- Will I be able to double my exposure?
- Can I grow my number of followers?
- What other changes will take place?
What I Started With
Every experiment begins with a baseline.
For a long time, I avoided posting on LinkedIn.
Honestly, I was terrified of even logging in.
LinkedIn can feel like a vanity network. If you’re already thriving, it’s easy to show up. But when you’re starting over a new career in a new country, it can feel like a nightmare.
All of your friends and colleagues are already at least CEOs, VPs or 30 under 30 and you’re the one lagging behind.
Here’s what my LinkedIn profile stats looked like before I began posting consistently: impressions, engagements, and the number of followers were all stagnant.
In 90 days, my sporadic posts garnered just 3,425 impressions.
75 people engaged with my posts (reacted, commented or reposed them) in the previous 90 days.
I also had 694 followers at that point.
I never posted on LinkedIn regularly before.
I never had LinkedIn premium.
Now that we’ve established the baseline, let’s see how this changed over the next 30 days!
My Initial Plan For the LinkedIn Growth
My initial plan was the following:
- one long-read once a week
- two short videos
- two smaller posts of my thoughts
In addition to that, I planned to:
- leave 5 meaningful comments every day
- join all the professional communities
- become a contributor to the LinkedIn knowledge base
1. At this point of my life I was completely lost. I had no job so I had nothing to lose.
2. I acutely realized that I want more exposure. But as every multipassionate person I was struggling with a topic I want more exposure on. Is it marketing? Personal brand? Online visibility? Leadership skills?
3. I really felt like I have so much to tell and I wanted a platform to genuinely share my thoughts. In the recent years, I mostly felt like my voice didn’t matter in the world. And I finally gained courage to change that.
So I decided to take a dive into the unknown.
My First Week of Posting On LinkedIn
As soon as you make a commitment to regular posting on a certain platform, the first question popping in your head is this:
What do I post?
Even though I have been writing all my life, I didn’t know the exact answer.
I started with just a quick comment on what I felt was important.
After that I decided to schedule my short videos I already published on my YouTube channel.
I intended to post only the most useful shorts and I started with the insight that inspired me to start an edtech company Exectrain.
Here it is:
I also scheduled my other short vertical videos to have them posted twice a week.
The next day I attended a local small startup gathering. It was an honest and moving conversation with founders of several startups on our challenges.
Somehow I managed to take a picture and it turned to be amazing.
So I posted it to thank them for that conversation and tagged several people.
What surprised me was that all people who were tagged on this post, actually commented and liked it, which kind of prompted LinkedIn to promote it.
Aside from the fact that I genuinely enjoyed that conversation, somehow taking this picture made me think that if I always manage to be with people, I don’t have to rack my brain over what to post. At least for this month.
And just like that despite my innate introversion, I decided I’m going to attend at least one networking event a week.
I actually wanted to start doing that years ago. And now it was the end of February. It was finally spring, meaning the weather was really benevolent to going out.
Yet it was a challenge.
The First Week of Posting On LinkedIn: Results
After the first week, the number of impressions in my profile has gone up 870%.
A big number, but considering the reference point was close to zero, it wasn’t a big deal.
The number of followers also increased by 6.4%.
What I totally forgot during the first week was contributions and comments.
Quite frankly, as posting daily was my main goal, and it was already challenging enough, I forgot about contributing at all.
In addition, commenting on 5 posts per day also turned out to be challenging.
I thought that it wouldn’t be a problem. Yet after I scrolled my feed to the end, there weren’t enough meaningful posts to comment on.
Saying “Congrats” to my network’s promotions and certifications was not the idea that I had in mind when I listed “5 meaningful comments” as my goal. There was just not enough posts on my feed.
My Second Week Of Posting On LinkedIn
My second week was even more challenging.
I continued to implement a habit of going to at least one networking event a week and visited the Female Ventures women entrepreneurship gathering.
This sparked many thoughts on what I’m passionate about so I wrote a post I’m most proud of:
As you see, I also added visual hooks, such as bold/italic fonts.
If you wonder how to do that, just Google “LinkedIn bold font” – you’ll immediately find it.
Here’s a link to this post.
I also added a few contributions:
Every time you’re adding a contribution, your network gets a notification.
LinkedIn used to reward contributors with a Top Voice badge. They don’t anymore unfortunately.
