EP #093: You're Measuring LinkedIn Like a Paid Ad. That's Why You Think It's Not Working.

On almost every sales call, I ask, “What does success look like for you?” But in the first ten minutes of the call, before I even raise the question, the client has already told me. 

They want to be seen as a credible voice in their industry, or they want investors or top candidates to know their name before the first meeting. They want to own the narrative in their category instead of watching a less experienced competitor do it.

That's what they say they want, and I believe them.

But then I ask the question outright, they start talking about a new pipeline, or attributing new candidates to specific posts, or measuring impressions and follower growth month over month.

And I sit there thinking: those are paid advertising metrics, and that's not what you just said you wanted.

The Misalignment That Causes People to Quit

Executives make a fundamental gear shift when they move from describing their goals to describing how they'll measure them.

The goals are qualitative and long-term: credibility, perception, trust, narrative ownership. Meanwhile, the measurement framework is short-term and attribution-based: pipeline, dashboards, clean data.

Those two things are fundamentally incompatible. And that incompatibility is what causes people to quit, even when LinkedIn is working - because they set the wrong measuring stick at the start, and then judge the investment against a standard it was never designed to meet.

Nobody measures a reputation with a dashboard. You don't track "percentage of target investors who now recognize your name" in HubSpot. 

You know your reputation is building when you walk into a room and someone already knows who you are. Or when a candidate says they specifically wanted to work for you, or when a deal closes faster because the trust was already there before the “hello.”

Those are the outcomes clients are almost always searching for, and they don’t show up cleanly in a dashboard.

The Timeline You Should Know

There’s a performance pattern that shows up with enough consistency that I can set expectations for almost every client.

Month one is almost always a person’s best month. LinkedIn actively rewards new creators, so your reach spikes, your impressions jump, and old connections resurface. It feels like validation and proof.

Then you hit month two, and the algorithmic boost fades. The numbers drop back to something closer to baseline. This is where I see executives get nervous - and where a lot of them start questioning whether posting on LinkedIn is worth it.

This is also the worst possible time to draw a conclusion, because you’re still at the start of your process.

Months three through six are where your consistency starts to make you familiar. You're building a catalog, and the algorithm is learning your content. Your audience is accumulating.

And then, somewhere around month six to nine, your presence changes. The "I saw your post" moments start happening in sales calls, and recruiting outreach gets warmer responses. Someone you've been trying to reach for months suddenly replies. You get a text from a colleague you haven't spoken to in years.

I see this all the time. The executives who stay the course for two, three, four years stop asking whether LinkedIn is working because the results are too clear to question. The outcomes are just part of their reality now.

The Right Things to Track

I don't want my message here to land as just "trust the process." There are things worth tracking - as long as you understand what each metric is really telling you.

Total monthly impressions tell you whether your reach is growing. Useful directionally, but don't confuse reach with precision. A post about morning routines might get you 500 likes from people who will never hire you - which is less impactful than a post that resonates with the exact 200 people you're trying to reach.

Additionally, profile views are one of my favorite early indicators. A profile view means someone saw your content, got curious, and clicked to find out who you are. That's active interest - someone asking, "Wait, who is this?" We use profile views as a daily trigger for outreach on behalf of clients, and I'd encourage you to do the same.

Beyond the numbers, pay attention to the warmth of your inbound over time. Are people coming into conversations knowing more about you than they should? Referencing specific things you've said? Further along in trust before the first exchange? Those are signs your reputation is growing, and that may be the best metric of all.

Because if you’re like the vast majority of executives on LinkedIn, your reputation is exactly why you’re posting. At the core, you’re not trying to generate clicks or hit a certain number.

And if you’re measuring your reputation like a paid ad campaign, you’ll never see the results you’re really looking for.

— 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.