Lead generation is broken.

Too many companies:

- Try to generate leads themselves, but fail
- Hire a lead gen agency with bloated retainers who can’t deliver

Lead generation as a whole is always changing, so unless you’ve got a dedicated team
on it (that knows what they’re doing) — you can expect to overpay for underwhelming
results.

That said, in 2025 — you don’t need to try to generate leads yourself, or pay an
outsized retainers for subpar work.

With Leadbird, you:

- Don’t pay for overpriced retainers
- Only pay per meeting-ready-lead we deliver
- Get the expertise of career outbound salespeople

We achieve this for you through:

- Targeted lead list building
- Domain + inbox set-up and warm-up
- Proven cold email copywriting principles
- Done-for-you cold email campaign management

Book a free demo from the link in my bio to join over 115 active clients getting
high-quality, meeting-ready-leads every single month.

Talk soon,
Nick

Nick Abraham

Maybe I’m falling for ragebait, but cold email has let me:

(1) Drop out of college.

(2) Grow my own agency to multi 7-figures of revenue.

(3) Employ 30+ people around the world full-time.

(4) Buy my sister and Dad cars.

(5) Rent my dream apartment.

(6) Buy my first 5 properties.

(7) Work with 100s of businesses.

(8) Make lifelong friends.

(9) Give my future family a financial head start.

Just remember, for every one person that dunks on cold outbound, there's another person whose life was changed because of it.

I send 2M+ cold emails and 1M+ LinkedIn DMs per month for 1,000+ active clients across Leadbird and Cleverly

Gemini 3 cannot sell a $10k service package.
GPT 5.1 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Llama 4 cannot sell a $10k service package.
Opus 4.5 cannot sell a $10k service package.
DeepSeek-R1 cannot sell a $10k service package.

A great human seller can.

I posted the below tweet earlier this year. If I could edit it, I would say:

“If I had a son, I would preach that you can either be top 1% in whatever job you have or risk losing it to AI’.”

Because “AI is going to eliminate [insert role]” is surface level thinking, and too broad of a generalization.

It is, of course, going to eliminate roles, but not roles in their entirety. 

Instead, it will eliminate the bottom 99% of certain roles while accelerating the top 1% of others.

Sales is a great example.

AI can handle a lot of the outreach process, even including script writing. What it can’t do is work a deal the way a human would.

The same can be said for a lot of software dev work, in my opinion. Great engineers will never be out of work, but average/mediocre ones likely will.

In short: if you want to AI-proof yourself, become top 1% at what you do. Easier said than done, I know…but very much worth it.

I jokingly posted this and SO many people commented or messaged about Agency 3 and asked for an intro. This is a huge problem.

This post was a joke. No lead gen agency worth their salt would ever take a deal in which they generate leads for clients, and only get paid if/when the client closes them.

We can't control what the client does after we generate the lead.

- What if they simply don’t engage with them?
- What if the lead asks to follow up later, and they don’t?
- What if their sales team just can’t close for their product/service?
- What if their pricing is way off the market norm?
- What if their reviews online are terrible, and the prospects drop out pre-call?
- What if they have no social proof and can't build trust with prospects?

There is so much that is out of the lead generation agency's control. 

Moreover, the client will have no skin in the game and not value the opportunity if they have no risk associated 

The agency can do their job perfectly and even go above and beyond and still make zero dollars because of something on client’s side.

Just a word of warning!

Excited and grateful to share I’ve reached 20,000 followers here on LinkedIn!

Almost 3 years ago, with 3,000 followers, I started posting the most valuable content I could every day (sometimes 2x per day).

Since then, I’ve been able to:

- Meet lots of awesome people I now consider friends.
- Learn a ton about outbound, GTM, and marketing.
- Attract incredible clients we’re extremely grateful for

Whether you were one of the first 3,000 or a part of the next 17,000, I truly want to say thank you. None of it's possible without you.

To that point, I only ask of you is to comment what type of content you want to see more of moving forward!

Super excited to show off our new client portal that makes it far easier for clients to track replies!

Before, we had clients logging into Smartlead to check email replies, then switching to a LinkedIn inbox manager for DM responses, then tracking cold calls elsewhere.

