📈 Why nobody's reading your content

Read time: 4 minutes

Every piece of content on LinkedIn is making a promise. In your hook. In your title. Before anyone chooses to read a word.

A promise of education. A promise of inspiration. A promise of amusement.

You can post every day. Do all the things the gurus tell you. But if people aren't reading or buying, the problem is often your promise.

It's either not clear, not compelling, or not believable.

Let me break this down.

The Three Common Problems with Promises

1. Most promises are vague

A promise is simply the claim you make up front:

“If you give me your attention, here’s what you get back.”

But most people write things like:

• “Level up your LinkedIn.”

• “Grow your brand.”

• “Win online.”

None of that tells the reader what they’ll actually get from reading your content. A good promise tells me the outcome - in plain language.

We made this mistake early on with Saywhat. Our banner on our website was some classic software fluff like “Win on LinkedIn”.

Now it is much clearer:

“Post 5× a week for 90 days → 130% more impressions.”

That’s a clearer promise. You instantly understand what’s in it for you.

2. The promise isn’t big enough

Even when people make a clear promise, often it’s too small to matter. Think about it:

Would you stop scrolling for “Work 1% less”? Probably not.

Would you stop for “Work 50% less”? Much more likely.

The bigger payoff grabs attention - but it needs to be true, otherwise you lose trust.

Your promise doesn’t need to be outrageous, but it needs to be worth your reader’s time.

3. The promise doesn’t come with proof

Big promises without proof feel like clickbait.

Your proof comes from three places:

Examples. Show the thing working. Screenshots, data, real posts that performed.

Results. Not just your results - your audience's results. When Saywhat users tell me they've grown 130%, that's more credible than me saying it.

Track record. Every time you deliver on a promise, you build trust for the next one. This compounds over time.

The Saywhat Promise

When we first launched Saywhat, the promise was vague:

“A tool to help you win on LinkedIn.”

Nice words but pretty unclear and unactionable. Win how? Win when? Win to what extent?

Users couldn’t understand the outcome - so we seemed like everyone else. Then we dug into the data and found the average user who posted 5× a week for 90 days saw:

→ +800% impressions (mean)
→ +130% impressions (median)

Suddenly we had a real promise:

"Follow the Saywhat program → 130% more impressions."

That single change really changed how people valued it: More sign-ups. More retention. More people talking about the product.

The tool itself didn’t change, but the promise did.

So ask yourself this before you post:

What is the promise? Is it clear? Is it big enough? Will people believe it?

Most people skip this step. That's why their content doesn't land.

A Simple Framework to Write a Better Promise Today

Here’s a simple system you can use right now:

1️⃣ Define the outcome in one sentence - “What changes for the user after they read/use this?”

2️⃣ Quantify it - Time saved, % gained, hours reduced, money made - anything measurable.

3️⃣ Stress-test the size of the promise - Would you stop scrolling for this? If not, can you make it bigger or more relevant?

4️⃣ Add proof - Screenshots, data, examples, or past results. De-risk the claim.

Use this on your next post or sales page.

The difference is immediate.

See you next week,

Will

P.S. I just dropped a new 12-min YouTube video on the three most important LinkedIn post frameworks. Watch it here.

Will McTighe

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