A Founder's Playbook to Doubling Sales with LinkedIn

Most people still write off LinkedIn as a depressing corporate social network plagued by humble-brags.

But the truth is, it's an amazingly underutilized marketing channel ripe with opportunity for indie hackers and founders.

I've spent years dissecting and refining a comprehensive system for leveraging LinkedIn as a powerful growth engine.

When people ask for advice, here's what I now tell them:

1. Start with the lowest hanging fruit - consistent connection requests.

As often, the most boring stuff can also be the more effective. As a free user, you can send around 50 per week targeted at your ideal audience and location. Don't include personal notes - very counter-intuitively you'll get 80% more replies.

Just hit that 50 request quota weekly (because it doesn't roll over).

As a paid LinkedIn user (Premium, Recruiter, Sales Navigator), you can send 3X as many invites (so ~150 per week)! This alone makes it worth it to buy a subscription if you're serious about LinkedIn.

Make sure you're sending invites to your Ideal Customer Profile, and you'll get a ~50% acceptance rate (yes!).

That's ~75 new connections & followers per week, or ~4,000 per year - without really doing anything. This number also compounds and there's a snowball effect to the number of contacts & followers.

Why should you care about connections & followers?

• You'll get more views to your posts (each post is shown to ~30% of followers + their own connections)
• You can direct message 1st degree connections for free (otherwise you need expensive inMails) + you also get their email address (multi-channel 4 ever!)
• You'll be more credible (one one of our polls ~30% of respondents said they judged people based on their LinkedIn followers count)

You can use tools like our very own botdog.co to consistently schedule 150 requests per week and make sure your quota doesn't go to waste. Set it to run constantly in the background.

2. Next, optimize your profile for conversions.

Have a clear, benefit-oriented headline showcasing your expertise.

Use a professional headshot (no AI images).

Flesh out your "About" section, presenting yourself as an authority figure rather than being too salesy.

3. Now deploy a "silent nurture" content strategy.

Don't make the rookie mistake of instantly pitching new connections. That's an surefire way to get ignored or unconnected.

Instead, consistently put out 3-5 valuable text, image, video or poll posts per week between the peak hours of 8am-12pm.

Ask questions that spark discussion so that people engage with your posts.

To get ideas: Share contrarian insights or advice you constantly give clients.

Repurpose successful posts after 4-6 weeks into different content formats (polls, posts, images, carrousels etc.).

This steady stream of narrative-driven, legitimately helpful content positions you as a thought leader worth following. It's like signing your network up for a newsletter without them realizing it!

If you do choose to message new connections 1-on-1, always try and provide an upfront freebie like a guide, video or resource that spotlights your expertise first. Give value before asking for anything. Think "what's in it for them".

4. Additional hacks to increase your reach and influence

Get a "Top Voice" credibility badges by consistently leaving insightful comments in your niche on the Collaborative Article section (I plan on writing a full article on this one day).

Learn about LinkedIn Lives, which is LinkedIn's most underrated feature by far (planning on writing a guide on it too if that's interesting).

Re-engage cold connections by directing them to your latest popular posts.

The key is layering these optimizations on top of a rock-solid foundational strategy of always adding value, positioning yourself as an authority, and making your network want to endlessly consume your pearls of wisdom.

Consistently execute at a high level, and LinkedIn can be an unbeatable sales pipeline for any indiehacker or founder's product or service.

Do this and you'll still feel like you're just scratching the surface of possibilities on this underrated platform!

What else would you add to that guide? Ping me on LinkedIn to let me know!