The exact daily & weekly actions I'd take on LinkedIn — depending on my follower count

Photo by Kelly Sikkema Hire on Unsplash

4 full-time years into my LinkedIn content creator journey and I can say I’ve seen a lot.

I’ve worked with founders with 10k followers who weren’t monetizing their audience.
And founders with 369 followers who were.

When I started promoting my business full-time on LinkedIn in 2021, I had 1,200 followers and made $10k in my first 40 days of posting. I became obsessed (after strugglinggg to get traction & clients on Instagram) and committed myself to figuring out everything I could about this platform.

Now, with 15,000 followers, there are many more ways I monetize my audience:

• High-end consulting

• Low-ticket sales

• Speaking

• Teaching

And at the very end of last year, I secured my first aligned brand partnership (which I’m so so excited about).

All this is to say, I’ve seen firsthand how follower count doesn’t directly = more $$$.
It’s the quality of the follower that matters most.

But… I can’t not also argue that a bigger following does give you something that’s harder to measure: Clout.
And that there’s actually psychology behind this. It’s called Authority Bias.

So while follower count alone won’t get you clients, the perception of authority that comes with a bigger following can indirectly help.

Which means the actions you take when you’re sitting at 200 followers will vary greatly from when you’re sitting at 5,000 followers.
And I’d love to help break this down even more.

Again, you DON’T need a huge audience to start getting business from LinkedIn.
What you need is a strategy that matches where you're at right now.

So Here's How I Would Approach My Daily & Weekly Actions Depending on My Current LinkedIn Follower Count:

0 - 500 Followers

Your mindset: You're in audience-building mode.

It's not impossible to get traction at this stage, but you're at a disadvantage compared to most other accounts who have a head start. Your #1 job is to play catch up.

• Non-negotiable: Max out 100 connection requests per week. Go through your 'traditional rolodex', networking events, conferences, professional groups, people you've been introduced to over email, Instagram mutuals. Anyone who already knows you professionally or personally is a warmer connection than a total stranger who won’t take your profile very seriously at this stage.

• Engage like it's your job. Leave thoughtful comments on the posts of smaller creators within your niche, people you do know who are posting, and on big accounts like Mel Robbins. Use the "More Profiles Like You" feature to find profiles & accounts in your space.

• What to post: Forget trying spending all your time writing in-depth 'valuable insights.' Right now, people don't know who you are, so why would they listen?
  What works better at this stage is personal stories. Share who you are, why you're doing what you're doing, and what you believe in. People connect with people before they care about your expertise.
  This stage requires grit and consistency and honestly, most people quit here.

500 - 1,000 Followers

Your mindset: You're still in audience-building mode, but you've got some momentum.

• Still max out your 100 connection requests per week, but now expand beyond your personal network.
  Half of your requests should be going to peers in your industry. The other half to leads or potential clients.
  A quick hack: the people you already like and vibe with — click on their ‘post activity’ (on the home page of their profile, click ‘see all posts’). There will be tabs that say posts, comments, and see who they’re engaging with — start connecting with those people, too (I literally still do this).

• Start collaborating with your new LinkedIn friends. Offer to host a LinkedIn Live, interview them to co-write a post together, or create a joint masterclass you both can promote on LinkedIn. When they tag you on LinkedIn in the promotional posts, their audience will get exposed to you and vice versa.
  This was one of the quickest ways I grew my audience in 2022 — collaborating with tangential service providers and offering free masterclasses based on both of our expertise. People are a bit burned out of virtual offerings so you may have to get a bit more creative in 2025.

• What to post: You're ready to start sharing more in-depth value posts. If you’re solving a real problem and offering tangible help & perspectives, those posts will get reshared and sent around, but still prioritize stories and personal observations.
  This is the stage where you start to notice a shift: you're not just adding connections anymore, your content is starting to organically bring new people into your audience.

1,000 - 5,000 Followers

Your mindset: You're building your reputation.

• Ease up on outbound connection requests (~50 per week) because your content should be bringing in new followers organically now. Hopefully you’re doing less searching out and instead sifting through new followers & content engagers to see who you’d like to personally connect with.

• Double down on relationship-building. Identify your Core 7-10 People — those who consistently engage with your content or whose content you genuinely love. Engage on their posts every single week. Stay in touch in the DMs. Send them leads, referrals, conferences that could be interesting for them, speaking opportunities. Tag them when people in your network put a call out for services. Remember milestones and celebrate them.
  These relationships will snowball and soon enough you’ll be getting intro-ed into their trusted communities, to their peers, and spoken about by them in rooms you’re not in.

• What to post: More thought leadership, more niche expertise, but don't lose the personal stories.
  At this stage, people really have a sense of what you do, and your audience will move from passive follower to active supporter based on your generosity and consistency.

• Get riskier in your content and comments. If you want bigger traction, you need to give people something to agree with or disagree with. You should have enough regular supporters now that they'll jump in to back you up and you could get some high-traction or viral posts.

• Join off-platform communities like Slack, Circle, or industry-specific membership groups. Be active, be generous, and bring those relationships back to LinkedIn by connecting with people you’ve built rapport with outside the platform. This creates a natural feedback loop where your network deepens across multiple touch points.

• Experiment with video content, especially quick takes or talking head videos, to deepen your relationship with your existing followers. The people who already know, like, and trust you will engage and be excited about seeing you in a new medium, which will push your content to more people in their networks.
  At this stage, your reputation is your biggest growth lever. Focus on generosity, consistency, and strategic collaborations.

5,000+ Followers

Your mindset: You're in leadership mode.

• Honestly? Not much changes with your routine & non-negotiable actions here. You're still engaging like it's your job and showing up for your relationships.
  If you've somehow grown without doing that work (either from an old job or sales activities you had to take in old roles), your engagement will be low, and you'll need to go back and build those foundations I outline in steps 1-3 here ^^^

• Start pitching. Bigger clients, more collaborations, media opportunities — your profile and DMs will carry more weight at this stage. But no one will give you what you don't ask for.

• What to post: Content that positions you as a leader in your space. Personal stories should still be present, but your posts should regularly reflect what you want to be known for at this point.
  The hard truth? Staying consistent does get harder the bigger your audience gets, not easier.

No matter what stage you're at, the secret to getting business from LinkedIn is simple (not easy):
Engage like it's your job. Tell personal stories. Be generous and go deep with your expertise. And build relationships.

The bummer news? Most people won't stick with it long enough to see the results.
But if you're willing to, the opportunity is wide open.

Now… the founders that monetize the fastest?
Take consistent action to grow their following (as outlined above ^^^) while actively starting conversations behind the scenes.

I’ve been quietly using one of LinkedIn’s own products to build my pipeline for the last 4 years, landing high-ticket clients, partnerships, and opportunities without needing to obsess about ‘going viral’ every day.

And last month, I opened up access to this knowledge.

In my hands-on training for service-based business owners who want to feel in control of their pipeline on LinkedIn, so they don't have to spend the summer stressed about sales and leads, I teach:

• How to successfully build an Outbound LinkedIn Strategy

• How to realistically & as simply as possible execute on this Outbound LinkedIn Strategy

• How to follow-up without being annoying & build a robust Nurture Strategy on LinkedIn.

No cringey cold pitching. No weird stuff.
Just proven, ethical, relationship-based outbound strategies that can help you add $5-10k/month to your pipeline, even if you're doing it at a C+ level.

All the details are [here] if you want access.
I'm so, so pumped about this one because I know firsthand how learning these skills can change everything in sales for founders.