Evan Patterson 💅🏻

Hire Me & Win In The Attention Economy💥 I Help Founders & Startups Grow Audiences 🔥 Ghostwriting • Personal Branding • Social Selling • Community Marketing • Content Strategy • B2B Influencers • Affiliate Programs

👋🏻 You should really click the "...see more" button over there. 👉🏻

😉

I’m Evan Patterson.

Fractional CMO. Personal CMO.
LGBTQ+. AuDHD. Two cats who have main-character energy and paperwork opinions.
Metro Detroit-raised, Chicago-thriving, seeking a EU-husband for dual citizenship (kind of not joking...)

A small but vocal group of humans — plus my mother — call me the Joan Rivers of Marketing. I didn’t ask for that title, but I also didn’t give it back.

My work focuses on helping founders, CEOs, and operators stop sounding like they were assembled by committee. When people understand you quickly, everything gets easier: sales, hiring, partnerships, even that awkward moment when someone pretends they’ve heard of your company before.

My entire approach runs on feral specificity.
Egregiously unique. Audaciously effective.
Ideas with teeth. Narratives with posture. Writing that doesn’t need a spotlight to command attention.

I work in two lanes.

Evan Patterson Consulting
The Fractional CMO lane.

This is where companies finally get a marketing function that isn’t held together by vibes, hope, and a Google Doc last updated during the pandemic. I rebuild the structure, the sequencing, and the decisions that keep revenue steady instead of seasonal.

The second lane
The executive identity work.

Voice extraction. Narrative architecture. Brand presence that doesn’t wobble when the market does. There’s more coming in this lane; something I’m building quietly; and it’s shaping the way I help leaders show up with clarity and actual gravitational pull.

I build systems with staying power.
I build brands people remember without squinting.
I build marketing that earns attention because it deserves attention.

People who work well with me tend to appreciate speed, accuracy, and a sense of humor about the chaos they built before I arrived. People who want a polite museum tour of marketing usually exit early.

My goal is consistent: make you unmistakable.

Fractional Content & Community Marketing Leader

Ditch the gift cards, scrap the underutilized benefits package, and focus on the individuals in your organization instead.

Companies looking to improve performance and retention should care about helping people get further faster towards what matters most in their life. We make this easy with tools to create personalized incentives, meaningful recognition & self-defined benefits that help their people unlock "sacred funds" towards their personal life goals.

Employee Motivation Simplified.

Evan Patterson

Can we talk about how we're systematically destroying the SDR role? $45K base salary. In San Francisco. In 2025.

That's not a job. That's economic violence with a LinkedIn title.

And then we wonder why SDR turnover is 35% annually. Why quality is declining. Why nobody wants to do outbound anymore.

We treat SDRs like disposable batteries instead of future revenue leaders.

I've been that SDR. 80 calls a day. Rejected 79 times. Making less than a Target manager while being told I'm "lucky to have a foot in the door."

The door to what? Poverty?

The math is broken:

Average SDR generates $1M+ in pipeline
Gets paid $65K if they're lucky
Has 18-month average tenure
Leaves with zero equity

Meanwhile, that Series B founder's raising another round based on the pipeline SDRS built.

Here's my radical proposal:

Minimum $70K base (yes, everywhere)
Actual career pathing beyond "maybe AE someday"
Equity. Real equity. Not 0.001% that vests over 47 years.
Training budget that isn't just "shadow Dave for a week"

"But Evan, we can't afford—"

Stop. If you can't afford to pay the people generating your revenue a living wage, you don't have a business. You have a exploitation scheme with a pitch deck.

The companies getting this right are stealing all the talent. And they should.

Time to choose: Evolution or extinction.

What's the minimum you think SDRs should make? Let's get spicy in the comments 🌶️

Marketing for Fractional Execs & Founder-led Companies 🔥 Fractional CMO for Founder-led Startups 🚀 Personal CMO for the Self-Employed ❤️ Freelance Marketer For Hire! 🤩 “He’s the Joan Rivers of Marketing” - my ex boss

I hit 30,000 followers on LinkedIn today. 

I have been posting on LinkedIn since I was 24 years old. I’m 31 now. 

