EP #073: Why Your 200 Impressions Might Be Better Than Someone Else's 20,000

A CEO called me last week, anxious about his LinkedIn performance. He's getting a couple hundred impressions per post and wondered if he should feel bad about such low numbers.

I asked him to run a thought experiment: if someone offered you a weekly speaking slot in a conference room, how many of your ideal prospects would need to show up for you to consider it worthwhile?

50? 100? 200?

He's already getting that. Every week, 200 professionals see his content. But are those people CFOs at mid-market companies, or his fifth-grade teacher who will never become a client?

The Data Makes You Feel Like You're Losing

I get why low impression counts create anxiety. When you see the actual numbers across different audience sizes, the gap looks insurmountable. After all, our analysis of 8,000 LinkedIn posts from C-level executives shows:

• Nano-tier leaders (under 5k followers): 1,100 impressions and 18 engagements per post

• Macro+ leaders (50k+ followers): 42,000 impressions and 568 engagements per post

Macro+ leaders get 40x more visibility per post. And when you see someone else's content getting tens of thousands of views while yours gets 200, the comparison feels brutal.

Those raw impression numbers miss a crucial detail about who's actually seeing the content. Most executives in our dataset fall in the Micro (5k-10k) and Mid (10k-20k) tiers, which means their follower bases skew heavily toward industry peers, potential customers, talent, and investors. 

And when you're getting 200 impressions from this type of concentrated audience, you're not losing to someone getting 20,000 impressions from random followers.

In fact, you’re ahead.

Mass Reach Is Overrated for B2B

If you're targeting a niche audience - say, heads of procurement at manufacturing companies with 200+ employees - there might only be a few thousand people in your entire addressable market. Getting 200 of them to see your content weekly represents exceptional market penetration.

Compare that to a LinkedIn influencer with 50,000 followers posting generic career advice. And they might get 20,000 impressions, but how many of those people will ever buy from them? How many are even in their industry?

Mass reach sounds impressive until you realize you're speaking to people who will never become clients, never hire you, and never invest in you.

The People You Don't See

One of my clients recently mentioned attending five events where people approached him to compliment his LinkedIn content - but none of those people had ever liked, commented, or engaged with a single post online.

I've experienced this myself at conferences - strangers saying they follow my content, people I've never seen engage. Your 200 impressions likely represent a much larger group of silent readers who consume without leaving digital breadcrumbs.

LinkedIn's engagement rates average around 2%. That means 98% of your audience reads without interacting. If 200 people see your post and typical patterns hold, you could have thousands of silent readers following along. 

When Low Numbers Actually Matter

Not all low impression counts are created equal. Your numbers become a problem when you're getting impressions from the wrong audience. LinkedIn's analytics now show who viewed your profile from each post. Use this data to understand if you're reaching decision-makers in your space or just randos scrolling their feed.

Low numbers also matter when your network is too small relative to your addressable market. If there are 50,000 potential buyers for your service and you only have 500 connections, you have a distribution problem.

Inconsistent posting compounds these issues. Our data shows executives posting 2-3 times per week get 57% more engagement per post than weekly perfectionists. Post once a week and you're invisible 85% of the time.

Technical, niche content often gets fewer impressions but higher conversion rates with the right audience. A post explaining complex procurement software might get 150 views - but if 50 of those are VPs of Supply Chain, you just reached a gold mine.

Stop Playing the Wrong Game

Before despairing over your impression count, run this reality check: if someone offered you regular access to your ideal prospects, how many would need to show up for it to be worthwhile?

Most executives would kill for a weekly audience of 100-200 qualified decision-makers - and you already have that on LinkedIn. The platform just doesn't make it feel like a win because you're comparing yourself to consumer influencers playing a completely different game.

Your 200 impressions from CFOs at mid-market SaaS companies beat 20,000 impressions from aspiring entrepreneurs who will never become clients. The silent readers you can't see might become your biggest advocates, and the offline conversations sparked by your content don't show up in any dashboard.

Focus on audience quality over vanity metrics and measure success by the business conversations that happen outside LinkedIn. And remember that the most successful executives on LinkedIn reach the right people consistently, regardless of their total follower count.

If your 200 impressions come from decision-makers in your space, you're winning a game most people don't even realize they should be playing.

— Justin

Justin M. Nassiri | Founder & CEO
M: 650.353.1138 | E: [email protected]
250 Fillmore St Suite 150, Denver, CO 80206
www.ExecutivePresence.io

Executive Presence specializes in helping top-tier executives boost their visibility, activate their network, and position themselves as thought leaders via our premium, fully-managed LinkedIn service.

Our unique process involves ex-McKinsey, BCG, and Bain consultants conducting monthly hour-long interviews with our clients, and turning them into impactful daily LinkedIn posts to establish their unique voice and authority. On average, our clients see a 500% bump in engagement in their first 30 days with us. Data is continuously analyzed to improve engagement and identify impactful messaging that you can use for conferences, podcasts, and internal communications.