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I got a great message from a reader recently: 

“It's starting to feel like verbal diarrhea on LinkedIn. Everyone is using the same playbook. How do I stand out when everyone sounds the same?"

I completely get it. 

With AI, templates and playbooks, it is easier than ever to create content. 

Our feeds are overflowing with “leadership lessons” and “signs of a toxic workplace”.

And don’t get me wrong, I’ve written posts like this too.

But the problem isn’t that there is a “playbook” for building a brand.

It's that most people copy what they see others doing blindly without adding their own personal twist to capture attention.

Aka, they build a brand, but NOT a personal brand.

So what makes the best posts stand out from the sea of sameness?

When I look at top-performing posts in Saywhat, the best content does at least 1 of 3 things differently.

And none of them require you to be a professional writer or have a massive following.

Ok, so what is the problem exactly?

Well, most cookie cutter LinkedIn content fails because it makes one of these big mistakes:

But there's good news: the bar for standing out is surprisingly low.

Here are three ways to cut through the noise.

My two favorite ways of doing this are:

A: Hooking with authority (6,220 likes)

After 24 years in Navy, 17 leading in the Navy SEALs, 
one of the most brutal truths I learned:

Jon Macaskill’s post went on to give conventional leadership advice BUT he first told people why they should stop and listen to his version of the story.

B: Hooking with a story that creates curiosity (2,225 likes):

When I was VP Sales, one of my top AEs closed a $440K outbound deal in just under 90 days.

Readers are left curious to know how the AE closed such a big deal.

The narrower, the better. Will’s hot take on modular home construction got 570 likes and more than 200 (spicy) comments even when he has just 1,392 followers!

He spoke directly to his niche and led with a hook that built up tension:

“Look, I’m going to ruffle some feathers here.”

Cesar’s post got >150,000 likes and followed a pretty simple template but he did two really powerful things that made this post stand out:

Similarly, Michal’s light-hearted but controversial post about stereotypes of software engineers got >50,000 impressions and 94 likes when he had less than 800 followers.

The point is: say something controversial enough to make you wince a little just to see how it performs.

If you’re struggling to find controversial things to say, I use this Saywhat Collab prompt to help me to come up with interesting points.

These three strategies share one common thread: they all inject something uniquely you into your content.

Try one of these strategies this week and let me know how it goes.

See you next time,

Will

P.S.

Will McTighe

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