Everything you know about LinkedIn is wrong

Most executives who post content on LinkedIn are completely wasting their time.

Not some executives. Most executives.

Their content can be interesting. It can be timely. It can be well-written.

But it will still fail to gain traction or create measurable business impact, not because the content itself is bad, but because of how LinkedIn distributes it.

Most executives don't know this. So they do what any reasonable person would do.

They blame the content.

This escalates to an extensive and time consuming spiral.

They re-write posts endlessly. They study hooks. They purchase white-papers and DIY courses. They hire ghostwriters. They download sketchy AI content tools. They join engagement pods.

And then finally... they quit!

All of their time, effort, and money was a complete waste because they were trying to solve the wrong problem due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how LinkedIn works.

LinkedIn is a vast graveyard of these executives.

I know more than a few. Maybe you do too.

Or maybe you're even one of them.

What follows is the correct mental model.

If you take it seriously, you'll emerge from this article with a re-discovered sense of purpose on this platform and a real path toward making LinkedIn a meaningful part of your overall marketing strategy.

What the hell do I know?

I know what you're thinking: "Who does this guy think he is giving me advice? He's clearly not one of those LinkedIn influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers."

"Plus that headshot totally looks AI-generated. What a loser."

Fair points. Guilty on all counts.

So forgive me while I take a moment to tell you a little about my relationship with this platform.

A little about my story...

Seven years ago, I was hired to lead marketing for a small agency based in Seattle.

I took a VERY big bet on this up-and-coming channel called LinkedIn, doing things on the platform that no one (except for Gary Vee, perhaps) had done before.

My bet paid off... big time.

In just two years, on the back of our LinkedIn strategy, that small agency grew from 20 people to over 100 people and achieved a nice 8-figure exit.

While I, on the other hand, unexpectedly became a LinkedIn expert at 25, despite most of my friends thinking that was an extraordinarily useless and lame skill.

(I've since proved the former wrong. The latter is still up for debate.)

Over the next five years I took that original strategy and built it into something considerably larger in both scale and impact.

I developed proprietary technology that measures ICP engagement on LinkedIn in near real-time and pushes that data directly to your CRM. I established close partnerships with LinkedIn's product, advertising, and editorial teams. And I built an agency that has now implemented this approach across 120 clients, from the fastest growing startups in the world to F500s and market leaders.

But here's the most important thing I can tell you, and the real reason you should trust anything in this article:

I am not a LinkedIn guru or course bro. I don't sell knowledge products. And I don't want you to download my "algorithm hacks" whitepaper.

The vast majority of people reading this will never be the right fit for my agency. I have nothing to gain from this except to genuinely set the record straight on a platform I've spent the better part of a decade obsessing over.

How LinkedIn actually works

The best way to start is by jumping straight to the deep end. So hold onto your shorts.

FACT: LinkedIn's algorithm is network-based, not interest-based.

This the most fundamental fact from which everything else in this article will follow.

Here's a concise definition:

DEFINITION: Network-based algorithms rely primarily on one's connections (or friends, or whatever) to distribute content.

Meaning if someone in your network publishes a post, you will see it. If someone in your network likes a post, you will see it. etc. etc.

It's important to know that network-based algorithms are NOT the norm.

In fact, the vast majority of social media platforms which likely dominate your screen time (TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, YouTube, etc.) are all primarily interest-based algorithms.

What is an interest based algorithm? Exact what it sounds like.

DEFINITION: Interest-based algorithms rely primarily on a graph of your assumed interests to distribute content that the algorithm thinks you'll like.

Meaning if you post about X topic, the platform will do it's best to surface that post with people who are interested in X topic.

Each platform may have some part of their feed that is network-based... like how you can opt to watch just the "Followers" feed on TikTok. But the majority of users, regardless of platform, still interact primarily through the interest-based feed because the content discovery experience is orders of magnitude better.

Facebook and Instagram are the only major platforms that still rely heavily on a network-based algorithm that keeps you close to your "friends" and "followers". But even in those cases, the rise of the TikTok-style short form video feed ("Reels") has pushed their algorithm further and further into the interest-based world.

