Make LinkedIn growth a team sport

Have you noticed the Exit Five team publishing more on LinkedIn over the last month? Not a coincidence. Our CEO Dan and I challenged the team to grow their following through what we’re calling the Clout Cup. Whoever grows the most over 90 days wins. There’s a cash prize, plus perks at our offsite (winner picks the limo ride playlist in Miami).

Why are we doing this? As I told the team, serious business people with all the connections in the world are on LinkedIn. But it’s not just about promoting Exit Five – there’s real career value here. You could become known as an authority in your specialty, and years from now, that reputation gets you hired to run the next big thing (Dan hates when I say things like this to our team – don’t leave!). 

I don’t just get marketing opportunities from LinkedIn – I get book, speaking, board opportunities. So yeah, some people might think posting is cringe. Don’t care. This could be a career launchpad, not just a way to promote a company.

It’s definitely good for business too. LinkedIn is the second most cited domainacross ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, after Reddit. And since 75% of LinkedIn citations come from individuals these days, you should be posting from your personal account to get cited in AI search! Everyone has something to share – growth marketing, event planning, sales, content, community. Everybody.

It’s about getting clear on what you have to offer and building a strategy around it.

How The Exit Five Clout Cup Works

The rules are simple – whoever grows their percentage of follower growth the most over 90 days wins. Dan split the team into two divisions: Division I for less than 15K followers and Division II for 15K+ followers.

Here are the people from our team who are participating and the current leaderboard:

Division I – sub 15K followers

• Marisa Forsman (Timko) – Content Engineer
• Ben Read – Growth Marketer
• Maria Vasserman – Content Marketing Manager
• Allison Saxon – Events Marketing Manager
• Sheery Bath-Pannu – Membership Experience Manager
• Anna Vermillion – Sponsorships Marketing Manager

All the credit for this idea goes to Dan Murphy, the mastermind behind this contest (currently fighting for his life in Division II).

Division II – 15K+ followers

• Matthew Carnevale – Head of Community
• Dan Murphy – CEO

Where to Start with Content

Don’t overcomplicate this: pick a lane. You do not always need to have a hot take. Just share what’s already happening at work, challenges and solutions, your POV or process. Use your own content as the easy button: a podcast interview, a webinar, a customer story.

If you’re not sure what to write about, keep a running list on your phone of anything from Slack or a call that could be a post – and if you’re really stuck, feed some transcripts into AI and ask it what patterns keep showing up. A story you keep telling is usually a story worth writing.

A Look at the Team’s Top Performing Tactics

Once you’ve got a lane, here’s a few examples of what’s actually moved the needle for the team so far. (Go follow them for tons more ideas!!)

Short form video (Testing new formats)

This is actually not Dan’s top-performing post – but he’s the real MVP for building the contest in the first place: the rules, the tracking, all of it. This video was his first stab at something new: a green-screen voiceover breakdown of the weekly leaderboard and the week’s top tactics. Dan’s usual lane is leadership content, so this format was an experiment for him – and it’s become something the team looks forward to every week. Testing new formats, even ones that don’t crush it right away, is half the game on LinkedIn.

Memes

Matt’s positioned himself as the B2B guy, and memes are a big draw for him. A great example of identifying what works and making it your own. Posts like this get a lot of engagements, which helps with visibility. Simple, relatable, effective.

Another take: Some of my biggest posts aren’t about work at all. I’ll just screenshot a viral tweet and add one line of commentary. Curating something people already care about, and adding your voice is its own format.

Carousels

Don’t start from a blank page, start with what works. Go find someone’s carousel you like, and borrow inspiration to make it your own. There are tons of templates and inspiration in tools like Canva. The format’s already proven – just build your own version of it. This applies to any format you see in the wild.

Real examples and tactics

One thing that always works – real examples of what’s working that are relevant to people with the same challenges as you. Talk about what you’ve done that got results. Marketing is hard. Be a resource people can turn to for tips to improve their craft. Ben recently shared how he indexed 700 pages on our site. People running SEO will want to know how!

Listicles

Lists are an easy, repeatable format. Write less, but better – and always add value! I could sit down and write something like “15 lessons I’ve learned building Exit Five over the last four years,” (insert whatever your application is) and that post alone can be the only thing you need to publish that week, because you put more into it than a quick take.

Maria has been sharing tips for job seekers recently, and did a listicle where she just shared a resource list of job sites for marketers. There’s a lot of demand for this right now, and this was one of her top-performing posts.

14 Tips For Follower Growth (The Exact Plays I Gave My Team)

LinkedIn is simple, not easy. You need to show up and do the work. Here’s what I’ve learned from over a decade of posting and the exact rundown I gave my team.

1. Adopt a character. Pick one lane tied to your role and stick to it.
2. Post once a day, max. Mornings hit best, but don’t skip weekends – LinkedIn can crush then too!
3. Batch-write when inspiration strikes. Schedule the rest out.
4. Text-only posts (no link, no tag, no image) get the most reach, always – it tells LinkedIn you’re not trying to sell anything or send them off the platform.
5. If you’re sharing a link, work twice as hard on the hook.
6. Engagement isn’t everything. Check traffic before judging a post. A post can get 3 likes and still convert someone who matters.
7. Be cautious of vertical video with no captions. It gets buried on LinkedIn now. If you’re going to do video, horizontal works better.
8. Reply to every comment. It’s how strangers become connections.
9. Spend 10 minutes a day commenting on posts before you post your own.It builds credibility, and unlocks ideas for your own writing.
10. Connect with people, don’t just follow them. A fresh connection puts your content at the top of their feed.
11. Your company’s content is a built-in, low-risk source. No proprietary info – no secret sauce, of course.
12. Half your best ideas are already in your Slack messages. Use what you have.
13. Use AI to help you think through a post, not to write it for you. Don’t ask it to write the post – ask it for the questions you should be answering, then fill in the blanks yourself. The imperfection is what performs.
14. Posting cadence: Set a guardrail on frequency and stick to it, even when nothing is landing. Someone I know ran a 30-day posting challenge with no traction – until day 28, when one post finally broke through. You don’t need every post to land, but keep publishing.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about the contest. It’s about building something that outlasts it – a body of work, a reputation, maybe even the next opportunity you didn’t see coming. That’s the goal. In the meantime, who knows? Maybe it’ll even help influence your company’s ICP and close some deals.

Posting feels cringe sometimes, but with more reps comes data – which you can use to improve your strategy and see results. Do you agree with these tips? Are you going to try any of these?

PS – Do you post on LinkedIn? If not, what’s stopping you? Do you have any feedback or winning tactics to share with the team? Reply and let us know – the team would LOVE to hear from you what’s working or not.