LinkedIn Strategy for Founders: 7 Rules From a Ghostwriter

The best LinkedIn strategy for founders is a short routine aimed at one buyer. Post three to five good posts a week from your personal profile, connect with 15 to 20 people with your buyer's job title every day, leave comments under their posts that could stand as posts of their own, and judge it all by likes, comments, profile visits and DMs from that buyer.

That's the routine Jacob Goldschein gave our founders when I hosted him at a Moat expert session on 2 November. Jacob has worked in social media marketing for six years, since he was 16, and co-founded Notice Media, a LinkedIn ghostwriting agency that has grown from around six founder clients to more than 200, mostly in B2B.

The part I keep coming back to is his maths on impressions. A post with 10,000 impressions where 1% of viewers are your buyer does less for you than a post with 4,500 where 85% are. Below are his seven rules, how to measure them, and what to do with each one this week.

Why this matters once you have your first clients

If you've built a B2B product and have a handful of paying clients, more clients is usually the next thing you need before you raise. For selling to B2B buyers, Jacob was clear that LinkedIn is the best platform to be on. Our own team picked LinkedIn as Moat's main channel for a similar reason: it's where founders, experts and investors already are.

The 7 rules

Each rule ends with one step we'd suggest taking this week.

1. Win one platform before you add another

LinkedIn for B2B. TikTok and Instagram for consumer apps. Jacob was firm that you shouldn't split your time between them early on. Instagram is about entertainment and gimmicks work there; LinkedIn is about giving value, and gimmicks usually don't land.

When he was 17, Jacob messaged Harry Stebbings 12 times to ask for one piece of advice on building a personal brand. When he finally got an answer, it was to pick one platform, win there, and only then move on. Jacob has only just started posting on X, after years on LinkedIn, and he still calls LinkedIn "the bread and butter."

Do this: if you sell B2B, put all your posting time into LinkedIn until it brings you clients every month.

2. Pick one job title, then connect with 15 to 20 of them every day

Before you write anything, work out the exact person who buys from you inside the companies you sell to. Build a list of people with that title and send connection requests to 15 to 20 of them a day. You don't need to add a note.

"Every single day. Don't miss a day," as Jacob put it.

Then write every post for that same person. Doing both means your network fills up with the people you want to reach, so your posts land in front of them by default.

Do this: write the job title at the top of your drafts doc, and block 15 minutes a day for connections.

3. Post three to five good posts a week

Five a week is ideal and three is the minimum. Posting good content every week matters more than hitting a number.

Weak posts cost you. Many people will scroll past a bad post and won't give you another look, and you don't get many chances to make a first impression. Jacob also said LinkedIn now lets viewers report a post as AI slop, and a post reported several times gets its reach cut.

Do this: pick the three days you can always post, and write in your own words.

4. Only leave comments that could be a post

Jacob's test for a comment is whether it could be turned into a post of its own. "If it can be, then it's worth leaving. If not, don't even bother." Leaving "good luck" or "congratulations" adds nothing, so just like the post and move on.

A good comment is seen by the person who posted and by their network, so you reach your buyers through audiences someone else has already built. It's also the most time-consuming part of LinkedIn. "Commenting is super underrated, and people hate doing it because it's just so freaking annoying," he said.

Do this: find five posts from your buyers each day and leave one useful comment on each.

An audience of your exact buyers is distribution you own, and that's one of the main types of moat a startup can build. Early on it's often the only one. Read more in our startup moat guide, or see where yours stands:

Get your Moat Score

5. Post from your personal profile

Company pages get about a tenth of the reach of a personal profile. Jacob's advice was to make your own profile the first line and treat the company page as optional. He also said personal content often does best for young founders, because people like seeing you build.

Do this: move your posting to your own profile, and post from the company page only if it takes no extra time.

6. Match the call to action to the post

Jacob builds every account around three types of post: company, industry and personal.

• Personal posts are pure story: why you started, how you met your co-founder, what it's like building alone. No call to action.
• Industry posts are thought leadership: trends in your market, or common practices you think are wrong.
• Company posts are client wins, community wins, expert sessions. "Bottom of funnel should always have a call to action."

His reasoning is give and take. If a post has given someone real value, you've earned the right to ask them for something. If it's just an announcement that you started a company, you haven't.

Do this: label each draft P, I or C before you write the last line.

7. Show how you got the result

One founder in the session asked how to talk about a technical product to buyers who only care about results. Jacob agreed buyers want the result, then added: "But what I would say is they care about how you got there."

So tell the whole thing: the problem you were brought, what you did about it, and the result. You can keep client names and exact numbers vague.

Do this: turn your best pilot so far into one post: the problem, what you did, the result.

How to tell if it's working

LinkedIn's post analytics show who viewed each post, including their job titles, industries and locations. After a month or two you can see which topics reach your buyer and do more of those.

"Impressions can be very misleading," Jacob said. What counts is likes, comments, profile visits and DMs from your buyer. For his clients, winning on LinkedIn means it has become a consistent source of new clients. Anything else is a bonus.

His own example: he posted about staying up late to write sample posts for a client. A prospect read it, got in touch and asked for the same thing.

The routine in numbers

• Posts a week: 3 minimum, 5 ideal.
• New connections a day: 15 to 20 people with your buyer's job title, no note needed.
• Company page reach: about a tenth of a personal profile.
• Readers who don't know you: assume 85%.

And here is his impressions example worked through. The impressions and percentages are Jacob's; the buyer views are our arithmetic.

In his example, post B has less than half the impressions of post A and reaches about 38 times as many buyers.

What Jacob told me to post

I asked the first question of the session: how should a team of co-founders split LinkedIn between them?

His answer was to split it by job. Each co-founder posts from the same three types of post, but about their own part of the business. A founder who handles hiring and investors posts about recruiting and fundraising. For me, running growth, that means posting about how the Moat community is growing, how we got there, and frameworks for building a community. Over time each account finds its own reach, and you only find out which type of post works for you by posting consistently.

Founders in our batches get sessions like this with operators like Jacob, and bring their own questions.

If you're about to launch

Jacob splits a launch into three parts.

• Before launch: post every day for about a week and a half. Start with why you started the company, then what you saw in the market that you were the right person to solve. Two days before, message every relevant contact yourself and ask them to like or comment when it goes live, then remind them the day before.
• Launch day: post at 8 or 9 AM and send it to everyone straight away. The first 30 minutes or so matter most.
• After launch: keep posting for the next few days and refer back to the launch post each time. "Assume your reader knows nothing about you."

Want investors to see what you're building?

Every week at The Pitch Room, founders pitch live to angels and VCs, and each investor votes yes or no on the spot. Read why investors passed on startups at a recent session.

Thanks to Jacob for his time, and to every founder who brought a question.

Alex Montoro is the Co-Founder of Moat, a community that helps founders get funded, and co-hosts The Pitch Room, where founders pitch live to angel investors and VCs.