Founder-Led Content: How We Drove $15M in Pipeline via LinkedIn

In 2024, more than $15M of our sales pipeline came inbound as a direct result of content – specifically, content I (the founder) posted on LinkedIn. What started as a few tentative posts turned into a major growth lever for Unify. Over the year, I grew my LinkedIn following from about 3,000 to 16,000, and LinkedIn became one of our highest-ROI “channels.” Perhaps most importantly, it has hugely amplified our brand presence in the market.

Founders often ask me how we did it. Below, I’ll share the key lessons and tactics from our founder-led content playbook – the things that made the biggest difference in turning social media posts into tangible pipeline.

1. Pick the right platform.

You don’t need to be everywhere – you need to be where your buyers are. For us, selling to sales and growth leaders, the choice was obvious: LinkedIn is where our ICP (ideal customer profile) lives. We decided to go all-in on LinkedIn and not worry about other platforms for the time being. Could we have tried Twitter, TikTok, etc.? Sure, but we knew LinkedIn had the professional audience we wanted.

This focus allowed us to learn the LinkedIn game faster. (For what it’s worth, I’ve found Twitter can be more volatile and time-consuming to build an audience on, whereas LinkedIn’s algorithm is a bit more forgiving if you consistently post quality content.) The takeaway: figure out where your target audience hangs out online, and concentrate your efforts there.

2. Commit to consistent posting (5x per week for at least 6 months).

I treated LinkedIn like going to the gym – consistency matters more than any one brilliant post. In mid-2024, I challenged myself to post every weekday for six months straight. It was a grind at first, but it forced me to flex the content muscle and get a lot of reps in.

For the first few months, the results were modest – some posts would get only a few hundred impressions. But around month 4-5, we hit an inflection point: certain posts started taking off, follower count compounded, and inbound interest spiked. Had I quit after a month or two, we would have missed that breakout.

A common worry founders have is “Will I annoy my network by posting so often?” I can say confidently: no, you won’t (as long as your content provides value). Posting frequently actually helps you learn what resonates by giving you more data points. We got roughly 20 data points (posts) a month instead of 4, which meant we learned 5x faster what topics and styles worked. And your audience will largely see only the posts that perform well anyway, thanks to the algorithm.

Now, consistency doesn’t mean mindlessly posting fluff. We built a system to generate ideas and recycle themes (more on that later). But the bottom line is: make a realistic posting schedule (it could be 2-3x a week if daily is too much) and stick to it religiously. The compound effects will surprise you.

3. Tell real, personal stories.

One of the biggest unlocks for us was embracing storytelling – especially personal and company stories. Early on, I was mostly sharing tips or industry observations. Those were okay, but whenever I shared a genuine story from our journey (a win, a failure, a lesson learned), the engagement soared.

For example, I wrote a post about how we went from me being the only salesperson to hiring a team of 6 AEs in a year, including the struggles and imposter syndrome I felt letting go of sales. That post struck a chord and went fairly viral in our circle. It worked because it was a narrative with emotion and insight, not just a generic tip.

Your stories are your unique asset – no one else has them. Don’t be afraid to pull back the curtain a bit. I share revenue numbers, growth stats, mistakes we’ve made, etc. It might feel uncomfortable to be that open, but it humanizes your brand and builds trust with your audience. You don’t have to overshare or divulge every secret, but find the anecdotes and lessons that only you can tell.

4. Lean into team and culture updates.

An interesting pattern we noticed: posts about our team tend to over-perform. LinkedIn, at its core, is a professional network, and people love seeing growth and momentum at a company. So whenever something good happened internally – a new key hire, a promotion, a company offsite – we made it a point to share that.

Every time we welcomed a new team member or celebrated a milestone (“Unify is 25 people strong now, up from 7 at the start of the year!”), the post would get lots of likes and comments. It’s partly people genuinely congratulating, and partly the LinkedIn algorithm boosting “celebratory” posts.

This ended up not just driving engagement, but also helping recruiting (inbound candidates mentioned seeing those posts) and credibility (prospects saw evidence that we were growing and investing in the business). So my advice: when good things happen with your team, don’t be shy – brag on LinkedIn. It tends to create a positive feedback loop of goodwill and interest in your company.

