How makers stay productive

It's no secret that I'm trying to build a brand and an audience on LinkedIn. It's been about 6 months since starting in late March this year. So am pretty happy to hit 888 followers there! (Only locals will understand the significance haha)


Here's some learnings and thoughts:

- Started with 600+ followers in late March, so I grew about 200+ over 6 months. Not crazy growth, but steady at the least. Got a handful of viral posts (>10k impressions) but nothing regular. Most days my combined impressions are ~1k or less.
- But since starting, I've received more opportunities to consulting and training gigs. My current project was something that came via someone messaging me on LinkedIn! Another training opportunity with a non-profit institute also came from LinkedIn. My regular posts gave visibility, made my presence more top of mind, and at the right time, they remembered me and the skillset I provided.
- As always what's most surprising to me was how posts have longevity here. No 24h algo like Twitter. Some of my posts get impressions and likes even after weeks.
- Being a content creator on LinkedIn is still uncommon. There's still lots of leverage to be had in these early days. You get more exposure, less competition.
- Posts with images of interesting designs and some commentary on it seems to do better than text based posts.
- Experimented with different posting timing (8am, 11.30am) but it didn't seem to make much of a difference.
- Memes have a place on LinkedIn too. What works: funny, work-related, nothing super outrageous. People in employment are often too worried to post memes. You'll stand out.
- Photos of my past projects seems to be well-liked too. Which was surprising to me since I thought no one would care.
- Unlike Twitter, there's still a market gap of LinkedIn tools. Writing editors (to count the number of characters before the truncation), carousel generators, analytics, etc.
- Hashtags still work in LinkedIn, unlike on Twitter where it's mostly dead as a tool for reach. I get people outside of my LinkedIn connections liking my posts.
- The "reply guy" approach that work on Twitter works on LinkedIn too, but I'm not spending much time doing that. I really should, since just 1 post per day won't be enough.
- Know who your audience are. My audience on LinkedIn are: designers, local in Singapore. But because many indie hackers are starting on LinkedIn, I end up connecting to them as well and liking their posts. Which doesn't help me with my brand- and audience building on LinkedIn (it shows up on your activity feed, and LinkedIn algo sometimes also shows what you liked to your connections/followers, which I don't want). So I'm experimenting now with engaging with fellow designers and locals more.
- It's been pretty hectic building 2 different audiences for separate niches. Even with batch scheduling and all, it's been hectic, and big time suck. I need to find more tools and systems to make it easier.