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?"

Case study

A cool thing happened after I shared the initial version of this article. Finn Thormeier, founder of project33 asked if I had any questions/topics he could explore in future episodes of their pod → I said that I’d like to see examples of this in dev tools → he came back with this case study where they talked about their work with the CEO of Grafbase. Great stuff.

I really loved the part about the most impactful post they made together (below).

‍The impact was not in likes (they had other posts with more reach/likes) but in engagement, reposts by relevant people, and discussions with their target audience (CTOs at Fintech Enterprise companies). It showed actual resonance with their audience.

I like the hook style too, one blob that feels natural but cuts exactly where it should to get you to click.

If you’d like help with this stuff I am quite sure Finn can help, no affiliation or anything, I just trust that they can deliver.

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.