LinkedIn isn't just another social media platform—it's a professional network where strategic content can generate meaningful business outcomes. But most professionals approach LinkedIn content all wrong, posting randomly without understanding the underlying strategy that separates viral posts from those that languish with minimal engagement.
This guide breaks down the proven LinkedIn content funnel framework, showing you exactly how to structure your content strategy, what to post at each stage, and how to measure success beyond vanity metrics.
Just like traditional marketing, LinkedIn has a content funnel with three distinct layers. Each serves a different purpose and attracts different audience segments.
TOFU content on LinkedIn consists of personal stories that resonate beyond your target audience. These posts cast the widest net and help you build followership among people who find you interesting as a human being.
Examples of effective TOFU topics:
The key is authenticity. You're not sharing what you ate for lunch, but rather personal experiences with business relevance. A post about a weekend hike becomes relevant when you connect it to work-life balance or perspective on what truly matters.
MOFU content targets your specific audience with industry insights, trends, and perspectives on problems they face. This is where you establish credibility within your niche.
Effective MOFU content exists at the intersection of:
For Rock Salt, MOFU content focuses on how AI is changing the buyer journey and why marketers need to be present where their audience naturally congregates, rather than relying on traditional funnel tactics.
BOFU content includes product announcements, company news, funding updates, and events. This content appeals primarily to people already familiar with your company—existing customers, prospects actively evaluating you, or those closely following your journey.
Your ideal TOFU/MOFU/BOFU mix isn't static—it should evolve based on your LinkedIn maturity.
Beginners (under 5K followers):
Focus heavily on personal stories to establish yourself as an interesting person worth following. You're building awareness and growing your network.
Experienced (5K+ followers):
With an established following, you can shift toward thought leadership and company content. Your audience has chosen to follow you and wants professional insights.
Rock Salt's Writing Strategy tool analyzes your last 90 days of content and provides personalized recommendations on your current mix versus where you should be.
Most professionals jump straight to middle or bottom of funnel content. They want to showcase industry expertise or promote their company immediately. This approach fails because you haven't given people a reason to care about you as a person.
Without TOFU content, you're just another voice in a crowded space shouting about how smart you are. Personal stories create the human connection that makes people want to hear your professional insights.
TOFU content isn't generic inspirational quotes or turning LinkedIn into Facebook. It's not posting motivational graphics or sharing what you ate for breakfast.
TOFU content is YOU—your unique background, perspectives, and experiences that no one else can replicate. It's the story of working with your sibling as a co-founder, navigating your industry as a woman over 50, or lessons learned from a specific failure.
The personal stories must be authentically yours and have some business relevance, even if loose.
Random posting leads to random results. Strategic LinkedIn content requires identifying your zones of expertise for both TOFU and MOFU content.
Ask yourself:
Passion matters because it makes content creation sustainable. When you care deeply about a topic, you can write about it repeatedly without burning out.
Examples of effective TOFU zones:
Identify 3-4 themes, then test them on LinkedIn. The platform will tell you what resonates with your network.
Your MOFU zone sits at the intersection of:
For example, if you're targeting B2B marketers and believe strongly that traditional demand generation is broken in the AI era, that becomes your MOFU zone. You look for stories, data, and research that help you tell this story in fresh ways.
Rock Salt's Content Performance tab shows you what's trending with your target audience and identifies topics generating engagement among industry influencers, helping you identify promising MOFU themes.
This question arises constantly: Should I focus on my personal profile or my company page?
The answer: Personal pages are the engine, company pages are the amplifier.
Why personal pages win: LinkedIn is a social network where people connect with people, not corporations. Personal posts generate significantly more engagement than company posts. LinkedIn's algorithm actively throttles company page reach.
How to use both strategically:
Maintain three distinct voices: yours, any other key executives, and your company. All three should post TOFU/MOFU/BOFU content, but personal profiles should dominate your strategy.
With millions of posts competing for attention, your content must immediately signal value. Here's how top-performing LinkedIn posts accomplish this.
Write like no one knows you. Even if your last post went viral, your next post reaches people unfamiliar with your background.