The entire lead gen operation was fragmented across three interfaces that didn't really interconnect.

Clients would miss responses because they forgot to check one of the platforms. They'd get confused about which channel was performing better. 

The biggest sign of this was support tickets kept coming in asking where to find specific replies.

So, we effectively rebuilt our client portal, using MasterInbox as the common thread. Now when clients log in, they see everything in one feed (emails, calls, DMs) that looks completely native to our platform.

Most importantly, clients have commented on how much easier this is for them.

Not to mention, it helps us, too. We've eliminated ~80% of the "where do I find my replies?" support requests. 

As for performance, clients are responding to leads faster because they're not losing track of conversations across multiple tools.

We're rolling this out to all clients because the upgrade is that significant.

Of the 1,000s of client campaigns we've run this year, the best-performer in recent memory was for a yoga studio.

I am big on local lead generation, and this is a perfect example of it. 

This yoga studio hired us to reach out to other businesses to try to get them to book group classes, retreats, off-sites, etc.

So, we scraped lead lists of local businesses and wrote a hyper-local cold email campaign to go with it.

And though you might expect the best performing campaign to be for an agency with a great offer or a hot new SaaS product, this blew others out of the water 

The point is that cold email for local businesses is wildly underrated. If you have or know of a local business interested in generating leads via cold email, feel free to reach out.

We’d love to replicate this.

If you’ve ever pulled leads from Apollo or anything else using “Industry” filters, read this post to make them way more accurate:

They have miscategorized companies in the industry that aren’t relevant to your ICP.

We've been using a new method to get our refined TAM into one list.

See, most lead lists give you name, email, company, LinkedIn URL, and a generic "industry" tag. The problem is that those industry classifications are wrong a lot of the time.

You end up messaging wrong accounts or missing perfect fits.

We found a way to fix this using data already in your lists.

Every company LinkedIn URL comes with an "About Us" section where they describe exactly what they do.

Process:

- Take 3-5 dream clients.
- Go to their LinkedIn About Us sections.
- Pull out every relevant keyword - product terms, customer segments, pain points, industry language. Build a keyword bank.

This takes 20 minutes.

Now layer this on top of broad industry tags. Instead of just "Healthcare," filter for Healthcare companies whose About Us mentions your specific keywords.

Gets you from the neighborhood into the right house.

This is basically advanced semantic filtering without expensive AI tools.

Use the company's own words to qualify them instead of relying on generic industry buckets.

My agency has 283 active clients. If we don't get to 1,000 by the end of 2026, I'll view the year as a failure. There are 3 things we need to do to get there:

LEVER 1 – Churn Reduction

We want to cut our churn in half.

Our sales team don't lie to prospects, but much of the churn does come from misaligned expectations around lead generation, so we are investing a lot in making that extremely clear up front.

LEVER 2 – More Time On Growth

This sounds obvious, but few people do it in practice. It's so easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and not spend enough time on top of funnel activity.

There's so much more we could be doing (YouTube, ads, events, etc.) here.

LEVER 3 – Make Sure Our Team Levels Up

To serve 1,000 clients, we need to make sure our team is operating at all levels.

We had them at off-sites in Dubai and Cape Town in the past few months, and we'll do another one next year.

More tangibly, we are trying to get them more ingrained in lead gen overall.

We are asking them to go follow other leaders in the space and consume their content on a regular basis.

To me, this is an undeniable way to level up.

This comes off the heels of rebuilding our client portal and making it crystal clear and easy to operate. If you have any questions or want to see more on this, let me know.

One of the most common replies you'll get to cold emails at scale is "how much does it cost".

Generally, you'll either:

A) Give the price. Without further context or sales tactics, people automatically see this as a cost and have a hard time justifying the ROI. This usually makes it harder to get on a call.

B) Give a range. This is a bit better, but depending on budget, it still may be hard to paint ROI via email. You need to give a fairly broad range.

Now, very few businesses selling >$1000 packages are public about pricing.

I think that should change.

Your pricing should be publicly available somewhere, ideally on a dedicated page that does a lot of the selling for you.