In that time, I met amazing people whom have become some of my closest friends, been mentored by amazingly talented professionals, grew as a person, became happier, more confident, explored various career paths, and made the move to self employment.

Here’s to another 30! Let’s see what happens next. 😎

graphical user interface, text, application

If you refer a founder, hiring manager, or executive who signs, I’ll pay you $3,000 USD.

For context, here are some top achievements for specific clients:

- 20–40 qualified inbound conversations per month generated from LinkedIn alone after installing founder-led GTM systems
- Over $750,000 in pipeline created within 90–120 days from organic content and positioning shifts
- $1,200,000+ in attributed pipeline tied directly to narrative architecture and messaging alignment
- Increased closed-won ratio by 50% due to improved lead quality and tighter positioning
- Implemented a content system that took a startup from generating $1,000 per day on average over a quarter to $250,000 in one month
- 10,000–20,000 follower growth in under 12 months for executive accounts
- 3x–5x increase in profile views within 60–90 days after repositioning
- $25,000–$60,000 retainers closed directly from inbound conversations
- Sales cycles shortened by weeks because buyers arrived already aligned on value

I operate as a fractional senior marketing leader and specialist.

That means stepping in and owning the strategy layer while also executing where needed:

• Ghostwriting and executive thought leadership
• Content marketing systems
• GTM strategy
• Social media marketing
• Executive personal branding
• Newsletter management
• Email marketing
• Search Visibility Optimization (SVO)
• Sales and marketing alignment
• Influencer marketing
• Community marketing
• Channel partnership strategy and implementation

I also have 50+ testimonials you can review directly on my profile. Right now I’m in conversations with:

- Seed-stage through Series C startups in SaaS, AI, edtech, martech, govtech, legal tech, salestech, etc.
- Venture studios
- Software and web developer agencies, marketing service providers, and professional services organizations
- Bootstrapped startups in growth mode

If someone comes to mind who needs senior marketing ownership in any of those categories and sharper strategic direction, introduce me.

I'm open to freelance, fractional, part-time roles, or whatever buzzword we're going with these days.

If it turns into a real partnership and lasts 90+ days, you get $3,000.

Simple. #opentowork

Looking for Head of Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer, CMO, VP of Marketing and Marketing Advisor roles

“Want to make $1,000? Stop scrolling and read. I’ve got space for new clients and I want to pay YOU.”

I can start 2 clients this month.  
I can start 4 more in March.

If you’ve got friends who’d like to make $1,000, tag them here too.  
Maybe they know someone. Maybe they want in. Maybe this gets interesting.

Here’s who I actually work with, and why people hire me.

Fractional CMO  
For founders and revenue leaders who feel like they’re doing a lot, but not moving much.

You come to me when:
- Your GTM feels like a pile of good intentions.
- Marketing is loud, pipeline is quiet.
- Everyone is working hard, nobody is sure on what.
- You want judgment, not another checklist.

I help you:
- Get a position that has a spine.
- Turn chaos into a simple operating system.
- Sequence demand so effort turns into revenue.
- Build content that compounds instead of exhausting you.

Personal CMO  
For executives, solopreneurs, and fractional leaders who know their presence is money, but hate playing content factory.

You come to me when:
- You know you should be visible, but you freeze.
- Your brand feels generic, polite, or diluted.
- You’re stuck in tactics when you should be thinking.
- You want demand to find you.

I help you:
- Clarify your narrative until it’s sharp.
- Create a repeatable content engine.
- Strengthen your executive presence.
- Make your public voice feel unmistakably yours.

---

If you refer someone who becomes a paying client between now and June 30, 2026, I’ll pay you $1,000.

Tag them in the comments.  
I’ll take it from there.

Learn more about me @ www.evanpatterson.io

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Two years ago, I was posting about community marketing roles. 

Today, I operate as a fractional marketing leader for SaaS and AI companies that need senior direction without full-time overhead.

The work has evolved.

It’s less about growing LinkedIn followers 700%.

