Introduction to Organic LinkedIn

This module explains how to acquire customers through LinkedIn organically, without using ads.

This material comes from conversations with LinkedIn employees and top audience builders who know how the underlying algorithm works.

Specifically, we'll learn to acquire customers by posting to your personal LinkedIn account—not a brand account. That's because people follow people, not brands.

We'll build an organic audience that we'll later convert into customers. Much like we'd do on Twitter or YouTube.

Why would we want to use LinkedIn for this?

Because LinkedIn generates nearly 300% more B2B leads than Facebook:

• The platform has 660m active users.
• 63mm of them are in decision-making roles.

If you're a B2B startup, you should have a presence on LinkedIn. It has much of the same virality potential as Facebook or YouTube, but with remarkably better B2B performance.

A snapshot of the LinkedIn organic funnel

Why LinkedIn organic instead of LinkedIn ads?

LinkedIn ads generally perform terribly.

They work best for education, recruiting, and other career-related advertisers who generate $15k+ in revenue per customer.

Other verticals often see unsustainable customer acquisition costs: LinkedIn ad clicks are expensive and the subsequent on-site conversion is poor.

LinkedIn organic, however, has a surprisingly high ROI. Many marketers don’t realize that LinkedIn posts attract enough engagement to single-handedly drive top of funnel strategies.

Today, LinkedIn remains a content deficient platform: there is more content demand than supply. Of all the major social channels, it remains easiest to become a top influencer on LinkedIn.

The time that businesses spend investing in Twitter should likely be invested in LinkedIn instead.

A bold statement, but the facts bear it out.

What makes LinkedIn so special?

The main advantage of LinkedIn is its "firmographic" data: business and employee information you can target by. No other social network has this level of specificity and consumption context.

Further, LinkedIn is the primary platform people use to advance their careers. B2B companies that help with career development and recruiting see outsized success because they're getting in front of people who actually want to see their products.