This might look like:

1. Landing page with 8-minute VSL, full of social proof, with pricing in the middle.

2. Static pricing page, full of social proof + process walkthrough.

This changes your reply from:

"Sure, our pricing is XYZ"

to

"Sure, feel free to have a look here [link] for more information on that".

This way, instead of your prospect just seeing the amount of money you want them to pay you, they get a much fuller picture of the value you provide.

If I were in charge of business development at a local blue collar business like this and needed to win jobs with cold email, I would:

1. Scrape a list of local businesses with an office location.
2. Write the following email copy:

—

[name], just wanted to touch base. We're an HVAC company in the area at [address].

Curious - do you have a go-to person for any kind of AC/heating repairs?

—

You might get a couple of jobs from this, but that is not really the goal with this kind of work.

The "magic" is what happens after.

3. Enroll all positive replies into a weekly nurture sequence (case studies and value).

Do this locally for 90-120 days.

It's the most surefire way to make sure that when a business' AC/heating breaks, they think of you right away.

Scaled to thousands of businesses across a major metro area, you're looking at serious pipeline.

Plus, a VERY small portion (if any) of your competitors are doing this.

To that point, if your business or someone you know would benefit from a system like this, comment or DM me!

Job titles are lying to you about who actually does the work. 

If you're selling something without a clean buyer title, your targeting is probably broken.

Here's how we fixed ours:

Outbound breaks down when your product is ambiguous. 

Say you sell financial forecasting software. 

Who owns forecasting depends on the company (Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy, or even founders, etc.).

A "Finance Manager" could handle AR, AP, Treasury, or actually build forecasts. You can't tell from the title.

So we stopped guessing titles and started targeting the actual work.

Layer 1: Department filtering

Start with departments where your problem sits. For forecasting: Finance, FP&A, Operations, Strategy.

Layer 2: LinkedIn description keywords

Every user writes a description under their title:

- "Own the quarterly forecast"
- "Build headcount forecasts"
- "Drive variance analysis"
- "Maintain the revenue model"

These keywords self-identify who does the work.

Instead of targeting "Finance Manager" and hoping, target "Finance Manager who mentions 'forecast' and 'financial model' in their description."

The process:

1. Pick 1-2 relevant departments
2. Extract 8-20 keywords tied to your product
3. Filter people mentioning those keywords in descriptions
4. Hit people who self-identify as doing the work

Example query:

Department: Finance/FP&A/Operations

Description contains: "forecast" OR "financial model" OR "budget"

This surfaces only people who explicitly manage forecasts.

We've been running this across ambiguous products and have seen both higher reply rates and better conversations.

The perfect cold email has:

- Relevance = Reason for reaching out.
- Personalization = Part that only makes sense to them.
- Offer = Outcome you'll provide.
- Social proof = Proof you've done it.
- CTA = Low-risk ask that puts the ball in their court.

Not complicated!

We've had clients we book 100s of meetings for per month, and others who churned because "cold email doesn't work".

The difference in how they operate:

Ones booking 100s of meetings:

- Willingly give away free value
- Take suggestions on optimizing offer
- Understand it's a volume game
- Don't overanalyze campaigns
- Chase leads we send them religiously

Ones who are convinced cold email doesn't work:

- Refuse to give away free value because it'll bring "bad leads".
- Refuse to optimize their offer to make it cold-ready.
- Want to send to a "targeted" list of 76 accounts.
- Analyze campaigns in relation to "industry standards" they Googled
- Let leads sit dormant for days and weeks after we submit them

It isn't exactly rocket science. This isn't to say we're perfect at what we do with every campaign.

It is to say we operate based on the data we have, and our data shows that this works.

We're doing 60,000 cold calls per month for clients and ourselves right now. Our number 1 learning for what converts to appointments and what doesn't has nothing to do with cold calling tech or set up.

It strictly has to do with the caller's tone.

One of the big pitfalls of outsourced callers is that they come into the call with no tonality.

Typical "Hey, do you have 10 seconds to speak? I'd love to show you how we could..."

