LinkedIn CEO/Founder playbook

This article is my TLDR based on hours of reading/listening about Founder/CEO LinkedIn content creation mostly from Project33 (an agency that specializes in this) and their show Founder-Led Marketing Show where they interview folks who grow through Founder/CEO on LinkedIn.I tried to extract the absolute essence from it.

Also, I know the reality of trying to do this sort of thing with a technical CEO/Founders at dev tool startups. So here is an absolute minimal effort playbook:

Audience Building:
- Send LinkedIn connection requests to the target audience (Free: 20/day, 100/week; Paid: 50/day, 250/week).
- Respond to comments on your posts meaningfully—avoid generic responses like "great" or "thanks."
Content Creation:
- Pick one concept/trigger word that you want to own. You want to be brought up when that trigger word comes up in your target audience conversations.
- Record a quick 30-minute call weekly (no prep needed). Ask:
  - What happened this week?
  - What was surprising or challenging?
  - What did you learn?
- Extract 2-3 insights, connected to your concept/trigger word, write short posts or have someone ghostwrite for you.
Conversions:
- Connect with people who engage with your content. Follow up with a simple message: "Hi, thanks for engaging! Let me know if you ever need help with XYZ."
- Measure conversions/impact through "How did you find out about us?" style attribution.

Do that and you should see results.

Growing the audience

(MUST) Invite your target audience on LinkedIn. Stay within limits. Free: 20/day & 100/week, Paid: 50/day & 250/week (limits may change).
(MUST) Answer comments on your posts. Aim for meaningful interactions; avoid generic responses like “great,” “amazing,” or “thanks.”
Comment/interact on other posts. Thoughtfully disagreeing with big accounts can work well. Chris Walker is an excellent example.
Run Thought Leader ads. Use LinkedIn’s dedicated ad features to build authority and reach.

Creating content

Strategy

Pick “one word to own” to facilitate word-of-mouth.
- Choose a focus word or phrase that triggers an association with you, e.g., “AI tools for marketing” or “LinkedIn CEO content.” (Devin Reed)
- You want to come up in the next conversation about that
Focus on YOUR learnings. Sharing your unique insights is defensible:
- "Doing cool things and talking about them". (Founder Lempire)
  - Build in public by sharing real-time progress, challenges, and successes to foster transparency and authenticity.
  - Use storytelling to frame your journey in a compelling way that engages your audience.
  - Create engagement loops by involving your audience with polls, feedback requests, and questions.
  - Consistently update your audience to keep them involved and reinforce your message.
  - Highlight milestones and lessons learned to resonate with your audience and provide actionable insights.
- If you do company strategy with multiple profiles then each profile should have its own personality/focus. Make it focused on roles most similar to who you are/were. (HockeyStack CRO)

Record a weekly call (30 minutes, no prep required) with the CEO/CTO/SME. (Devin Reed)
- Ask questions like:
  - What happened this week?
  - What was surprising?
  - What did you read and love/hate?
  - What made you angry?
  - What did you learn?
Look for insights and emotions; dig deeper.
Extract ideas from these sessions, ideally starting with hooks.
The CEO ideally writes the first draft (v1). If not possible, write in their voice.
Aim for three posts per session.

Hooks

Hooks are key; rule of thumb is to spend 50% of the time writing the post on the hook.
- Visuals can enhance them.
- For text you have 5 lines, for video/image only 3 lines
Good hook examples from project33
Audience signal hook
- Use hooks that self-select your audience.
  - Example: "If I were a CMO of a 1-5M B2B SaaS startup, here’s how I’d set my channels."
Also hooks in archetypes below

