by following three simple themes. This will help you to build a sustainable presence that works hard for your business, even when you’re not posting every day. Especially when you’re not posting every day.

We’ll begin by breaking your content down into three themes:

• Authority

Teach something you know. This could be an insight into your industry, commentary on a trend, a contrarian viewpoint (we love those), or a breakdown of how you solve a common client problem. Authority

content is what earns you respect. This content is how you prove your thinking and it’s especially useful for differentiating yourself in a crowded category. If you have a distinctive approach or a bold take on something everyone else is parroting, this is where to put it. Think: ‘Here’s what we’re seeing in the market right now’, ‘Here’s how we do things differently’, or ‘Here’s what everyone else is getting wrong.’ Just be prepared to back it up, if you’re going against the tide, don’t be argumentative for the sake of it.

• Personal

Talk about your own experiences. Not the motivational waffle, but the honest reflections that other business leaders will actually relate to: lessons from hiring, decisions you regret, or the frameworks you’ve come to rely on over time. Personal content isn’t about being vulnerable for the sake of it, it’s about creating connection through perspective or shared experiences. When you share something real, others can relate to you. That could mean talking about a tough decision you made, how you think about risk, or even what you’ve changed your mind about recently. It builds warmth and credibility in equal measure.

• Commercial

And finally onto the money shot. Share the occasional nudge about what you do and who you help. A case study. A client win. A new service. These are the sales posts, and they’re essential, but they should be the smallest slice of your content gateaux. Commercial content gives your audience clarity: here’s what I do, here’s how you can work with me and here’s what others have experienced. Don’t over-engineer it, try and write from your customer’s perspective. The best sales posts are the ones that show how you solve your target market’s problem. Just like this post you’re reading right now, that’s right, hire me.

Content Ratios

Now I wouldn’t advocate to get into the business of strict quotas as then it becomes a chore and it’ll start to show in your tone of voice. But that said, some helpful ratios to work with are as follows (adapted from Sam Browne’s newsletter “Nice Work”):

The Thought Leader – 100% value + 0% selling

This is a helpful route to take if you’re right at the beginning of whatever it is you’re doing and you don’t have something to sell yet. Besides, if you’ve just broken into a brand new market and start trying to sell to people, you’re going to fall flat on your face as you have no credibility. Spend a few months establishing yourself as a thought leader in a given space, so that people know you’re the guy that knows a thing or two about a thing or two, and when you launch your business specialising in said thing or two, it’ll feel like a natural fit to your audience. After this point, you can start to pivot to…

The Founder/Creator – 80% value + 20% selling

This is when you can start to slowly introduce sales-based content into your posting schedule. You have a good track record in your given industry, either by way of your career history or by following The Thought Leader model above. But remember, your sales content needs to be pitched from the perspective of your customer, don’t write it how you want to read it. Think about the actual problem your business solves, for example:

• I’m a law firm that doesn’t palm you off to an associate after luring you in with a partner.
• I’m an accountancy firm that can help provide fractional CFO guidance because you can’t afford to hire a senior finance partner yet.
• I run a compliance consultancy and I’ll give you commercial solutions rather than regurgitating the handbook at you.
• I’m a leadership coach that doesn’t rely on generic frameworks, I’ll show you how I built and exited 3 businesses.
• I’m a marketing consultant that works to your business objectives, instead of badgering you to do TikTok dances for engagement. (That’s me, by the way)

And these are the two personas that we don’t adopt…

The e-Book Seller – 50% selling + 50% value

This is the person who insists you need to post exactly four times a week, between 8:37am and 8:42am, ideally from a second-hand iPhone 3GS while standing barefoot in soft morning light. Every post must start with “Not enough people talk about this,” or “Hot take” followed by something unbelievably tepid, contain one line per paragraph, and end with a finger-pointing emoji. Their profile banner says “Helping you monetise your genius.” They sell digital products about building a brand, but have never actually built one. That 50% of value is just regurgitated AI garbage and they post fourteen times a day.

The Agent – 0% value + 100% selling

This is the one who connects with you and pitches before you’ve even accepted. Their DMs read like a cold call in paragraph form. Every post is a thinly disguised sales deck, and they use phrases like “jump on a quick 15?” without irony. Their idea of content strategy is tagging 23 people and ending with “Thoughts?”
You hate this person. You’re never buying from them. Do not be this person. Delete your LinkedIn, go outside, and touch some grass.

Where to find inspiration for content?

You don’t have to do this alone. Whilst full-on ghost-writing is a bit of a moral grey area in my book (I prefer a collaborative approach), there’s no shame in getting outside help, two heads are better than one after all.

But, if you’re determined to go at it alone and you’re short on ideas, you can repurpose what you already have, reuse parts of client proposals, rework internal presentations into public insights, or ask someone on your team to ghostwrite with your input. There’s no doubt what you have to say is interesting, you just need some creative input.

Above all, be useful. If you wouldn’t read it yourself, don’t post it.

Personal branding is about being unmistakably clear about who you help, how you help and why you’re good at it and if you do that consistently, once a week is more than enough.

Done right, LinkedIn is a slow-burn, high-trust channel that builds relationships before the first meeting ever takes place.