Callers will sound robotic because you are grading them on the amount of dials they do per day. So, they speed-run through the list 

The much better play to run is:

1. Ensure your caller has a curious, inquisitive tone.
2. Ensure they don't get into the routine of sounding like a robot.

It sounds like a simple fix, but it's really not.

This is the difference between booking appointments from cold calling and wasting a ton of money.

How it feels when you realize you can just send more cold emails to get more leads:

We’re sending 260k cold emails Thursday-Sunday this week.

So many sellers view holidays and weekends as time to pause campaigns. I just don't see the point in doing this…mainly for a few reasons:

1. Because so many sellers pause their campaigns, inboxes are way less crowded.

2. Often, you’re targeting someone senior with outbound. Senior people, even though less on weekends, are more likely to check email (even once per day) during the holidays.

3. Generally, people are in more relaxed, friendly moods on a Thanksgiving Friday than they are on a random November Tuesday morning. This bodes well for reply rate.

Disclaimer:

You can expect ~50% of your typical campaign performance in terms of positive reply rate during the holidays. Yes it's reduced, but it's not worth stopping sending altogether.

TLDR: Don’t pause campaigns this holiday!

If I had to increase positive reply to meeting booked rate for any B2B business, here are the exact steps I'd take:

(1) Set up an automation that enriches positive replies with all relevant info (LI URL if I don't already have it, phone number, etc)

(2) Send them a LinkedIn connection request post-positive reply.

(3) Cold call them after that as well.

(4) If the meeting still isn't booked, I'd bump the cold email reply, mentioning I called and left a voicemail. Then, I’d follow up one more time after that.

(5) If they STILL haven't booked, I'd set up a weekly nurture newsletter for all prospects that fit this mould. Each email would have a CTA to book a call.

The point is that you reach them on all platforms.

If you need to set this up:

- Find out what data you have available after each list scrape.

- Set up waterfall enrichment to find what you’re missing after a positive reply (phone number, LI profile, etc.)

- Outline a process for you/your sellers to walk through post-positive reply.

- Use your CRM or beehiiv to set up a weekly newsletter nurture sequence (52 emails comprised of social proof + value).

The more you reach them, the better chance you have. It's not that difficult, but a lot of companies struggle with this.

- client with $100,000 LTV

Client: We only got 3 leads this month.

Me: And?

Client: We are going to have to churn.

Me: Why?

Client: We're clearly not getting enough volume for this to work.

Me: Ok, let's run the numbers. Your average LTV is $100,000 right?

Client: Yes.

Me: Okay, so, if we charge you $300 per lead, we can generate 100 leads that you close 0% on, and you'd STILL be at breakeven with us.

Client: Yeah, but we don't close at 0%. We close at 10-15%.

Me: Exactly. Let's even cut that in half and take 5%. If you pay us $300 per lead and close at 5%, you'd pay $6000 in lead generation costs for $100K in rev.

Client: Oh.

Me: Do you see why you don't need a lot of leads for this to work?

Client: Yes.

We have 60,000 monthly cold calls worth of data to show that prospects absolutely still pick up the phone.

Yet, still, deniers will say that it’s not worth their time, or that nobody picks up the phone, or my favorite: “When you pull the list, you’ll end up with office numbers and not personal ones!”.

(for the record: It is incredibly easy to pull personal mobile phone numbers from lead lists).

My point is that you absolutely shouldn’t listen to people who’ve never given a channel a fair shake about whether or not it works.

If you did:

1. You’d never send a DM because “inboxes are crowded”.
2. You’d never send a cold email because “it doesn’t work”.
3. You’d never make a cold call because “nobody picks up the phone”.

In reality, cold calling and quite literally all other channels “work” if executed correctly and for long enough.

Heading into 2026, outbound marketers will have to multi-thread more and more, meaning it’s likely going to be time to pick up the phone.

Just remember: It does work.

"We already emailed them"

That's EXACTLY why you should be emailing them again.

At any given point, roughly 3% of decision makers in your TAM are actively looking for your solution.

That means even if you do everything right with your lead gen efforts, a good portion of your TAM simply won't buy right then and there (see: “email me next year” replies).