More about this:

• $1.3M+ pipeline in 12 months for a 6-person AI sales platform
• $500K+ in 90 days from a structured 20-operator ecosystem
• 35% lift in partner-sourced revenue after rebuilding a stagnant channel program
• 3x increase in qualified meetings after clarifying ICP + positioning
• 120% lift in retention and 65% lift in conversion after narrative overhaul
• $900K+ enterprise pipeline across US + UK markets

Same underlying strengths: content, partnerships, influence, social selling.

Different lens: revenue and infrastructure.

I’m opening space for 1–2 new engagements.

Founder-led SaaS or AI.
Past early traction.
Marketing feels busy but not compounding.
Sales team strong.
Positioning unclear.

Part-time. Embedded. Remote.

If that’s you, or someone in your network, let’s talk.

And if you’ve been following my work since the “community marketing” era, appreciate you.

Stop using LinkedIn DMs like a drive-thru window. If your first message contains a calendar link, you’re not efficient. You’re skipping consent.

There’s this strange belief that senior people want to be “optimized.” That is not what these folks want.

They want context, relevance, and a reason this conversation exists beyond your quota.

A cold calendar link says:
“I have decided this is valuable. You’ll catch up.”

A good message says:
“I’ve thought about where you sit. This might matter.”

One builds friction while the other builds signal.

If you’re still the best salesperson in your company, marketing hasn’t caught up yet.

That’s normal.

Founder-led startups often rely on:

Charisma > positioning
Energy > infrastructure
Momentum > structure

It works… until it doesn’t.

Recent outcomes from stepping in at that stage:

$1.3M pipeline in 12 months
$500K in 90 days from structured partner ecosystem
35% increase in referral revenue
3x meetings post-ICP clarification

You don’t need more marketing activity.

You need alignment.

I’m opening capacity for 1–2 founder-led SaaS/AI startups that want marketing to operate like infrastructure instead of a side project.

DMs open.

You can tell when a company doesn’t agree with itself. Here's how:

Sales says one thing, website says another, product has a different definition, and founders tell a story from two years ago.

Buyers feel that mismatch immediately. Internal narrative alignment is a growth lever because it reduces friction everywhere:

1. sales cycles
2. onboarding
3. retention
4. referrals
5. content production
6. hiring

It’s operational coherence that you need, not just "messaging."

Most founders fail with CMOs because they hired too early or for the wrong reason. Here's how to get it right:

A Chief Marketing Officer is not a growth accessory or demand generation specialist with a fancier title.. It’s a redistribution of authority; and that’s where things get uncomfortable for some founders.

Founders who built the early motion are used to being the signal. The closer you are to the customer, the product, the revenue, the more natural it feels to control the narrative. However, growth eventually stops being about effort and becomes more about identity.

Questions like these become increasingly important:
- What do we actually stand for?
- What do we want to be known for?
- What are we willing to say no to?

They’re infrastructure questions often confused with campaign questions.

A real CMO doesn’t just “do marketing.” They build identity infrastructure, define the brand spine, decide what the company amplifies, and what it stops tolerating.

That means re-sequencing priorities, reallocating capital, reframing positioning, and sunsetting work that once felt productive.

It also means pushing back on the founder; not because they’re difficult, but rather because they’re close.

When marketing is treated solely as a service layer, like something that supports sales, supports product, supports founder ego, it can never shape the company; it can only decorate it. 

If every message still requires approval, you don’t have a CMO. You have a senior executor with a bigger title. If alignment is expected without change, you’re not asking for leadership; you’re asking for reinforcement. And more noticeably, if growth is still defined as “more activity,” you’re not ready for strategy. Strategy is filled with subtracton and tradeoffs. Good strategy involves saying no to good ideas so great ones can compound.

This is why most CMO hires disappoint; the founder hasn’t transitioned from operator to CEO. Operators optimize output and CEOs architect systems. Hiring a CMO is less about revenue acceleration and more about emotional maturity. It requires the willingness to let someone else hold the narrative weight of the business.

Most founders don’t need better writing. They need their edge back.

I just published a new article: “Why You Should Fire Your LinkedIn Ghostwriter.”

It starts with a real moment. A founder I was working with looked at his content and said: “In person, people get it immediately. Online, it’s… fine.”

Fine.