Establish credibility early:
This approach works because AI cannot replicate it. AI doesn't know your unique background and experience. Only you can lead with your specific credentials.
Signal that you've done work on behalf of your audience:
People appreciate when someone has already synthesized information for them.
Challenge conventional wisdom:
Contrarian takes generate engagement because they challenge readers' assumptions.
Share authentic failures and lessons:
Vulnerability works because it's relatable and demonstrates growth. Just ensure it maintains professional relevance—LinkedIn isn't the place for oversharing personal issues unrelated to work.
People love insider perspectives:
These stories satisfy curiosity while establishing your credibility.
Pose genuinely interesting questions:
Questions invite engagement naturally and work especially well for subject matter experts.
Text-heavy posts blend together. Custom visuals make people stop scrolling.
Kyle Poyar, a LinkedIn expert with significant following, reports spending up to an hour creating custom visuals for posts. This isn't wasted time—it's the differentiator that makes his content unmissable.
What makes an effective LinkedIn visual:
AI-generated visuals look generic and get ignored. Hand-crafted visuals signal effort and authenticity.
Think about what visual would communicate your main point even if someone never read your text. That's the visual worth creating.
Break complex concepts into digestible structures:
Frameworks provide value by organizing information into memorable, actionable formats.
Start near the conclusion to hook readers, then unravel what happened:
The structure creates narrative tension that keeps people reading.
Use data to reveal surprising truths:
Data grounds your arguments and provides shareable statistics others will reference.
Unlike many platforms, LinkedIn doesn't reward consistency with algorithmic advantages. Your post today won't perform better just because yesterday's post went viral.
What this means for your strategy:
Quality beats frequency. Post once every two weeks with stellar content rather than mediocre content three times per week. Each post succeeds or fails on its own merit.
Bad posts don't hurt you. If a post flops, LinkedIn simply throttles its reach. Most of your network won't see it. No need to delete or stress about it.
Every post gets a fair shot. Even with a small following, exceptional content can reach thousands. The playing field is more level than on other platforms.
Invest time per post. Spending 1-2 hours crafting a single post isn't excessive—it's the standard for top performers.
This approach works for busy executives who can't post daily but can dedicate focused time to creating valuable content periodically.
One of the fastest ways to expand your reach is engaging strategically with industry influencers.
A Rock Salt post received 100,000+ impressions partly because Sam McKenna, a LinkedIn expert with 120,000 followers, commented on it. Before her comment: 40 engagements. After: the post exploded.
When influencers engage with your content, LinkedIn shows your post to their audience—people likely interested in similar topics.
Step 1: Identify relevant influencers in your industry whose audience overlaps with your target market.
Step 2: Engage authentically on their content. Leave thoughtful comments that add value, not generic "great post!" responses.
Step 3: Be consistent. Comment meaningfully on 3+ posts over 90 days.
Step 4: Send a connection request after establishing engagement history.
Step 5: Eventually send a brief DM thanking them for their valuable content.
This mirrors real-world relationship building. You wouldn't walk up to someone at a conference and immediately pitch them. You'd have several conversations first.
Rock Salt's platform tracks your influencer engagement and suggests when you've hit key milestones (3 comments, 5 comments) that make connection requests or DMs appropriate.
Most people measure LinkedIn all wrong. They obsess over likes and comments from their ideal customer profile (ICP), missing the bigger picture.
Consider the math: A post gets 100,000 impressions but only 200 comments and reactions. That's 99.8% of viewers engaging invisibly.
This isn't failure—it's normal human behavior. People scroll, read, and absorb without leaving visible traces. Some don't want to be hounded by connection requests. Others are simply passive consumers of content.
The majority of your buyer journey is invisible. You need metrics that capture this reality.
Metric 1: Impressions (especially from target audience)
High impressions mean your content reached people. Rock Salt's analytics break down what percentage of impressions came from your target audience, so you know if you're reaching the right people.
Don't stress if engagement is low relative to impressions. If the engaged audience matches your ICP, the invisible viewers likely do too.
Metric 2: Branded Search Traffic
After seeing your post, interested people Google your company name. Track this in Google Search Console (free tool available to everyone).