From there, you're given two choices:

1. Mark them as permanently "not interested" and move on.
2. Re-market to them with new messaging every 30 days from there on out.

If you mark leads that don't want to buy right now as "permanently not interested," you will eventually run through your TAM.

If you reach out to leads who don't want to buy right now, every 30 days with fresh messaging, you will be top of mind when they do want to buy.

This is also why it's effectively impossible to burn a relatively large TAM. (Taylor Haren does a great job of explaining this).

The point is, don't be scared of holding on to the same leads. Just make sure your offer is strong, and the messaging is unique each time.

Get Leads From Your LinkedIn On Autopilot | Founder @ Hat Tip

If you:

→ Make social content
→ Want to make social content
→ Tried making social content but were unsuccessful

… you’re in the right place.

Truth is, publishing content you’re proud of on a consistent basis is tough.

You get busy. Things come up.

And for most founders, content takes a backseat to whatever fire they’re putting out at their company that day.

That said, its 2025.

Content is king — and the benefits for B2B founders are clear:

→ Drive low-cost brand awareness
→ Generate inbound leads from a new lead source
→ Become a “thought leader” in your space (even though you may hate that word)

And after meeting tons of founders while working in influencer marketing, starting Hat Tip felt like a no-brainer.

You can still benefit from publishing high-quality social content — without worrying about blocking out time to write, being inconsistent, or if you’re making content the “right way”.

Hat Tip handles that for you—while maintaining your voice—through:

→ Bi-weekly content interviews
→ Product and industry-specific thought-starters
→ The will to edit and revise until you’re proud of the content being published

If high-quality, consistent social content sounds like something you’re interested in, DM me or visit the link in my profile to book a call.

Thanks 👋

Christian

📧 christian@hattipagency.com
🐤 Twitter @dibratto

Christian Di Bratto

Yesterday, I had the worst day I had in a while.

It felt like nothing could go right. 

I was frustrated and irritable, just trying to do the best work I can before I shut my laptop for the day. 

But, my YouTube vendor has been hounding me to record this one-hour YouTube video for over a week. 

So when I was finally able to, I sat down to record it.

27 minutes in, I realized my audio wasn't recording through my mic.

Enjoy.

Founder @ Hat Tip. Helping startup founders generate pipeline from social.

I've posted (almost) daily on LinkedIn since November 2023. Today, >60% of our pipeline at Hat Tip comes from my profile. What I wish I could tell every founder wanting to do the same:

1. Nobody cares enough about you to have something "cringe" alter their perception of you.

2. You'll be tempted to chase "growth hacks". Don't.

3. Give it 90 days, or don't start.

4. Your results from content are only as good as the system you build to make it.

5. You get out what you put in. Comments and DMs are your best friend.

6. Analyzing performance on a post-by-post basis is a death sentence for your sanity.

7. "I'm not getting any reach" and "my content isn't valuable enough" mean the same thing.

8. Treat social like an afterthought, and it'll treat you the same.

9. Everyone who has the power to buy from you on this platform can tell when ChatGPT writes your posts. Just saying.

10. If you only post what gets the most likes, you'll end up in the "buy a LinkedIn growth course, make a LinkedIn growth course" pyramid scheme. Did I just say that?

These are all facts and not up for debate.

My agency, Hat Tip, was doing $18,500/month of revenue before I had 2,000 LinkedIn followers. 

For context, there are accounts with 200,000+ followers that don't generate a fraction of that number.

I don't say this to brag, as that isn't the whole lot in the grand scheme of things. I do say it to clarify that you absolutely do not need a lot of followers to make this platform work for your product or service.

3 things I did to achieve this:

1. Avoid the urge to write for likes.

LinkedIn gurus will tell you to post about topics that get a ton of likes and reach...but do absolutely 0 for your pipeline.

Instead, I very intentionally wrote for who I serve - software founders and agency owners. Mainly I tried to solve the problems that came up in all of my sales/client calls.

2. Comment, comment, comment.

In my heyday, when I was really trying to win business, I blocked off 60 minutes per morning and did not get up from my computer before I left 40 thoughtful comments on others' posts.