And then there's LinkedIn. Weird, little LinkedIn.

On LinkedIn, if you publish a post about:

"How CFOs should be thinking about the future of AI operations in light of Agentic AI"

That post is not going to be shown automatically to CFOs. Instead, it will be shown to a small subset of your connections and followers, which likely include:

• Former bosses and colleagues
• Coworkers
• College roommates
• Your cousin Gilroy and uncle Sylvester
• Possibly one or two people in and around the world of finance (if you're lucky!)

If/when those people engage with your post, LinkedIn will then show your post to a larger subset of your connections and followers, in addition to the connections and followers of those who engaged with the post. And so on.

This is the most straightforward way to understand LinkedIn's network-based algorithm.

There are some complexities surrounding WHO is in that first group of your connections and followers to see the post, and what happens when you tag someone, and so on...

But the most that anyone really needs to understand for the purposes of basic LinkedIn content strategy is that content moves from person to person and is not, no matter how much you kick and scream, algorithmically pushed to users based on their demographics, firmographics, inclinations, and interests.

Said once again, more plainly, for all of the executives who struggle to keep this simple fact straight in their head:

LinkedIn is not going to show every CFO interested in AI operations the aforementioned post.

I wish that was how LinkedIn worked.

It doesn't.

So when executives complain that their content isn't going anywhere, it's almost ALWAYS because that content is simply not reaching their ICP. You can't even begin to measure the efficacy of the content because the distribution is out of sync with their intended audience.

Don't believe me? Scroll through your feed and tell me how much of the content you see if from a first degree connection... either their own post or a post they engaged with.

For as long as you continue to assume that LinkedIn functions like all of the other social media platforms that you use, you will be terribly frustrated at the impact that you're able to create from this platform.

(Note: the only exception to the above is a very limited number of "suggested content" placements on the feed as well as LinkedIn's new video feed. But even these placements, which represent a VERY small portion of overall impression share, are only VERY broadly interest graphed. The vast majority of your content is going to live and die by your network.)

The answer you don't want to hear

So then, we're all left to wonder:

"How on Earth can I get in front of my ICP if I don't already have tens of thousands of ICP connections and followers?"

That's a great question to which the most straightforward answer is to pay LinkedIn advertising dollars to simply put that content in front of your ICP using Thought Leader Ads (TLAs) or their new Boosted Posts feature.

In other words: pay to play.

While that's a somewhat uninspiring conclusion, it's also relatively straightforward when you consider all the madness that is growth purely through organic requires.

A company can (and in my view, should) spend money to circumvent the algorithm and show their content to their ICP directly.

Unfortunately, not all companies are going to do this for a variety of reasons, most of which are secondary to an incurable allergy for spending money on marketing any advertising that isn't explicitly lower funnel.

This is ironic when you consider that most companies have already spent years and countless dollars attempting to win on LinkedIn only to produce organic content that is extraordinarily under-leveraged through the organic feed.

I digress. The business world does not always operate as rationally as one would hope.

So you want to make this work organically

No ad dollars available. Got it. Now what?

Well, in order to build an organic strategy that can effectively attract new ICP engagement and followers, we must first consider how content funnel stages interact with this network-based algorithm.

At Influent, we always classify content into stages of a funnel that correspond to the intended audience layer + the buying-state of the reader.

I'm going to lay these out somewhat formally because the way our team talks about the funnel is not how most marketers may talk about it in other contexts. Plus these distinctions really matter for what comes next:

• Upper Funnel (TAM): Content that addresses broad industry topics, trends, or challenges that the total addressable market cares about. The goal is to generate reach and establish thought leadership by joining relevant conversations. This content attracts attention from the wider market and positions the company/executive as knowledgeable, but doesn't directly address specific customer problems or push toward conversion.
• Mid Funnel (ICP): Content that focuses on the specific problems, pain points, and challenges that the ideal customer profile experiences. The goal is to build urgency and make the reader recognize they have a problem worth solving. This content creates awareness around issues they may be ignoring, quantifies the cost of inaction, and establishes the problem as strategic rather than operational. It rarely mentions specific solutions or products.
• Low Funnel (In-Market ICP): Content that teaches how to solve the problem, often through specific methodologies, implementation approaches, or tactical frameworks. The goal is to educate in-market buyers on what good solutions look like and how to evaluate their options. This content may present the company's product as one solution, but primarily focuses on de-risking the decision and shaping buying criteria. It can include case studies framed as implementation guides, comparison frameworks, and how-to content.

