In 2020, I had just under 3,000 followers on LinkedIn, most of them from my OG industry of meetings and events.

Then the pandemic hit, and the industry went quiet almost overnight. I did something different. I stopped posting about meetings, and I started posting about how I built my meetings and events business on LinkedIn.

The first posts were bad. Not charmingly bad. Genuinely, forgettably bad. I look back at some of them now and wince a little.

I kept posting anyway.

My profile changed a little too, once I actually had something to say about LinkedIn instead of a title that implied it. I didn’t announce it anywhere. Nobody found any of it because of that.

A few months in, the DMs started. “Hey, I want to learn more about how you’re doing this.” Then a request to speak on a webinar about LinkedIn. Then another.

They found it because I showed up, again and again, in a feed they were already scrolling.

I think about that a lot right now, watching people spend real hours getting their Headline and their About section exactly right, and then stopping there.

Here’s what that stopping point usually means. The profile is finished, and quietly, it starts to feel like the work is finished too.

A good profile does exactly one thing: it confirms your legitimacy to someone who already found a reason to look. It does not go looking for anyone.

Ninety percent of people on LinkedIn are reading, not posting. A small slice engage, commenting and reacting on other people’s work. And only 1% of people actually post anything at all.

When you’re a 1%-er, you’re showing up in the home feed with little competition 😊

Which means every time you post, you’re standing in a room where almost nobody else in your field is speaking. That’s not a reason to feel behind. It’s the opposite. It’s the whole opportunity.

The profile is the door. It was never the doorbell.

Somebody has to actually walk up and ring it, publicly, more than once, including on the days the post is a little ugly.

I did not post my way to those webinar invitations with a polished strategy. I posted my way there with consistency, and a willingness to be bad at it in public for a while.

Your Headline is sharper now than it’s been in years. Your About section actually says something. That’s real work, and it matters.

It just isn’t the part that gets you found. The finding happens in the feed, one post at a time, said in your own words to people who are already scrolling past everyone who stayed quiet.

You don’t need your first posts to be good. You need there to be a first one. The good ones only show up because the bad ones came first.

What’s stopped you from posting the thing you’ve been sitting on?

P.S. If you fixed your Headline and About section this week and haven’t posted yet, that’s the actual next step. Not a better profile. A worse-than-you’d-like first post.

P.P.S. The guide I sent Wednesday is still up if you haven’t grabbed it. But the Headline was never the hard part. Posting is.

Cheers,
Leanne