Just… fine.

The problem wasn’t grammar, cadence, or engagement. It was signal.

In sales calls, he was surgical: clear tradeoffs, sharp disagreements, and decisions made out loud.

On LinkedIn? The edges that made him "him" were gone. 

- Conviction had been translated into “perspective.”
- Specificity into general insight.
- Tension into comfort.

Nothing was broken, but nothing was building either.

That dissonance between how strong you are in the room and how diluted you appear online quietly reduces revenue potential. In the article, I break down:

- The structural reason signal gets softened
- The difference between sounding smart and being recognized
- Why “random acts of marketing” create the illusion of traction
 -What actually compounds in 2026 and beyond

AI has made polish cheap.
Identity is now infrastructure.

If you’ve ever felt like your visibility doesn’t match your capability, this will likely resonate.

Read the full piece below.

If it sharpens something for you, a like, repost, or follow meaningfully supports the work I do via Evan Patterson Consulting helping founders and fractional executives turn expertise into structured authority that drives real revenue.

A founder once told me, halfway through a sales call review, “I don’t understand it. In person, people get it immediately. Online, it’s… fine.” Fine. 

Open article: Why You Should Fire Your LinkedIn Ghostwriter by Evan Patterson • 4 min read

Why You Should Fire Your LinkedIn Ghostwriter

You don’t need another productivity hack, a posting schedule template, or another AI marketing tool. Here's what to do to double your income this year instead:

Get you someone who owns the narrative while you own the work.

Fractional executives, founder-led operators, senior-level freelancers: you’re paid for judgment.

You’re paid to make decisions, solve hard problems, and sit in rooms where outcomes matter. Every hour you spend trying to “keep up” with marketing is an hour you’re not operating at your highest value.

Most of you have tried something like a ghostwriter who needed too much direction, a junior marketer who required babysitting, or an agency that executed tasks but never really understood the business.

These attempts didn’t fail because marketing doesn’t work. They failed because no one owned it at your level.

A Personal CMO is someone that truly handles that nuance for you. Giving a non-marketer a tool like a ghostwriter or another piece of marketing technology and expecting it to yield good results is like handing me a hammer and expecting me to magicaly become a world class carpenter. That's just not happening.

A Personal CMO isn’t there to pump out content. They architect positioning, tighten the story, connect the channels, protect your voice, and make sure your presence compounds instead of resets every 90 days.

This allows fractional executives and leaders of founder-led startups stay in their zone of genius while folks like me build the system that turns that genius into signal.

That’s the difference. The goal is to make sure the market understands what you already are.

If you’re a fractional exec, founder, or senior operator who’s tired of marketing feeling like a side job… this is the layer you’ve probably been missing.

Now excuse me while I get back to doing mine.

Cold email has developed a stand-up comedy problem. Somewhere along the way, “pattern interrupt” turned into “open mic night.” That's coming from me, someone who loves to crack a joke.

I was just talking to my friend Leanne Dow-Weimer, MBA about this on one of her posts earlier this week.

Every inbox now has:

– The fake breakup line
– The sarcastic subject line
– The self-aware “this is a cold email lol” bit

We're even seeing people tastelessly using the "Epstein" files a marketing gimmick. 

You can feel the writer hoping for applause, but the goal isn’t a chuckle.

The goal is and always has been to get a conversation. But these folks are writing a lot of cold email right now that reads like someone trying to win a retweet, not a meeting.

This is what I would call miscalibrated relevance.

If the joke is doing more work than the insight, it’s theater. The best cold emails I’ve seen don’t have zingers, they have specificity. They demonstrate an understanding of a real constraint the recipient is dealing with. Something operational, political, emotional, or timing-related.

No punchline required. Comedy works because of tension and sales works because of alignment.

When you mix the two without taste, you get neither laughter nor replies. If you want attention, show me you understand the pressure I’m under. That’s funnier than any subject line trick.

Looking for a fractional or contract-to-hire job? I found some job postings for you. Repost if you think someone you're connected with wants to see these.

P.S. I share job postings daily, so follow for more. 

