Built a Viral LinkedIn Series Into a $2.1M Pipeline GTM Flywheel

I will let you know what has worked (and what hasn’t) for me. 1) Novelty is king on Linkedin. When I started at DoWhatWorks, I had data showing what the biggest brands in the worlds, from Amazon, to Nike, to Microsoft, were testing on their homepages, pricing pages etc.. I thought that was a content goldmine. Nobody cared to stop and absorb the insights. So the first big lesson was less focus on validated best practices (which the product delivers) but for social lasering in on uncommon tactics, more experimental and new ideas, that got attention and distribution 2) Widely replicable tactics worked really well. The most impactful content was things people could go do right away (like link case studies to their logo bar), see a result, and then come back to follow more of my content with trust established. Things that were highly impactful but required more complex changes on say pricing, rarely did well. 3) Focus on other companies. The big thing, as I talk about in my Artifact, is to have content that champions someone else and gives them a reason to distribute (and even put paid budget behind it). I always waited for a post to take off first, before sharing it with the team, that way my outreach was “Hey Lovable, this post about you has over 100k impressions in just the first few hours, love what you are up to”. That gets basically 100% reply rate even from senior execs at big brands. I see a big opportunity, based on the model you have here, to learn and relate to published Artifacts, and celebrate their tactics while adding your own perspective/learnings. What didn’t work… --> Teardowns. If the content is negative, other teams won’t share it. It kills distribution and builds ill-will. Just focus on the good. --> Don't focus on product content (go category instead). I have driven millions of dollars from content that is about websites broadly. I want to be associated with websites, innovation, and best practices. When I do that, I get attention and can position DoWhatWork’s downstream (which is a competitive intelligence platform). Be very sparing with your “product” content, and as I taught my students in my Stanford class, do a lot of 3rd and 4th degree content (category-focused and business-focused respectively). --> Don’t spend a ton of time trying to convince people to post who don’t want to post. To win on LinkedIn, you need three things → a) to have opinions b) be willing to share actual data/real results from your experience and c) have consistency. If folks can’t commit (or aren’t allowed) to do any of those three, it isn’t going to work