📈 My 100k LinkedIn Writing Framework

Hey friend! Welcome to Level Up 📈.

Every Sunday, I dive into one topic to level up your career. Today is how to write great LinkedIn content.

Today at a Glance:

• Deep Dive: My LinkedIn Writing Framework

• Real Life Example: My First LinkedIn Writing

• Reader Q&A: How to Scale Yourself

Read time: 5 minutes

I just launched, Saywhat, a LinkedIn Creator Tool

I recently launched Saywhat, a LinkedIn creator tool to make it easier to build your brand efficiently. It helps you:

1. Engage with your community 10x more efficiently

2. Find pre-validated content ideas

3. Find content-driven leads

We’re adding many more features soon, and you can sign up for the waitlist here to get early access.

Early customers get discounts, infographic templates, and biweekly Q&A sessions with me, so sign up now!

Deep Dive

Why Write on LinkedIn?

Building a personal brand is the highest leverage thing I’ve done in my career. It has taken all my career experience and amplified it.

I think LinkedIn is a great place to write because it is the only business-first social network. When people see your content, they start to feel like they know you and will be more likely to buy from you in the future.

What to Write About?

Talk about the things you know or that you are learning from others that your audience wants to know about. People will follow you for education. Give away all your best ideas for free.

At the start, you just want to write about pre-validated topics. Use tools like Saywhat (LinkedIn viral content database), Kleo (Individual LinkedIn creator crawler) or Favikon (finding successful content by big creators on Instagram/Twitter/TikTok) to find them.

Look at successful posts of large creators to understand what people like from content topics to formats. Then comes the writing.

How to Write Great LinkedIn Content

There are three important parts to a written post:

1. Hook

2. Body

3. Call to Action

Hooks

Spend 30% of your time on the first 3 lines. Come up with multiple versions of it. Wait till you’re done writing the whole post then finalize the hook.

The hook is your first impression. Check its appearance on different devices before posting using this. Create intrigue to stop scrolling.

P.S. Your visual is part of your hook. Here’s an example of a decent hook.

Body & Writing Style

A few important tips:

1. Write in a conversational tone with NO jargon. Imagine you are talking to a friend.

2. Write for skimmers: No long blocks of text. >70% of LinkedIn usage is on mobile. Use lots of line spacing, and pretty text structures (staircase, etc).

3. Remove unnecessary words: Use Grammarly to proofread your text. Make sure each word earns its place. Use tools like Hemingway Editor to make it concise and direct.

4. Simple punchy language: After I finish writing a post, I put it through ChatGPT with the prompt “please rewrite this at grade 5-7 reading level and make it punchier and more succinct” and edit from there.

5. Don’t use the passive voice or adverbs. Here’s another post as an example.

6. Put your best points at the start and end.

Call to Action (CTA)

There’s only one rule for good CTAs: simple and actionable. Your CTA should have ONE clear message and ONE action for your readers.

Examples: “Sign up for my newsletter” or “Book a discovery call”.

Your 7-Step LinkedIn Content Checklist

Here’s a content checklist I developed over the last 5 months. It will make your content creation process more efficient, especially when you’re starting out.

Once you’re done writing (and editing), check to see if your post includes:

1. A hook that creates suspense or authority?

2. A call to action?

3. A beautiful visual?

4. Does it help my target audience to achieve a goal?

5. Does my target audience look good by sharing this?

6. References to my experience/perspective/authority?

7. References to a reputable source?

Real Life Example: My First LinkedIn Writing

To show you everyone starts somewhere, here is one of my first LinkedIn posts that got 3,000 impressions, 14 likes, and 2 comments.

What is wrong with it:

1. The hook doesn’t create curiosity for the reader. It is about me.

2. There’s no visual - I’m giving up free advertising space!

3. Bad formatting - large blocks of text.

4. No call to action.

5. Doesn’t reference my personal experience.

6. Doesn’t make my target audience look good by sharing.

Now, this is one of my recent posts that got 7.1 million impressions, 27,756 likes and 3,891 reposts. What is different?

1. A strong visual component - the first image by Ash had gone viral on Twitter before

2. A hook that piques curiosity - “How will it change how I think?”

3. A single clear call to action to repost.

4. Line spacing, punchy sentences, and simple words for readability.

5. Sharing this makes you look good to your peers.

Reader Q&A

Each week, I cover a challenge from a member of the Level Up Community, sharing the problem and how I would approach solving it.

Hey J, kudos to you - bootstrapping a company is certainly not easy. If I were in your position, I would ask myself the following questions:

1. What are the different things I am spending my time on?

2. Which of these can I outsource?

I would then hire team members in the Philippines or LatAm to help drive these areas. Hiring through agencies like Athena is easier but 2x the price. I would check out Onlinejobs.ph (Philippines) or prosmarketplace.com (Latin America).

I have personally hired successfully from OnlineJobs and friends have hired from prosmarketplace. If you want to go down that route, here is my step-by-step guide to hiring from onlinejobs.ph.

Want to be featured? Email me what you’re struggling with!

Good luck leveling up this week.

Talk soon,

Will McTighe

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