Fractional Technical Recruiter
$80-150 per hour, 10-30 hours per week
https://buff.ly/TzJYB5H 

Fractional Facilitator, Software Engineering
$66-100 per hour, 6-9 hours per week
https://buff.ly/r6kK0Db 

Fractional Talent Acquisition Sourcer
$60-80 per hour, 35-40 hours per week
https://buff.ly/im8o4Da 

Fractional VP, People & Culture
$170-275 per hour, 24 hours per week
https://buff.ly/fLZbZzQ

For the work-from-home cat parents in my network, get you one of these floating desk-mounted cat beds.

Keyboard stepping via the cat has been reduced to near zero. 

(Thank you Hardy, one of my two cats, for being the model in today's content)

Jeremy Boissinot

↳ Find the best creators for your brand with AI-powered precision

Today, brands face a challenge: how to find the right voices that truly resonate with their audience, from 1000s of influencers to choose from.

That’s where Favikon comes in.

I’ve created an AI-powered platform that cuts through the noise, helping brands identify creators who align with their values and goals.

With access to 10+ million influencers across platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube or TikTok, we don’t just rank creators - we give brands the tools to make data-driven decisions.

The content economy thrives on trust and connection, and our mission is to help brands and influencers build partnerships that deliver real, meaningful impact.

Co-founder & CEO

This is MASSIVE.

LinkedIn just confirmed they're going after automated comments. Browser extensions, scripts, third-party tools, all penalized.

Great first step. 

But let's be real, most pod users aren't using automated tools. They comment manually, coordinate off-platform, and LinkedIn has no way of spotting them.

This is where we come in.

Our algorithm gives us a clear picture of who's gaming the system. And we actually just updated it, because our last rankings made it obvious that in some countries, a few creators were still slipping through.

Introducing Authenticity Score v1.6:

→ Less tolerance for automated comments
→ Engagement score below 85 = penalty 
→ Pod patterns detected = bigger ranking drop 
→ Rankings updated within a week

(If you've played League of Legends, this whole process feels exactly like reading patch notes lol)

LinkedIn is cleaning house from the platform side. We're cleaning house from the data side.

Let's go.

PS: Huge shoutout to everyone helping us make our rankings more accurate and relevant. Special mention to Michelle J Raymond and Britta Behrens 💡, you two really rock. This gets better because of people like you.

Co-founder & CEO Favikon | Setting new standards in the creator economy

Creators have found yet another way to fake influence here.

No engagement pods. 
No risky fake accounts. 

Just company pages they fully control.

Here's how it works: they post something, then a bunch of company pages they own start commenting and reposting within the first 20 minutes. We've found creators running up to 15 company pages doing this on every single post.

Company pages have a lot of advantages for this:

- Full control. No coordinating with anyone, no one posting late and killing your momentum window.
- Invisible by design. LinkedIn rarely shows company page comments in your feed, so nobody sees it happening. It looks like normal brand activity.
- Lower risk. Fake personal account gets banned, the trail leads back to you. A company page gets flagged, you lose the page. Your real profile stays untouched.
- Harder to flag. Company pages aren't subject to the same automation behavior detection as personal accounts. They fly under the radar way more easily.

And the algorithm rewards it anyway. Early comments and reposts signal that content is taking off, which pushes it to more people before real engagement even starts.

We spotted this across dozens of accounts. Same pattern every time: company pages with zero other activity, always on the same creator, always within 20 minutes of posting.

Manufactured engagement. Real reach. And nobody sees it coming.

So yeah, if you're evaluating someone's LinkedIn influence, look at who's actually commenting. Not just how many people are.

PS: we're building this into Favikon's authenticity score as we speak. Massive thanks to Jesus Serrano for bringing this to us with proofs!

The team is almost full for 2026. Almost.

We're still missing one position, and honestly, it's the one I'd want if I were starting my career right now.

Creative Content Lead at Favikon.

Here's what the role actually looks like day to day:

- Create content across formats and platforms (video, graphics, written)
- Build and execute content strategies for multiple initiatives
- Be comfortable on camera and behind the lens (you'll be the face of the company)
- Work closely with two department heads and a small content team
- Be super active on LinkedIn

We're a team of 10+ nationalities serving brands and creators across 110+ countries. The work is global. The energy is real.

