What I Learned Posting on LinkedIn for 40 Days [Audio Note]

So I just completed a challenge for my friend Chanel's community, Growth in Reverse Pro. It was actually like a separate challenge, but people in the community could join it. But it was a social growth challenge, and I decided to focus on LinkedIn because that is basically the only social network I'm on anymore.

And so I posted for – it was posted around September 1st to September 30th, but there was an analytics snafu, we'll call it. And so she restarted the challenge on September 10th, which means that I posted on LinkedIn for 40 straight days. It is the most consistent I've been on social media probably since the Twitter app came to my phone and I was live tweeting Yankee games.

But I wanted to reflect a little bit. I shared these reflections in the group on our wrap-up call yesterday, but I wanted to reflect on what posting on social media did for me. First of all, I learned, at least on LinkedIn, this is – I don't want to say this is an indictment on LinkedIn. It is an indictment on all social media, which is why I hate social media.

Like I try to be a genuinely helpful person, but far and away the most popular posts as far as impressions and engagement were all kind of like rage bait-y things. So I'll call it dead-eyed headshots, right? It was my AI headshots are a red flag to me. Easily the most popular – 60,000 plus impressions, 86 comments, over 100 likes and engagements.

And that was also my strongest opinion, right? Like I spent a lot of time talking about this and that was a red flag; I knew that a lot of people I follow use it and people got very personally offended. Uh, but there are also people who are like, 'Yeah, obviously.' Right? So um, that led to a long-form article, which is a kind of a call forward to another takeaway I'll mention in a second.

But the other ones were, you know, about how I'm deleting all of my social media accounts. There was one about, you know, using AI to write podcast pitches and they're getting increasingly bad. So I don't want to be the angry person on social media, but the algorithm has repeatedly told me that being the angry person works.

And this is not like, yes, tapping into a core emotion is definitely a key to social media; this is something that Jonathan Berger talks about in the book 'Contagious', which I thought was very good. Um, but anger – anger is the one that animates the most, I think. And that's, you know, I'm not a psychologist. This is anecdotal.

But in my experience across lots of media forms, anger is the one that animates the most. It's just like you anger somebody and then a different part of their brain takes over and they feel compelled to engage. It's happened to me too, where I've made comments then I've deleted them.

I've called Alex Hormozy and Dan Martell and Gary Vee and Tim Ferriss snake oil salesmen because, uh, you know, what they – they know what they're saying is false and they say it in any way because they know it's going to get clicks. And I've been criticized for like saying, 'Like, I don't know their intentions and maybe that's true.'

But I can objectively say that what they're saying is false and it is more hurtful to people than helpful. So, you know, that's – I mean, just there. I got angry and animated, right? So that's kind of my first takeaway.

My second takeaway, and maybe I just did a bad job of this, maybe the rage bait things, like my newsletter didn't grow very much as a result of posting regularly on social media. I did gain a bunch of connections, but none of that matters to me if it's not going to help me grow my business.

And I don't feel like posting on LinkedIn consistently for 40 straight days helped me grow my business. I will submit that that could be because there was a misalignment in content, right? Maybe I was just trying to fill the bucket and get those 40 days in a row and moving forward.

I mean, spoiler alert, moving forward, I'm not going to be posting every day on LinkedIn. I'll do it one to two times at most. And maybe I will see better results because the things I'm posting will be more aligned with what I actually do.

I try and I tested a bunch of ideas. And I guess that's like the third point is like, yes, I think testing a bunch of ideas has been good. Um, it kind of helped me, you know, uh, suss out some thoughts I had, test them out, and see if they were good.

But like also, like I feel like the podcast is good for that too, and, and better in a way – I'm not beholden to the algorithm to see if people see it. So, that the third takeaway.

And the fourth and I think most damning evidence against me wanting to do social media long-term is that my long-form writing is down. I wrote the one article called 'Dead Eyed Headshots,' or 'Y.A.I. Headshots or Red Flag' or whatever it's called.

But aside from that, I did not write very much from September 1st to October 10th, which is a shame because I like writing. And it was also the start of the school year. It was very busy. I traveled the last week. I've been emotionally distant because the MLB playoffs started and my New York Yankees have lost.

And so, you know, maybe, maybe it is, uh, more coincidence, but I don't think so. I think a lot of my mental energy was going towards making these little posts instead of spending it on writing longer-form posts.

And I'll say like, you know, in our wrap-up call, I know this is going long, but in our wrap-up call, somebody said, 'Another person posted that there's literally no never a reason to make a long post, get to the point.'

Which is objectively wrong. If you only ever make short points, what you're saying, in my opinion, is 'I only have shallow thoughts.' I've not considered the depth, or I don't want to prove that I've considered the depth of my thoughts.

Long-form writing exists for a reason, and it is both to develop deeper thoughts on a topic, but also show people that you've put thought into this. So, I mean, people who say that either, you know, they're trying to get that ragey clickbait from people who write long-form, which is disingenuous, or they just haven't spent a lot of time with their own thoughts, and, and they can't write them or whatever.

Like that's just such a misguided thing to say.

So to that end, conclusions and next steps: I will not be posting on LinkedIn as regularly, maybe one to two times per week. It's going to be really focused on my long-form writing and my YouTube videos.

And so my next experiment, I guess like this is like better late than never. I read 'Tiny Experiments' over the summer and I didn't take the time to implement it. And, you know, shout out to Chanel and Dylan over at Growth and Reverse Pro for Chanel personally encouraged me to do the LinkedIn challenge.

And I thought, 'All right, this could be a good tiny experiment.' And so my next one is going to be posting to YouTube regularly this month. Uh, so from, uh, the slight OCD in me is upset I'm not starting on the first of a month, but it'll be like October 12th, right Monday.

Posting more regularly on YouTube. And it's not going to be every day. That's insane to me. That's just a lot. But it's going to be one long-form video, one to two shorts, and a live stream.

And then the experiment after that will be fully focused on my newsletter. Now, I feel like I should focus on the newsletter first, but I think YouTube is a better channel for me because I like teaching and I can build my newsletter and get good feedback from people.

So like I'm still going to – I'm actually going to take this weekend, probably depending on familial obligations, but my wife is not working and I think it's going to be a nice weekend for us to just kind of like relax.

I'll probably take this weekend and make the minimally viable optimizations, improve the, you know, my opt-in hasn't been very good for a long time. And the positioning I finally figured out like last night.

And so I'm going to make those improvements over the weekend and then really put a lot of effort into, you know, two things: getting consistent with posting on YouTube, but also changing YouTube's opinion of me.

My channel has been around for 10 years. It started off as strictly WordPress tutorials and then got a little like haywire from there. And I really want it to think of me as the automations for small business owners guy, right?

I want to help small business owners prevent burnout through simple, powerful automations. And so it takes being consistent on YouTube to do that. So I figure if I put the effort in now on YouTube, by the beginning of 2026, YouTube will know who I am and I'll have a better idea of what content resonates.

So, you know, all of this is kind of serving the newsletter, the podcast, you know, episode 500 of this show is coming out in nine days as I record this. And I really want the next 500 to be more focused than the first 500.

So, all right, if this was a longer voice, nothing usual. As always, let me know what you think over at streamlinedfeedback.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts on social media. I have strong opinions. I hate it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on YouTube or newsletter or what are you working on for the end of the year. Again, all of that is over at streamlinedfeedback.com. Thanks so much for listening.