5. Build a brand that punches above your weight.

By putting out content consistently, we began to shape the narrative in our category. Despite being a smaller startup, we started getting compared to much larger vendors because prospects saw our content everywhere. Thought leadership and brand building through content let us “punch above our weight class.”

In my year-end review post, I noted that we were beating much larger competitors in deals often – and a big reason is that those prospects had been reading my posts and saw Unify as a forward-thinking leader. Without any content, we’d just be another unknown startup trying to get attention based on features alone. With content, we became a company with a story and a voice.

This was a huge realization: brand isn’t just a fluffy nice-to-have; in B2B it can directly drive pipeline and win deals. Our content made us familiar to potential buyers long before our sales team ever contacted them. When your CEO or founder is credible and visible, it instills confidence (especially if you’re selling to other execs).

6. Use lead magnets to expand reach.

Later in the year, we experimented with “lead magnet” style posts – and they worked incredibly well. The idea is simple: you offer some valuable resource (a PDF guide, a Notion template, etc.) and ask people to comment if they want it, then you send it to them (typically via DM or email).

For instance, to distribute our full content playbook, I made a LinkedIn post saying “Comment ‘LINKEDIN’ and I’ll send you our Founder Content Playbook”. Dozens of people commented, which triggered the LinkedIn algorithm to show that post to thousands more because of all the engagement. We then sent them the link to the playbook (and collected a bunch of warm leads in the process).

It’s a bit of a growth hack, and these tactics can get saturated, but as of now they still work. The key is that the content you’re offering has to be genuinely valuable (so people feel it’s worth commenting for) and relevant to your target audience.

Whenever you find a format that works – whether it’s lead magnets, polls, slides, or something else – double down on it. We squeezed a lot of juice out of a few successful formats until they stopped working.

Building a Content Engine

So, how did we actually execute all this consistently given how busy a founder/CEO’s schedule gets? The truth is, I didn’t do it alone. We built a small “content engine” internally:

 
• Our growth team helped brainstorm content ideas and themes based on what we were learning in sales calls or common questions from prospects.
 
• I’d often riff on those ideas and draft posts in batches on weekends or evenings when I had quiet time. Sometimes I’d voice-record ideas during commutes and have our team help transcribe or flesh them out.
 
• We reused and repurposed content. A good story or insight might be referenced in multiple posts from different angles. If I tweeted something that resonated, we’d expand it into a LinkedIn post, or vice-versa.
 
• Importantly, we monitored performance closely. Our team tracked basic metrics (impressions, engagement, comments) in a spreadsheet to identify which topics were hits. That fed into future idea sessions – basically an ongoing feedback loop of what the audience cares about.

Over time, this system made content creation much more efficient. It wasn’t a random scramble each day to think of something to post – we had a backlog of ideas and a sense of what works. I still wrote most posts myself to keep the authentic founder voice, but I had a lot of help behind the scenes.

Final Thoughts: Founder-led content can feel daunting to start, but once you find your rhythm, it’s incredibly rewarding. The inbound opportunities, brand equity, and even talent attraction we’ve gained have more than justified the effort. If you’re a founder or executive thinking about doing this, my advice is:

 
• Start small but start now. Post once or twice a week to begin. You’ll improve over time.
 
• Be authentic. Share real experiences and insights – people can tell when something is genuine.
 
• Engage with your audience. Reply to comments, build those relationships. It will encourage more engagement and expand your reach.
 
• Leverage your team. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Get help generating ideas, editing, and repurposing content.
 
• Integrate with your go-to-market. We make sure to tie content into our broader strategy – for instance, our outbound team uses my LinkedIn engagement as a signal (when someone likes my post, they might get a friendly outreach). The content and sales motions reinforce each other.

By following these principles, we turned what many consider a “soft” activity – posting on social media – into a repeatable, measurable growth driver. It’s become a true competitive advantage for us. And the best part? It scales with very little marginal cost. Every new follower, every additional post, adds momentum to the flywheel.

If you have expertise or a story to tell (and every founder does), there’s an audience out there for it. Start sharing. Your future self will thank you when inbound leads say “I’ve been reading your posts” on discovery calls, or when a prospect replies to your cold email saying “Oh, I love your content, let’s talk.” That’s when you know the machine is working.

P.S. – If you want to see how we turn engagement from content into actual meetings, check out how we feed LinkedIn signals into our outbound plays. Combining a strong content engine with smart outbound follow-up has been a killer formula for us.