Branded search is marketing gold because:
Rock Salt found that focusing on branded search growth provided clearer ROI measurement than trying to attribute individual LinkedIn posts to revenue.
Metric 3: Self-Reported Attribution
On every form, ask "How did you hear about us?" with preset options (LinkedIn, Google, referral, etc.) plus an "Other" field with a follow-up question.
This reveals your actual funnel. Rock Salt discovered 80% of sign-ups came from LinkedIn using this simple tracking method.
The "Other" category provides surprising insights. Rock Salt had four sign-ups in one week from TikTok—a platform they'd never used. Following up revealed someone had shared a video about them, opening an entirely new channel they didn't know existed.
When content performs well, maximize its value:
Convert to LinkedIn articles. LLMs increasingly reference LinkedIn articles in citations. Turn high-performing posts into longer-form articles.
Publish on your website. Create blog posts from successful LinkedIn content so AI agents crawling your site find it.
Use in SDR outreach. Email sequences can reference or link to your thought leadership content.
Boost with thought leadership ads. While still testing ROI, many companies amplify top organic posts with LinkedIn's paid promotion to reach more of their target audience.
One great post can become 4-5 assets across channels, multiplying your content investment.
Never start from scratch. Maintain a running list of content ideas categorized by TOFU/MOFU/BOFU. Rock Salt's Ideas Board auto-categorizes ideas and suggests what you should write based on your current content mix.
When you have 30 minutes, you can immediately start writing instead of staring at a blank page wondering what to post.
The best ideas often emerge in conversation. Find a thinking partner—colleague, mentor, or friend—who you can brainstorm with. The Rock Salt team emphasized that their best content ideas came from discussions with each other, not solo brainstorming.
If you're stuck on themes or specific posts, schedule a 15-minute call with someone to talk it through.
Read your drafts aloud. If they sound corporate or stiff, rewrite. Your LinkedIn voice should sound like you talking to a colleague over coffee, not presenting to a board.
Instead of: "Organizations must leverage data-driven insights to optimize customer acquisition strategies."
Try: "I keep hearing that traditional demand gen is broken. What are you doing instead?"
Don't end posts with generic "Thoughts?" or "What do you think?"
Instead, ask specific questions:
Specific questions invite detailed responses, which signals to LinkedIn's algorithm that your content is engaging, which extends its reach.
Q: How often should I post?
Quality matters more than frequency. Once every 1-2 weeks with excellent content beats mediocre daily posts. There's no compounding effect, so consistency doesn't give algorithmic advantages.
Q: Should I use AI to write posts?
Use AI as a thinking partner and first-draft tool, but always inject your authentic voice, specific experiences, and unique perspective. AI-generated content that sounds generic gets ignored. The credibility-building hook and personal stories can't be AI-written.
Q: What if I'm not comfortable sharing personal stories?
You don't need to overshare. Find aspects of your professional journey that are personally meaningful: career transitions, lessons from failures, what you've learned about your industry. The "personal" element is what makes you unique, not intimate details about your private life.
Q: How do I know if my content is reaching my target audience?
Rock Salt's analytics show what percentage of impressions come from your target audience. You can also check LinkedIn's native analytics for follower demographics and who's engaging with content.
Q: Should I delete posts that perform poorly?
No need. LinkedIn throttles low-performing posts, so they don't get much distribution anyway. Leaving them up shows authenticity—not everything has to be a hit.
Q: How long should LinkedIn posts be?
No strict rule, but successful posts often run 150-300 words. Long enough to provide value, short enough that people actually read them. Use line breaks generously for mobile readability.
Ready to implement this strategy? Here's your step-by-step plan:
Week 1: Audit and Plan
Week 2: Build Your Content Pipeline
Week 3-4: Execute and Engage
Ongoing:
As AI makes content creation easier, authenticity becomes more valuable. Generic posts flood LinkedIn, making genuinely personal, data-backed, and expertly crafted content stand out more than ever.
The professionals who succeed on LinkedIn in 2025 and beyond will:
LinkedIn remains one of the few platforms where organic reach can generate meaningful business outcomes. But it requires strategy, consistency, and a genuine commitment to providing value.