 It was a complete slog, and I frankly hated it. But the eyeballs it brought me were invaluable (also made a ton of friends this way).

3. Free work. 

I was basically LinkedIn Costco at the time - if you were qualified, you were getting a free sample.

A very small portion of these people converted to clients, but that's fine. All that meant to me was I had to up the volume. 

I'm not saying it was easy, but if you're willing to come into the platform, it is absolutely possible to build a viable business off the back of it without a bunch of followers. 

The caveat is it takes actual work and time, which a lot of people won't tell you.

We grew a client's LinkedIn account from 4,800 -> 20,000 followers in 2.5 years. Here are the best-performing content formats we used to do it:

(it was actually 3,800, but we weren't reporting at the time. C'est la vie).

What we didn't do:

- Post sad selfie slop
- Use copy / paste post templates
- Try to "go viral"

The formats we found to work extremely well:

1. Templates

Most weeks, we create a template this person's audience can use to achieve a result, and explain how to use it. 

RESULTS:

POST 1: 105,635 impressions
POST 2: 104,899 impressions
POST 3: 79,054 impressions

2. Good/bad callout

We take examples of people/companies doing [what their company does] well, and highlight how well they do it, as well as companies doing it poorly, and highlight why it doesn't work.

RESULTS:

POST 1: 445,056 impressions
POST 2: 416,989 impressions
POST 3: 358,956 impressions

3. Niche memes

We post memes that, frankly, only this person's audience would care about. You and I would likely find them boring, but that doesn't matter.

RESULTS:

POST 1: 416,489 impressions
POST 2: 316,322 impressions
POST 3: 173,385 impressions

4. Industry-specific, data-backed commentary.

This person operates in a space that is always changing and where people are always looking for a leg up. Using their data, we're able to create hyper-relevant commentary on what's working/what's not that he can share with his audience.

RESULTS:

POST 1: 92,041 impressions
POST 2: 56,122 impressions
POST 3: 34,071 impressions.

NOTE:

These results are not typical. This client is far and away the most committed to social that we have.

They show up to their content interviews prepped and present. They're willing to test ideas and believe in the process.

And beyond the 17K follower increase, they book "hundreds of meetings per year" off social – their words, not mine.

--

DISCLAIMER: A lot of people like to fake reach and impressions numbers. I have permission to verify these. If you want help on social but are skeptical of these, DM me and I'll validate.

Everything I pay for to run and grow my content agency past $1M ARR:

OPS:

Comms – Slack
Call recordings: Fireflies.ai
Video call recordings: Riverside
Content – Notion
(Simple) Graphics – Canva
Client Feedback: SurveyGate (Eli Rubel)
Scheduling – Calendly
Payroll – Deel
Bookkeeping – Intuit QuickBooks
Contracts: Agree.com
Systems-building: Shiv Agarwal (Airtable Wiz)
Site: Webflow

Writing:

Content – Our hands.
Editing/Copy Chiefing – Claude (Anthropic)
Research for clients – ChatGPT (OpenAI)
Edits/Review – Loom

Growth:

Sales Nav – LinkedIn (pls make cheaper)
DMs – Also LinkedIn, but free.
Email nurture: beehiiv

Takeaway: Holy cow.

Reminder: Copying a big account's "viral" post format sentence-by-sentence will never give you the same results.

Remember:

They don't have tons of followers because that post did so well.

The post did so well because they have tons of followers.

Your time and energy are better spent on trying to write something your ICP will like, save, and share.

Brian Halligan (Co-Founder, HubSpot), gave a 41-minute podcast interview talking about growing HubSpot and building culture within it.

I listened on the way to my beer league hockey game last week, then listened again to note these takeaways (I found them interesting, and hope you do, too):

1. Customers are good validation, competitors are great.

Though most people thought HubSpot’s growth thesis around SEO and social was wrong, they found validation in large competitors (37Signals, Fogbug) executing the same playbook.

2. If you want to create a category, first define its enemy.

HubSpot created “inbound marketing” as a category by counter-positioning against “outbound” – historically associated with spammy messages.

