The Linkedin posts that made a millionaire.

As I mentioned in a previous blog (here), Linkedin was instrumental to the success of my previous business.

I would go so far as to say that it was the single biggest contributor to its success.

But back in the old days of 2017 there weren't the masses of personal branding experts and copywriters telling you what strategies, templates and blueprints you must use to generate financial gain from Linkedin. Nor were there the tedious AI driven comments and messages.

No, back in my day, Linkedin was full of people just writing about things and figuring out what works themselves.

It was a simpler time.

But, because I've been quite vocal about how crucial Linkedin was for my own business, and equally vocal about how current founders should make it a core part of their own sales and marketing strategy, then it's not surprising that people ask me what type of posts I used to write back then.

Well, for this blog, I've done what all of those people couldn't be bothered to do. I've spent 15 minutes scrolling back through my Linkedin feed to find the posts that helped make me money.

Like, real money, not just the pretend Linkedin money.

And below are some of the examples, with a bit of commentary on why they worked.

Link to the actual post here.

We used Linkedin polls quite often to help us identify suitable clients for new services that we planned to launch. The beauty of a poll is that you get the data of who votes for each answer, so if you craft the question right, you can unearth some potential clients with the exact problem that your service can solve.

And if you can get some early traction, you will get more and more votes, because other potential clients will want to see what their competitors voted for.

You can then use the data from the polls, to power additional Linkedin posts...

Link to the actual post here.

A Linkedin poll is the gift that keeps on giving. You get the initial engagement and data from the poll itself, but you can then share some of the findings with your network in separate posts.

In this example, we asked Amazon account managers (our perfect client) what growth they were forecasting for the year ahead. It gave us great insight that was super valuable to other Amazon account managers, who wanted to know how they compared. And by providing this data, it positioned us as someone that could deliver value rather than just another agency trying to sell things to them.

Link to the actual post here.

This post seems a little off topic considering we were selling Amazon marketing services, but that couldn't be further from the truth. We knew the things that kept our target clients up at night, and Amazon was usually just one element of their role.

The impact of shipping costs on their business was immense, and we used the fact we had a team based in Hong Kong to add value to their overall business, not just the small part that our service could help with.

Again, it was positioning us as an advisor, not just a supplier.

Link to the actual post here.

We aligned ourselves to the client, not to Amazon.

At the time, lots of other agencies were posting about how great Amazon was, and lots of photos of them in the Amazon offices etc. It makes sense as a strategy to show that you're well connected with the platform your service is supporting.

But... at this point in time, clients were seeing Amazon as a negative to their business, not a saviour. Our priority was always to solve problems that our clients had, so we weren't afraid to call out Amazon when they behaved badly, and showed potential clients that we had their back.

Link to the actual post here.

A not so subtle brag.

Don't be afraid to show off about things that you've done that are good. In this post we got a double benefit. Amazon had just launched 3 new marketplaces and we were ahead of the game in terms of translating content for clients. So while this post is showing how great we are for doing so much content in a short space of time, it's also successfully showing other potential clients that aren't so on the ball that they need to be doing the same.

We won a lot of new business off this one post alone.

Link to the actual post here.

An even less subtle brag.

During the 4 years of growing my agency, we opened offices in Hong Kong, Brazil and Spain. All 3 offices gave us great advantages operationally, but never really contributed significantly from a new business perspective.

Well, not entirely true.

We didn't sign many clients within the markets themselves, but by showing Linkedin that we were opening offices around the world, we won a lot of clients from the posts. It showed we were ambitious, forward thinking and financially secure.

Link to the actual post here.

Not only did we announce big hires on Linkedin, but we actually hired people based on how their Linkedin announcement would look.

For any hire over a certain salary level, we would actively review how a Linkedin post would perform if we announced them on Linkedin. Would it be a 'wow' for people.

Just by announcing these incredible, experienced and well connected people, we won clients. Just off the back of the post. Usually on day 1 or 2 of them joining the business.

Link to the actual post here.

Showing we were ahead of the game by always trying to be the people that alerted and educated our target clients about new features within Amazon. Because we had a team of people working on Amazon all day every day, any new feature or change that was spotted would be on Linkedin within minutes.

Link to the actual post here.

Have an opinion. We knew that most of our target clients had a background in retail. So we made sure we had an opinion on the future of retail. Not everyone agreed with it, but it showed that we were considering the wider market, and not just thinking of Amazon as another ad platform like Google or Meta.

Link to the actual post here.

Another less-than-subtle brag! But why not. If things are going well, tell people. As long as it's not the only posts you ever do, it's absolutely fine to show people that you're winning and they should join the ride.

Link to the actual post here.

Showing personality. People buy from people. So we didn't worry about trying to seem polished or extra professional on videos or webinars. What you saw on Linkedin was what you would get in person. I think we won clients because people could see what a good culture we had and how nice the team were. No better way to win clients!

Link to the actual post here.

And last, but certainly not least, we'd ask for feedback. Whether you have 1,000 people, or 100,000 people in your Linkedin network, they're a great resource for asking for feedback. If we thought up a new service offering, or created a new sales deck, we would ask our Linkedin network what they thought of it. A great way to get lots of opinions quickly, but also a great way to subtly sell the thing you're asking for feedback on too!

So there you have it. Not rocket science for sure. Hopfully it gives you confidence that really you don't need a Linkedin strategy. You just need a sales strategy, and you can use Linkedin to execute it.

You should never worry about how to format the posts, or how quickly you reply to comments. Just spend your time thinking about who your target clients are, and what's important to them. And make sure you're providing value that they value.