The requirements are simple: creative, fluent in English, based in Paris, and a high authenticity score (of course)

This is a junior role. Fresh degree is fine! 1 to 3 years of experience is ideal, internships count. What we care about is that you genuinely love the creator economy, not just follow it.

Apply here: https://lnkd.in/eYYBUXNZ

One thing before you do: read the full job description. There's a specific way to apply, and 95% of candidates miss it. Don't be that person.

If you know someone who'd be a fit, tag them below ✍

We're closing our fundraising round in 2 weeks.

And something happened that I didn't fully expect when we started this process: our creators committed over €300K to invest in Favikon.

These are people who use the platform every day. They decided to put their own money behind it. That kind of trust hits different than a wire from a fund.

We just opened a SPV to let a few more creators in before we close. Last seats.

What makes this round special to me: we now have investors from 20+ countries. Not just capital, but a global network of people who genuinely understand the creator economy because they live in it. This global footprint is going to matter a lot. We've been working on something behind the scenes, and our investors are the only ones who know about it right now 👀

If you're a creator and you want in, DM me. Two weeks left, then we close for good.

I reached out to our users to offer them a chance to invest in Favikon.

Same message. Same person. 500x difference in response rate.

- I posted on LinkedIn (45K followers): 3 DMs. 
- I emailed a 15K userbase: 500 replies.

0.007% vs 3.3%. The algorithm buried me. My list didn't.

That's the whole lesson on audience ownership, right there.

We're ending our fundraising right now, and this week genuinely moved me. I really was not expecting this. I sent the email on a Tuesday evening, went to sleep, woke up to hundreds of replies from people who use Favikon every day, people who believe in what we're building, people who wrote paragraphs about why they want in. Some of them I've never spoken to. Some of them have been with us since the early days. All of them took the time to respond.

That doesn't happen by accident. Creators are at the core of everything we're doing in 2026, a full creator plan revamp, a new global creator club, and honestly this week just locked it in for me. We're building this for them. Full stop.

And I know I talk a lot about the creator economy, about authenticity, about not chasing vanity metrics. But sometimes you need a concrete slap in the face to really feel it. 45K followers sounds great at a dinner party. A community that actually responds when you reach out is actually the real thing.

Your list is an asset. Your follower count is rented space.

Round closes end of month. DM me now to own a piece of Favikon and help us rule the creator economy together ✍

Tell me you like to live dangerously without telling me you like to live dangerously

Something that doesn't get talked about enough: the struggle of using multiple languages on LinkedIn.

Engage with a post in another language, and your feed becomes 80% that language. I just ran this experiment myself.

Worse, it starts showing that content to your audience, which can turn them off entirely.

So LinkedIn basically forces you into one language.

At Favikon, we used to publish posts in several languages to grow our rankings across markets. The algorithm tanked every time.

After testing this extensively, the rules are clear:

✅  Stick to one language only
❌ Never engage with content in another language (or do it very rarely)
❌ Never mix languages in a single post. We tested this. It tanks you. The algorithm doesn't know which audience to distribute it to, so it effectively shows it to no one.

This is a real problem for anyone building an international audience. LinkedIn treats multilingual users like a bug, not a feature.

I chose English, so I have to stick to English content.

My French ancestors are rolling in their graves. Désolé, grand-mère. The algorithm said no.

I saw a post last week that made me stop scrolling. It was about us. It wasn't good. 

Dr. Mic Merritt found themselves in our database, represented in a way that wasn't them. Not even close. They paid to fix it. Our platform still wouldn't let them. When support finally stepped in, we got it wrong again.

Favikon's entire reason for existing is to celebrate creator diversity. We serve customers across 100+ countries, our own team is 10 nationalities, and the whole product is built on the belief that every creator's voice and identity has value. You can't claim that and then force people into a box they don't belong in.

France doesn't legally recognize non-binary as a category. Fine. But our platform isn't France. Our users are 90% global, and so is our responsibility.

We shipped the fix. We're now actively going through our entire database and re-indexing creators who have publicly identified as non-binary. That will take time. In the meantime, any creator can update their own profile directly on the app, and the trial is free.

