Articles·Marketing

My best post all quarter was a comment on a stranger’s post. A LinkedIn content strategy for agency owners.

Chris Cordon · 5 min read
A gray-haired woman holds a circle of strangers' attention at a networking event while her own company booth sits empty behind her.

Most agency owners’ LinkedIn goes nowhere because it’s all reshares of the company page and nobody shows up in anyone’s comments. The fix is a system that turns a short recording of you talking into posts in your own voice, plus the habit of engaging on other people’s posts. My highest-viewed anything in the last three months was a comment I left on a post by someone I’d never met.

Why does an agency owner’s LinkedIn go quiet?

An agency owner’s LinkedIn goes quiet because there’s nothing original on it. The feed is the company account’s posts, reshared. A carrier announcement. A team photo from the golf outing. None of it says what the owner actually thinks, so nobody has a reason to stop scrolling.

The second reason is time. Writing a good post takes an hour the owner doesn’t have. Filming a video takes longer. So the account goes dark for a month, then gets one post, then goes dark again.

The third reason is that LinkedIn’s rules change every few months, and an owner who posts once a month never finds out what’s working.

What do most agencies try first?

Most agencies try resharing and hoping. It feels like activity. It does very little for the owner’s name, because a reshare has no point of view in it.

The next thing people try is chasing the algorithm. I did that. I pay for and follow the algorithm reports from probably the number one creator on LinkedIn, who puts out an update every six months. Things he said four months ago are already different. When I started posting a lot, video was juiced up. Then LinkedIn turned the volume all the way down. I had my own studio, and my videos couldn’t get any reach. That is objectively funny. Now it feels like they’re cranking video back up a little.

One morning last week, a post showed zero impressions (eyeballs) for a long time. I deleted it and reposted it 20 minutes later. To be honest, it didn’t teach me anything. LinkedIn was glitchy that morning. Don’t delete and repost.

Wanna fix it?

A LinkedIn account full of reshares gets fixed with original posts built from your own words, a voice profile the writing has to follow, a person who approves every post, and time set aside to engage on other people’s posts.

  1. Talk, don’t type. Record two minutes into a camera or a phone about one thing you saw this week. The transcript is the raw material. Build the post from what you actually said. You’ll go off script, and the off-script part is usually the good part.
  2. Write down your voice. Words you use, words you never use, how you open and close. The writer agents draft from your transcript against that profile.
  3. Keep the post rules short. A hook under about 150 characters. No link in the post. One post a day, max. Never sell in the post. The value is the content.
  4. Approve every post yourself. I’m very vain. I check that my skin is clear and my eyes are bright before a video goes out, and I read every word of the post the same way. Nothing goes out the door without a person saying yes.
  5. Show up in other people’s comments. You have to engage. Leave a comment worth reading on a post by someone you don’t know yet. That’s how my best number of the quarter happened.

What does it look like once it’s running?

Once it’s running, my part is the camera and the final check. Lately I film an explainer: I record my screen for a demo and talk a two-minute script straight into the camera. I put the raw footage in Final Cut Pro, do a little color correction, and add a color conversion LUT (a color preset). No cuts, no zooms, nothing.

Then it goes to my video editor, a workflow between Claude and Astra that renders the finished product. I do some touch-ups in Final Cut, add captions in CapCut, and it’s done. While that happens, the post copy gets drafted from the transcript of what I said on camera.

The system also gets checked against the newest algorithm research twice a year, because what was true four months ago may not be true now. Has all this grown my business? To be determined. I do get messages from people who saw the videos.

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, if you have the time, the creative judgment, and the taste. I used ChatGPT to build the foundation for a lot of the scripts in my Black and White Broker series, the one I got known for on LinkedIn. It had all my context, so I didn’t have to fight to get it to understand. It knew I wanted a 12-episode arc, and we sketched out the emotional ups and downs together.

Where DIY stops is the owner who doesn’t have that much time to put in, or doesn’t have the creative judgment. ChatGPT can write a good haiku. It can’t explain a complex issue simply, with the emphasis in the right places, unless someone who knows the issue steers it. One post a week in your own words, do it yourself with ChatGPT. Video and posts every day in a voice people recognize, build the system.

Quick answers

What’s a good LinkedIn content strategy for an agency owner?
Original posts in your own words, no more than one a day, plus regular comments on other people’s posts.
Should I put a link in my LinkedIn post?
No. Keep links out of the post.
Does video still work on LinkedIn?
Video reach dropped hard after an early boost and seems to be climbing again as of this writing. The rules change every few months.
Should I delete and repost a post with no views?
No. Give it time. A slow start is often LinkedIn being glitchy.
Can ChatGPT write my LinkedIn posts?
It can draft them. It needs your own words to start from, your voice rules, and a person with taste deciding what goes out.