Nowadays adding a contribution is just a way to get additional visibility in your network.
Second Week Results
During the second week, the number of impressions dropped 10% and my following continued growing.
Just to clarify, the weekly sharing tracker doesn’t show anything because I took the screenshot on Monday.
My third week of posting on LinkedIn
During the third week, I posted a few short videos that got over 500 impressions.
I’m really proud of this one as it was specifically hard to put together due to special effects:
Honestly, sharing short videos was a bit uncomfortable. I know that not everyone appreciates this kind of content on LinkedIn. I was really afraid it would become just noise.
Yet somehow I felt a big opportunity with the vertical videos, so I continued posting. I just made sure these videos were giving valuable tips and were focused on professional growth.
As I didn’t really have a particular goal in mind for these 30 days, sometimes I would just post life updates, keeping them professional. My life was basically managing my YouTube channel.
For some reason I’m not really aware of, these posts also generated a generous number of views and likes.
Some posts performed better, others got less engagement.
Generally, if a post was meaningful and shared an insight, it would attract more attention, more impressions and engagement. That’s what I love about LinkedIn.
At first, I wanted to document the fourth week too but I feel like the fourth week wasn’t that much different from the 3rd one so to save your time, I’ll just get down to the results.
The 30-Days LinkedIn Streak Result
I started posting daily on February 8th.
It’s clearly noticeable that since then the number of impressions went up consistently.
Before I started posting, the number of impressions in the last 90 days was 3,425.
During these four weeks, it tripled and reached 10,045.
My posts’ impressions increased by 1,678% compared to the previous 4 weeks, reaching 1,544 LinkedIn members!
My posts engagements skyrocketed by 3,214%!
Two of my top performing posts generated over 1,000 impressions each.
I also ended this streak with 770 followers, which was 76 followers more than my baseline.
It’s almost a 11% increase.
It might not seem much, but I always prioritize human connections. As I was networking a lot, these were the real people I met offline and I did my best to maintain meaningful relationships with them.
During this time, I was also adding the connections from my previous roles.
A small percentage (probably not more than 10 people) found me online through articles and videos.
Takeaways
Even though I moved to The Netherlands 3 years ago, I somehow didn’t network much. As most of the entrepreneurial journey is about sitting at home in front of your laptop, sometimes you just get lonely.
Truth is, there were days when I felt like I have no life al all. As if I lived in a bubble looking at the outside world from my window.
So this whole experiment turned out to be not about LinkedIn connections growth. My whole life completely changed in these 30 days:
- I got access to 2 amazing communities
- I did 3 speaking gigs
- I resumed interviews on my YouTube channel
- I took around 10 interviews for my book
- I built a habit of being out there
But what’s more important, now that I met so many amazing people, my life feels complete.
So if you can somehow relate to what I felt in the beginning of this journey, here are some actionable tips I’d love to share.
Find Your Community
If you’re not used to networking, you’ll be amazed at how many opportunities to connect with people are out there.
I recommend checking MeetUp to find communities around the topics you’re interested in. Whether you’re looking for language practice, business networking or just having fun, you’ll find your community.
You Can't Grow Online Without Offline
For many years, I identified as an introvert.
Through years of therapy, I’ve come to realize that the difference between introverts and extroverts isn’t as stark as it seems. At our core, both crave acceptance and love from others. The key distinction might be that introverts, having been hurt at some point, become more guarded.
We often build barriers—keeping people close enough to feel connected, yet distant enough to avoid vulnerability.
For example, growing a social media following can become a way of avoiding genuine human connection. You might dream of gaining more followers or going viral, hoping it will magically fill a void. But the truth is, meaningful growth—whether online or offline—stems from real, authentic human connections.
So meeting people offline is key to your visibility growth.
Building relationship takes time and effort. And there are no shortcuts.
Prioritize Quality Over Quantity
When you want to grow your online visibility and increase your following on LinkedIn, it’s easy to get carried away by the desire to add as many people as you can to your network.
Please don’t.
I know we’re all busy. But making a human connection doesn’t take that much time. You can take any person out for a cup of coffee and get a fresh perspective.
Every time I met a new person, I’d get a new insight. That’s what was driving my growth and provided energy to complete yet another challenge.
I truly believe that in the age of AI, staying human is your most valuable asset.
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