But the fast turnaround isn't the point. The point is we should have thought about this before someone had to make noise to get our attention.

We can always do better. We have to.

The top LinkedIn influencers across 6 countries all have one thing in common. Almost none of them earned their spot through content.

I looked at the current Top 20 LinkedIn rankings in the US, UK, France, India, Brazil, and Germany. 120 creators total. Here's what stands out:

📌 CEO/founder dominance is overwhelming. 

Across all six countries, C-suite executives and founders hold 70-80% of the top 20 slots. LinkedIn didn't become a creator platform. It became a broadcast channel for people who were already famous. 

📌 Each country reflects its own power structure. 

The US list is the most eclectic: @Obama, Reese Witherspoon, MrBeast, Lex Fridman. The UK skews traditional business. Brazil is almost entirely banking CEOs. Germany is industrial and energy (Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Volkswagen, Lufthansa). France is half politicians (Macron #1, Attal, Lecornu). India leans tech founders and motivational figures.

📌 Politicians have figured it out. 

Macron, Modi, von der Leyen all rank #1 in their countries. LinkedIn has become a soft channel for reaching professional audiences without media filtering. The platform seems fine with it.

📌 AI is the one topic that competes with status. 

Demis Hassabis, Andrew Ng, Mustafa Suleyman, Arthur Mensch, Yann LeCun all show up. It's the only subject where expertise alone can crack the top 20.

📌 The gender gap is brutal. 

Count the women across all 120 spots. The US is the most balanced (Melinda French Gates, Sara Davies, Reese Witherspoon, Asha Sharma, Leila Hormozi). Brazil has 4. Germany and India are almost entirely men. If LinkedIn's top creators reflect professional influence, the platform is mirroring existing power imbalances.

📌 LinkedIn-first creators will come from.

The US is the only list where pure content creators crack the top 20. Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) and Lex Fridman built their audiences outside LinkedIn and ported them over. No other country has that. Everyone else got there through institutional position first.

LinkedIn's algorithm rewards authority, not originality. 

A mid-level marketing manager could write the exact same post as Gary Vaynerchuk and get 12 likes. The algorithm weighs who you are (title, follower count, network density) far more than what you say. That's a structural choice by LinkedIn, and these rankings are the direct result.

📌 The fight for authenticity is real, and it's working. 

LinkedIn has been cracking down on pods for months. At Favikon, our authenticity score does the same thing from the outside: separating real influence from inflated reach. The 20-30 usual suspects who dominate every top list rank much lower in our system. Because reach without authenticity is just noise.

LinkedIn is at a crossroads. It can keep rewarding status and job titles, or it can shift toward rewarding genuine expertise and original thinking. The creators who actually move their audience will win either way. The question is whether our rankings will ever reflect that.

Yeah sex is cool but have you ever been the dumbest person in a room and felt great about it (that's how you know you've hired well)

A hill I'll die on: good weather doesn't make you lazy.

It makes you sharper.

After a week of rainy Paris, I landed back in Cannes and had more done by 10am than most full office days. Sun hits different when your office view is a fountain and a marina. There's something about natural light, warmth on your face, and not feeling like you're trapped inside a grey snow globe that just... unlocks something in your brain.

The lazy-in-the-sun thing is a myth built by people who've never actually lived somewhere beautiful. You don't slow down. You stop wasting energy fighting your environment.

Sorry not sorry to all my British followers 😄

Seb Johnson 📊🇪🇺 with 7K followers on X just made $1K in 5 weeks.

He posts on LinkedIn too. 100K followers. LinkedIn paid him → $0.

Here's why that's a billion-dollar mistake for LinkedIn:

There's a good reason X pays creators and LinkedIn doesn't. 

1. X lost its advertisers
2. Creators lost their sponsorship layer
3. X had to step in and pay creators directly

Pay creators from platform revenue, keep them posting, keep the content engine alive.

A survival mechanism disguised as generosity.

LinkedIn has the opposite situation.