Posts

Archetypes (project33):
- Claim: "Just because you can’t measure it, doesn’t mean it’s not working."
- Experiment: "3 months ago, I changed my LinkedIn headline to… Here’s how it went."
- How-to/Question: "How do I calculate my LTV when just starting out? Here’s how."
- Common Obstacle: "I don’t have the time to create content."
- Advice: "Don’t post on LinkedIn on Mondays. Here’s why—and what to do instead."
- Demonstrating Expertise: Write on topics where you have real experience, e.g., "I built a 3M visitor/year dev blog engine. SEO was the last thing I cared about."
Big giveaway posts:
- Start with the result ("This the exact playbook I used to XYZ")
- Show the GIF/Video of you scrolling through the resource
- To get the playbook you need to connect, like, and comment XYZ. Reposters get priority.
- Good for ultimate guides/playbooks/better articles
- Gating the resource behind free email signup is an option (not a must)
- Great post from Matteo Titarelli on how he ran those giveaway posts to grow his account.
  - Example from Ben Williams: “Stop making common 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 mistakes! I'm giving away my 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐭, packed with battle-tested frameworks, blueprints and templates successfully used at Snyk and many other companies”
  - Example from Mattteo Titarelli: “The strategy Gong used to dominate LinkedIn and drive demand? It's yours, if you can implement it (make it a priority in your 2025 plan ;).”

Converting audience to leads

Link to an email-gated resource. Build a library of all your posts over time.
Basic Playbook:
- Identify someone from your target audience engaging with your content.
- Send a connection request.
- After multiple engagements, send a message:
  - "Hi, thanks for engaging with my posts! Figured I’d connect and mention that we help with XYZ. If you ever wanted to chat, drop me a message. Have a good one!"
Extending Playbook:
- Gated resource (magnet):
  - Include a gated resource in your message: "By the way, I’ve put all my best posts in this searchable Notion gallery/library." (HockeyStack CRO)
- DIY “Sales Letter”:
  - Walk through tactical concepts with full "how to do XYZ" ending with CTAs for templates or tools.
    - Example from Gal Aga: "We built Aligned to drive this behavior and transform from ‘Selling’ to ‘Enabling Buyers’; to end the chaotic process that leads to buyer indecision and ghosting. It’s a 100% FREE Digital Sales Room used by 30,000+ sellers. You can try here: https://lnkd.in/dsD8s6gd." It’s a 100% FREE Digital Sales Room used by 30,000+ sellers. You can try here: https://lnkd.in/dsD8s6gd."
    - Example from Gal Aga: "We’ve just updated our playbook and I’m sharing it here. These 30 slides should cover everything you need to fix this problem: https://lnkd.in/d2SXXiRM."
- Ads:
  - Enroll your target audience into company ads.
  - Serve a mix of trust-building and awareness-building posts.
- SDR Outreach:
  - Automate engagement monitoring using Phantom + Zapier + Sheets or a tool like CommonRoom.
  - Base outreach on thought leadership using:
    - Hooks from your content.
    - Your content library.
Measurement:
- Combine self-reported insights (e.g., "How did you find out about us?") with trackers in Gong or by asking salespeople to ask prospects "How did you find out about us?"

Resources

Consultants and agencies

Project33 (great agency, tons of content here comes from their website and podcast)
Alec Paul (top-notch consultant, pricy afaik)
Davin Reed (ex Gong/Clari, fantastic content person)
Nick Moore (great at long-form thought leadership with a journalistic narrative)
Justin Gage (long form thought leadership content for technical audiences, managed to get many articles to the top of Hacker News)

Podcasts

HockeyStack CRO: This episode highlights using gated resources as content magnets and creating DIY "sales letters" within LinkedIn posts to effectively drive conversions.
Tom Hunt: Start posts with a sentence (not a question), ideally with a slight error to spark comments.
Gaetano DiNardi: Answer audience questions with playbooks.
Lempire Founder: Build accounts to 50K followers by "doing things and talking about them."
Alex Paul: Top top LinkedIn CEO content consultant’s insights.
Adam Robinson: Pick fights with relevant target audiences.‍
Chris Walker’s LinkedIn Playbook: Use customer insights to create highly engaging LinkedIn posts, repeat key messages effectively, and leverage video formats to maximize engagement.