3. Category creation is a lottery...be prepared to play more than once.

Though “inbound marketing” clearly stuck as a category, “inbound sales”, “content optimization system”, and “CMR” (Customer Managed Relationship) did not. 

4. The antidote to an underperforming metric is comp structure for those affecting it.

HubSpot fixed early churn issues by adding NPS as a metric sellers were compensated on, a commission clawback for fast-churned customers, and a retention threshold sellers had to hit before their sales accelerator. 

5. Great support talent lives in non-obvious places.

Brian would walk into Apple to fix his phone, and extend job offers to those he had positive experiences with. The pitch was “If you're making $40,000 standing on your feet all day, why don't you come sit and do the same?”

6. Culture is a product.

After having a culture enlightenment at a CEO group, HubSpot began scaling culture by: 

a) Writing a culture code. 
b) Appointing Dharmesh Shah (Co-Founder) as “Culture Czar”. 
c) Implementing NPS for employees. 
d) Implementing, hiring for, and evaluating on core values. 
e) Ensuring they built something people can get behind in the first place.

7. When asked, "what do you do when a customer is screaming at you?"

Brian: “Listen, and say you’re sorry”.

Also, The Library of Minds by Dara Ladjevardian and Delphi is a growing binge bank of content with leaders like Bryan. Wish I found it sooner - definitely check it out.

If there's one thing I've learned from helping 40+ founders grow a social presence, it's that these 7 mistakes hold them back more than AI or anything else:

1. Lack of strong POV. At least once per week, we have a client sit on the fence on if they want to share a (completely justified) hot take on their space. They're scared it will piss people off. That is exactly why they should do it.

2. Optimizing for LinkedIn "hacks". Posting at 8:01am vs 11:03am, or using one hook template over that another, or holding the selfie camera at a specific angle mean absolutely zero if your content isn't plain good.

3. Blindly outsourcing to Head of Marketing or contractor. This is coming from someone who owns an agency. There's a direct correlation between our list of most successful clients on social and level of buy-in from the founder themself.

4. Lack of a system. Every week, I talk to a founder who says some variation of "yeah, I tried posting, but fell off the wagon". If that's you, I don't blame you. You have a company to run. A proper content system fixes that. Whether it's an agency (I heard Hat Tip is good) or a team member, you have to build actual process around content, or it'll never work.

5. Being afraid to repeat yourself. Every time a founder says "didn't we already post about that?", I say "yeah, exactly". If it performed well, and is something you want to be known for, it is your duty to propagandize your audience with the take or belief.

6. Letting imposter syndrome win. It is insane to me that founders can raise funding from world-renowned investors, but posting on LinkedIn is where they feel imposter syndrome. People (team and investors) obviously believe in the mission. LinkedIn gives you the chance to make others, too.

7. Playing the comparison game. You aren't Adam Robinson, or a partner at a Tier 1 VC firm. You're a founder solving a unique problem, with a 1-of-1 story on how you're doing it. Put your blinders on, and focus on making the best damn content you can. At one point, you'll look up and realize you're on the same playing field.

I hope this post helped clarify social for you. If you want additional help, or even just to chop it up about LinkedIn, feel free to comment or DM me.

If my job was on the line and I had to generate demand from social for a B2B startup, here's the exact playbook I'd run to save my job 90 days from now:

Step 1: Decide on platform.

Most B2B startups' audience spends time on LinkedIn or X. One or both of those is a good bet 99% of the time.

Step 2: Pick (a) team member(s) to become "company cheerleaders".

Trying to grow from the brand account isn't enough anymore. The timeline is inundated with founders posting high-quality content that will completely overshadow your polished product demo.

To combat this, we need to put up our own fight with actual people from the company as well.

The founder / co-founders are ideal, but other leadership members can work, too.

One is great, two is better. So on and so forth.

Step 3: Map buckets.

Armed with our platform and leader, we need to figure out what they're going to talk about.

To do this, we'd devise content buckets that will help attract, nurture, and convert those we want to sell to. This is best done with top, middle, and bottom of funnel content buckets.