Now here's where the network graph problem and the funnel collide (ie. the nerdy part)

As established before, your existing network is a mixed population: former colleagues, industry peers, professional acquaintances, and somewhere in there, a small portion of your actual ICP.

But even among your ICP connections and followers, in-depth research (including research conducted by LinkedIn themselves) consistently shows that only 3-5% of any market is actively in buying mode at a given time. In-market buyers are a tiny fraction of your ICP, which is itself a fraction of your total network.

Low funnel content is written exclusively for that final fraction. Which means when you publish it, the vast majority of your network has no reason to engage. Low engagement means low distribution. Low distribution means no new followers. And without new followers, that fraction stays small or shrinks.

Executives who start here often struggle and interpret their lack of results as a content quality problem, not a distribution problem. So they keep rewriting the same low funnel posts until they get mad, claim they are shadow-banned, and quit.

Upper funnel content, on the other hand, totally inverts this.

When you write about broad industry topics relevant to your entire TAM, engagement comes from a much larger share of your existing network. Those engagements trigger distribution into their networks, populated by their peers, who are also likely in your TAM.

Your follower base grows, and it grows with the right people. And because each new TAM follower expands the network your future content distributes into, this effect compounds.

In other words, the base accelerates rather than grows linearly.

Mid funnel content then does the filtering.

Content that precisely names the problems your ICP is living with will resonate disproportionately with ICP-profile readers. They engage, they follow, and their networks skew similarly. Over time, the concentration of ICP followers within your audience increases.

By the time you deploy low funnel content, the audience it requires actually exists. The in-market buyers are there, because you built the base systematically, from the outside in.

Beware the upper funnel vanity metric trap

There is some compounding irony built into this model that is worth pointing out.

Upper funnel content, by design, reaches the broadest audience. Which means it generates the most impressions, the most likes, and the fastest follower growth. Every metric that LinkedIn surfaces prominently will tell you it's working.

This creates a powerful incentive to stay there... one that is entirely rational given the feedback the platform provides, and entirely counterproductive given the actual goal.

Executives post upper funnel content, see the numbers climb, and keep posting upper funnel content. Their audience grows. Their impressions grow. And they never understand why none of it produces pipeline.

The same trap exists at the extreme end of upper funnel which I call personal branding content (eg. posts about leadership philosophy, career milestones, and professional identity). These often generate the highest engagement of all. But they're also the furthest removed from any commercial outcome.

Upper funnel content alone can build credibility, social proof, and broad market visibility. But if the goal is pipeline, target account pressure, or measurable ICP engagement (ICPE), upper funnel content alone will not get you there.

This is why mid and low funnel content must be layered in deliberately, even when the metrics make it uncomfortable.

Mid and low funnel posts will almost always underperform upper funnel posts on vanity metrics. That is expected and by design. They are reaching a smaller, more qualified subset of your audience.

The measure of their success then is not impressions. It is ICP engagement rate, which is the strongest directly measurable correlate to lead flow and target account pressure available on the platform.

Designing the strategy

Given all of this, the first question to ask when designing a content strategy is not:

"What should we write about?"

But instead:

"What does our current network look like?"

That answer dictates the content distribution.

When in-market ICP density is low, the strategy should weight heavily toward upper funnel content to grow the TAM base, layer in a moderate amount of mid funnel content to begin filtering ICP followers out of that growing base, and introduce low funnel content sparingly to serve the in-market buyers who do exist while beginning to shape buying criteria for those who aren't there yet.

As the overall audience grows and ICP density increases, those levers need to adjust.

The strategy is not static. It responds to the composition of the network as it develops.