Reverse engineering LinkedIn success

In the summer of 2019, I was getting ready to quit my job.

I knew I would need to attract customers for my new sales consulting business, so I decided to get more serious about the LinkedIn presence I had started building in late 2018.

With 20K followers, I was posting about sales a few times a week and getting decent engagement. But I knew I’d need to do more to keep my pipeline full.

And coming from a sales leadership background, I knew how to analyze data to gain insights, identify trends, and monitor performance.

So I thought — What if I bring this approach to LinkedIn?

And it turned out that data was just as helpful for my new job as it was for my old one.

So for the last five years, I’ve continued using data to refine my social media approach, adjust with algorithm changes, and to reverse engineer LinkedIn success.

The Problem With Most LinkedIn Content

I see a lot of guesswork on LinkedIn.

People post content they hope will get traction —  without any data to suggest the content should actually perform well. They’re playing a guessing game. And guessing is not a strategy.

Unfortunately, posting arbitrary content prevents the smartest and most capable people from building brands that match their potential.

But with the system I'm about to show you, you can stop guessing and start using real data to drive better engagement.

My Reverse Engineering Strategy

I break down every LinkedIn post I create into four key components:

1. The opener (sometimes called the "hook")
2. The body of the content
3. The call-to-conversation (CTC)
4. The accompanying image (optional, but useful)

And for each component, I track specific metrics to determine what works best.

This process helps me continuously improve my content creation, my engagement results, and my overall efficiency on the platform. And you can do this too.

Let's dive into each component of a LinkedIn post, and talk about metrics that matter.

During this issue, I’m going to be mentioning (and showing you metrics from) my Taplio account and talking a bit about how I use that tool in this process.

‍Note: There’s a coupon code at the bottom if you want to get started with Taplio.

Part 1: The Opener

Your opener is arguably the most important part of your LinkedIn post. It determines whether readers click "…more" or keep scrolling on.

To optimize my openers, I use my Taplio dashboard and sort my posts by impressions.

I like to start by looking at my top 10 LinkedIn posts by impressions and the type of openers I used to get a sense for what’s working.

I study the commonalities between my top posts — specifically, what were the openers like?

Recently I’ve found that openers starting with two mobile-optimized, short lines outperform other styles.

You can see that if you look at the posts above in the dashboard. Real short openers.

Here’s an example:

Now just because this works for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. My point is to test different approaches and let the data guide you.

Part 2: The Body

The body of your post is where you deliver on the promise in the hook.

Here, I sort my Taplio data by “likes”.

My hypothesis is this: If more people like a post, then they likely read it to the end. That means I did something right.

Identifying the top ten posts, I study the body length, structure, and content type.

I find that medium-length posts with a mix of short sentences and bullet points perform best for me.

Here’s what that looks like:

You can run the same experiment in your Taplio account to figure out what your audience cares about.

The data is pretty illuminating.

Part 3: The Call-to-Conversation (CTC)

Your call-to-conversation (CTC) is what drives comments on your post.

To identify my best CTCs, I use Taplio's analytics to sort my posts by engagement percentage i.e. what percent of the audience who saw the post left a comment?

(Note: For posts that contain links, I also use Short.io to track clicks and measure click-through rates.)

I find that posts with specific questions that tap into people's personal experiences get more comments than others. And the comments tend to be more thoughtful.

For example, "What decision will you make today that your future self will thank you for?" got way more engaging responses than "What's your take on this advice?"

Part 4: The Accompanying Image

Finally, I looked at the impact of images on post performance.

Surprisingly, I found that images of Twitter screenshots (or Canva images) with 1-3 lines of text, had higher impressions and engagement rates than posts with more complex graphics or bullet points.

With that, I like to keep my post images clean, crisp, and un-busy.

The Results

After last quarter’s testing and tracking, I had a clear picture of what a high-performing LinkedIn post looked like for my audience right now.

And the impact of understanding that has been significant:

• My average engagement rate increased by 28.7% quarter-over quarter
• My follower count grew from 586,000 to over 645,000 in 90 days

I’m using data to craft my best possible content, with intention behind my efforts.

No guessing games.

Takeaways For Your LinkedIn Strategy

Here are the key lessons to keep in mind to succeed on LinkedIn:

1. Data beats guesswork. Track everything.
2. What works for me may not work for you. Run your own tests!
3. The LinkedIn algorithm evolves. Keep testing, and adjust quarterly.
4. Engagement quality matters as much as quantity.

If you're serious about growing your LinkedIn presence, start by creating a simple spreadsheet to track your post performance data.

Test different approaches for each component of your posts, and let the data guide your strategy moving forward.

If you enjoy LinkedIn strategy lessons like this one, check out The LinkedIn Operating System. My 75-minute masterclass has helped 30,000 students and 70 LinkedIn Top Voices generate over 23B impressions for their personal brands. Start watching now.

And that's all for this week.

Now it’s time to create your own data-driven LinkedIn strategy.