TOF: Industry takes, trends, contrarian opinions (brings new eyeballs)
MOF: Problem-focused content for your ICP's pain points (nurtures audience)
BOF: Product updates, case studies, social proof (converts followers)

Step 4: Prompts.

I'd come up with a list of 12-15 prompts that map to those buckets, which I'l ask the leader on a recorded interview.

Step 5: Interview.

I interviewed the leader with those prompts on a podcast-style conversation, recorded on Riverside so we can clip up relevant answers.

Step 6: Writing.

With the interview recording, I'd draft 10 LinkedIn posts. Each post gets mapped to the appropriate content bucket and optimized for LinkedIn's algorithm.

Step 7: Review/edits.

Send the drafted posts to the leader for review (Notion or Docs). I'd ask specifically about tone, voice, and word choice preferences, then log all feedback to reduce edits in future rounds. 

Step 8: Post!

I'd post the content (each weekday, ideally morning local time) and actively reply to comments to maximize engagement. 

I'd handle the basic comments myself and compile industry-specific questions for the leader to answer personally.

Step 9: Report 

I'd do this weekly using a tracking spreadsheet. I'd monitor impressions, new followers, profile visits, and engagement rates, then summarize everything for easy leader consumption.

Step 10: Connections.

I pull a list of decision makers at our target account list and manually connect with 100 of them weekly. When they accept, the high-quality content we're producing will show up in their feed.

Step 11: ICP Profile Viewers.

Each Friday, I'd filter the leaders' profile viewers down to our ICP in Sales Navigator and export a list to send to our sales/GTM team for outbounding purposes.

NOT DONE - MORE IN COMMENTS:

If your likes and comments are filled with the same non-ICP accounts with each post, do these 4 things:

1) Switch posting time. If you're posting at 8am sharp every day, you're likely mostly reaching folks on the platform at that time. There's a strong cohort of folks who get on earlier and later. Try reaching them.

2) Comment out* of network. 

Commenting on friends' posts is great. Only commenting on friends' post is a growth death sentence. Intentionally get out* of your network, and find other content you care about / can add value to. SalesNav's 2nd degree connections filter is a great way to do this (LMK if you want a tutorial).

3) Connect with / DM your ICP specifically. 

There are whispers that DMing with someone makes your content show up in their feed more. Anecdotally, I believe this. To that point, if you can have proper conversations in your ICP's DMs, all that's left is to make content they care about.

4) Refine who your content is pointed at.

It's VERY easy to fall into the trap of posting what gets the most likes and comments. Often, though, you'll find this doesn't correlate with what people care about (i.e. your ICP doesn't care about your commentary on an unrelated topic).

For every post you write, ask yourself: Would [ICP] care to like, save, or share this? If yes, post. If not, don't.

If you want to help executing any or all of these, feel free to DM me. I will send you some resources.

How to optimize your LinkedIn profile to convert maximum traffic (A-Z, save this):

1. Profile Picture: Clean headshot with your face clearly visible. Professional but not overly formal.

2. Banner: State your benefit on one line + add social proof underneath (logos work great). Right-align everything and leave padding so it displays properly on mobile.

3. Headline: Must include three elements - benefit statement starting with an action word, social proof, and your actual title. Example format: "Cut SaaS spend 20% before Q3 | Helped 50+ startups | Founder at XYZ"

4. Custom Button/CTA: Add a custom button. Founders skip this completely but it converts surprisingly well. Link to your newsletter, call booking page, or case study depending on your main goal right now.

5. About Section: Follow this structure exactly - Call out your ICP, state their pain points, agitate the problem, explain your solution, back it up with proof, end with a clear call to action.

6. Featured Section: Use this as your social proof shrine. Add one case study, your best-performing post, and a notable press mention or podcast feature.

7. Experience Section: Include your proper title and explain what your company actually does. Relax with the buzzwords or fluff.

Follow this framework and your profile becomes an always-on sales machine.

And if you want me to just optimize your entire LinkedIn profile for you, DM me.

taplio

The Battle

Nick Abraham

Christian Di Bratto

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreChristian Di Bratto's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Nick Abraham

Christian Di Bratto

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Nick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreChristian Di Bratto's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance