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How To Reach 100K Followers On LinkedIn in 1 Year
In this 24-min video, I walk you through every mistake I made on LinkedIn and what helped me to go from 3k to 430K followers in under 2 years. This is the most detailed video I’ve done yet.
When you start making content, nearly everyone has low status.
No one cares what you have to say - even if it's valuable.
That's not a criticism. It's just how attention works. People stop scrolling for things they already recognize. A face they know. A logo that's familiar. A name that means something.
What most people don’t understand is that you can take advantage of this phenomenon. You don't need to be famous to borrow attention. You just need to stand next to it.
There's a name for this - it's called credibility jacking.
What Is Credibility Jacking, Exactly?
Credibility jacking is when you borrow the authority of a famous person or brand to get people to stop and read your content.
Think about it this way. If I posted a photo of me standing next to Taylor Swift, a lot of people who don’t know me would stop. They’d read the caption. Maybe they’d even send it to someone.
Not because of me, because of her.
Now imagine taking that same principle and applying it to your niche.
Here are some examples:
Cease and Desist Letter From Starbucks (1,682 likes) - Starbucks is an incredibly well-known brand and so anyone who saw this post and doesn’t know Henry or Zoominfo, is likely to stop and read it.
Pivoting Is Part Of The Process (1,362 likes) - This is post about normalising changing direction. I used famous brands like Lamborghini, Shopify and Netflix that changed their direction to make this point.
The Story Behind GoDaddy (1,041 likes) - Grant borrows GoDaddy’s brand recognition to make people read his story.
Some people are already interested in them. And so they may be more interested in what you have to say.
How To Do This Yourself
The good news is this is one of the simplest content strategies to execute. Here are three ways you can:
The first is the simplest. If you ever meet someone well-known in your niche - at a conference, an event, anywhere - take a photo and post it. Sharing what you learned from them. The photo stops the scroll and your learnings give people a reason to follow you.
The second is what I did in the examples above. When you're making a point, do it with a real world example, not a hypothetical. Find a famous brand or person who proves it and lead with them. Lamborghini changed their business model. Netflix changed theirs. That's more compelling than "people sometimes pivot."
Put a recognizable name or face directly in your visual. Nicole Hoyle is in the ServiceNow niche and featured the CEO in this infographic - people in her world stopped because they recognized him. You can do the same thing in your niche. Think about who your audience already follows and respects.
This does not mean your whole content strategy should be built on other people's names. This is just a single tool in your toolkit.
But a pretty useful one.
See you next week,
Will
P.S.
A new format you can try this week: 10 Commandments of [My Niche] (2,646 likes). Works for any target audience.
Here’s my playbook reach 100k followers on LinkedIn in 1 year. Watch it here.
Will McTighe
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P.P.S. Building a personal brand was the highest leverage thing I’ve done in my career. Whenever you’re ready, there are three ways I can help you:
Enterprise LinkedIn Systems – I work with enterprise clients ($10M+ in revenue or Series A+) on building and running your entire LinkedIn content-led GTM system. If this is you, apply here.
Trying out Saywhat: My software platform and community for solopreneurs, consultants and coaches.
Cheat Sheets (Worth $200): Here are my 60+ LinkedIn Cheat Sheets.