Creators on LinkedIn can monetize through:

1. Sponsored content
2. Lead gen
3. Consulting deals
4. SaaS pipeline
5. Recruiting

On LinkedIn, money comes from what your audience does for your business, not from the platform paying you per view.

So LinkedIn doesn't need a creator fund, right?

❌ Wrong.

Money from the platform hits different.

$50 or $500 landing in your account from a dashboard → dopamine hit that no indirect pipeline metric can replicate.

It makes you want to post more. It validates the work on days when the leads aren't flowing.

And LinkedIn needs you to keep posting. No good organic content → the feed dies → the ad business suffers.

Here's what a LinkedIn creator fund would look like at $0.50 CPM (what X pays today):

📌 100K impressions/month → $50/month → $600/year
📌 500K impressions/month → $250/month → $3,000/year
📌 1M impressions/month → $500/month → $6,000/year
📌 5M impressions/month → $2,500/month → $30,000/year

None of these are life-changing for serious creators. That's the point.

The real money on LinkedIn still comes from your business, your clients, your deals.

The payout is just a nudge. A little reward that says "we see you, keep going."

---

LinkedIn made over $16B in revenue last year.

A creator fund at this scale → rounding error on their P&L.

But it would lock in the best B2B content creators on the internet.

X proved the mechanic works. LinkedIn just needs to copy it, not the desperation behind it.

Fabrizio Romano destroyed 10 years of credibility in 2 minutes and 14 seconds. And it's a masterclass in what NOT to do in influencer marketing.

20M+ followers. Top 1 Sport journalist in the world. "Here we go" is a cultural moment. Ten years of trust built scoop by scoop. Then he posted a paid #ad for KSRelief, Saudi Arabia's humanitarian PR arm. 

Here's why it's a failure for everyone involved:

❌ He has no business talking about this

His audience follows him for transfer scoops, not geopolitical takes. When you step that far outside your lane with an #ad tag, nobody thinks "oh interesting." They think "how much did they pay him?" This is the first rule of influencer marketing: the creator must have topical authority on what they're promoting. Without it, the #ad tag stops being a legal disclosure and becomes a confession. Essentially, it's the equivalent of Justin Welsh promoting a fast food chain on LinkedIn.

❌ Trust is asymmetric

Ten years to build, one post to crack. If he'll promote Saudi humanitarian PR, what else is he willing to say for money? That question contaminates everything, including the transfer scoops. In influencer marketing, credibility IS the product. The moment your audience doubts your independence, your conversion rates, your engagement quality, your brand value, all of it collapses.

❌ 11.9M views means nothing

When all comments call you out, you're just getting a public trial. This is why smart brands measure sentiment, not just impressions. Every brand evaluating Fabrizio for a future campaign will now see this. One bad partnership poisons the well for every deal that comes after.

❌ Both sides failed

KSrelief picked reach over relevance. Rookie mistake. The best creator campaigns work when the audience thinks "yeah, that tracks." A football journalist promoting Saudi state initiatives tracks for nobody. Fabrizio's team failed to protect his most valuable asset. And the agency that brokered this optimized for the wrong metric entirely.

Relevance is the foundation of influence. Trade it for reach, you lose both. And for Fabrizio's credibility? Here we go... straight down.

Many people in my DMs complain about their "low" authenticity score.

Guys, this is what a low authenticity score looks like 👇

I'm not at SXSW this year for one reason: we've been heads down on a big project launching in London and San Francisco over the next few weeks.

If you're in London on March 17-18 or in San Francisco from March 29 to April 2, reach out. Would love to meet in person. I might even tell you what we've been cooking 👀

We've had great results with Reddit, but the moderation is a real problem. Half the Favikon team is currently banned or restricted 🤣 

The reason: "Vote manipulation." Because our team members engage on our own subreddit. You know, the subreddit we created specifically so people could join our conversations publicly.

Of course 100% of their engagement is on r/favikon. They're busy building a company. They don't have time to browse r/gaming between sprints.

Reddit for Business, you should do better. You can't court brands and then punish their teams for actually showing up on the platform.

taplio

The Battle

Evan Patterson

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The Battle

Evan Patterson

Jeremy Boissinot

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Evan Patterson's LinkedIn Performance

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