You know when people say quality beats quantity? They’re wrong …

Well, at least, they’re wrong when it comes to content or indeed any skill improved by repetition.

In the 1960s, photographer and professor Jerry Uelsmann conducted an experiment with his Beginning Photography class at the University of Florida*.

He spilt the students into two groups.

He told one group they’d be graded on quantity. The more photos they handed in, the higher their grade would be.

He told the other group they’d be graded on quality. These students only had to hand in one assignment at the end of the year and he’d be looking for mastery of composition and photographic techniques.

In an shocking development, surprising no one apart from the students, the group who went hard and took as many photographs as possible ended the year with photography skills far exceeding those of the student who obsessed over taking the perfect photo. We hone our skills through repetition and experimentation.

We also hone our skills through sharing our work. Jerry Uelsmann said, “I expected students to be showing work on a regular basis, because that’s where a lot of the growth occurs, and to show work in process, because people are a lot less defensive. Many places emphasize theory, but I felt strongly that producing images was most important.”

The way to get better at any creative skill is to do it often and share it often. Part of that is accepting that lots of our work is probably going to be a bit crap or miss the mark, but it really doesn’t matter because you’re going to produce more tomorrow.

A woeful tale of slack and sorry behaviour

I was proper slack about showing up on LinkedIn last month. I usually post 4-5 times a week, but in July I posted twice a week tops.

I’ve been posting on LinkedIn long enough to know that this means two things.

1: In two-three months I’ll see a dip in sales. It’s that predictable.

2: By breaking  my LinkedIn habit, my LinkedIn muscle has got weaker, and I’m going to need to exert extra discipline to get back on track.

One way to make rebuilding (or building) a habit easier is to commit in public and take a bunch of people with you for the ride … so that’s what I’m going to do.

Post on LinkedIn every day with me in August

Here’s the plan. We’re going to post on LinkedIn every day in August, weekends too.

The weeks will be themed to give you practise writing the sort of posts that help move the needle for your business by attracting people who dig your vibe, love your work, and pay you what you’re worth.

1: Week 1, we’ll talk about the problems we solve for our dream clients.

2: Week 2, we’ll tell stories about those hotties we serve.

3: Week 3, we’ll use content to sell an offer.

4: Week 4, we’ll experiment with being feral.

If you like using hashtags, I nominate #LinkedInFest25. Hashtags are largely pointless on LinkedIn, but you can (sorta) use them to search for posts by other people taking the challenge.

The not-rules of this game

Here’s what we’re going to do.

We’re going to write with a real person in mind. Who’s your dream client? Do you know a real someone who represents your ideal client? Write all your posts to them.

We’re going to try and post at the same time each day. I’m going to go for the morning before work. At the weekend it’ll be whenever I get to it.

We’re going to do what we can and not be paralysed by perfection. This doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Posting every day for a month is great because you’re building a habit, smashing through the pain barrier of self-consciousness, and accelerating your writing skills. But do you know what’s better than posting every day? Posting what you can when you can. Any advance on where you’re at now is a win. If you can’t commit to posting, why not commit to commenting every day?

On the topic of commenting, here’s what we’re not going to do.

We’re not going to post and ghost. LinkedIn is social media. That means you get far more from it if you … socialise. Support content from others. Connect with new people. Send DMs. And for the love of the small gods of personal branding, at the very least reply to the comments you get on your posts.

We’re not going to obsess over the algorithm – or what sort of content to post, or what time of day is optimal for posting, or any of that pointless bollocks because it is totally missing the point. The point of doing this is to build your writing muscle and (hopefully) make some cool, new connections. You do that by showing up, not by worrying about distractions that are largely beyond your control.

We’re not going to use AI. We’re going to raw dog this content with our human brains and our own ideas because no matter how imperfect the results, any piece of content you write will be more beautiful, valuable, and meaningful than a screed of mediocre AI tosh. (visibly reining myself in from long AI rant …)

We’re not going to over think this. We’re going to write fast and dirty and post raw. I’m going to allow myself 15 minutes, then post what I’ve got at the end of that time. This is a lot easier to do if you’ve got some idea what you want to talk about. It can be handy to spend 10 minutes with a coffee planning out your posts for the week.

Content prompts for Week 1

Week commencing 4 August, we’ll start by talking about the problems we solve for our dream clients.

Cows love music. Maybe it’s because they’re curious beasts, maybe it’s because they’re genuine melomaniacs, but if you play an instrument to a field full of cows, they’ll rush over to the fence to listen. Talking about problems on LinkedIn is like playing your jazz trombone to a field full of Jersey cows. People with those problems perk up their ears and hare over to your post to take a look.

You need to know what problems you solve for your clients. Often we start out in business thinking about the problems we can solve, then as we work with more people, we develop a deeper understanding of what problems people want solved, and how they talk about those challenges.

Over time, we solve those problems for so many people we begin to understand them better than our clients do. We recognise the symptoms and we also understand the deeper root cause. We become specialists. Solving a particular problem for a particular group of people in a particular way can become what we’re known for.

• List the problems you solve for your dream clients.

• What real life stories can you tell about these problems? What conversations have you had with people about this pain point? (You don’t have to reveal who someone is if they haven’t given you permission to tell their story. Simply tell the story in a way that obscures their identity without losing the point.)

• How do those problems show up for the people you help? What effect are these challenges having on their daily life? How do those issues make them feel?

• Why do your clients think they’re experiencing those challenges? Is something deeper going on? What’s the real root cause?

• Are there common misconceptions around these challenges? Are there myths you can debunk? Are there sacred cows you can slay?

• What’s your approach to solving this problem? You don’t have to talk about how you solve this issue in detail, but if you have an interesting perspective on this challenge – particularly if it’s a bit iconoclastic – definitely talk about that.

• What makes these challenges inevitable for your clients? Why is it not their fault they’re in this sticky situation?

Content prompts for Week 2

Week commencing 11 August we’ll tell stories about our clients – those spectacular humans we serve.

Stories about our clients are wonderful for so many reasons.

• They celebrate the people we work with.
• They contain useful learnings and insights for our other clients.
• They prove you’re hecking hot sauce at what you do.
• They cater to the incurable nosiness of humans. We love to find out more about other people like us.

Stories about our clients bring our offers to life in a way sales posts and how-to guides simply don’t. Which is why they’re such a powerful part of your content sales machine. Almost every time I share a client story I get at least one enquiry from people keen to work with me. Client stories convert into work.

However, in the five years I’ve been watching the online shenanigans of solo pros I’ve noticed a thing. We don’t share nearly enough stories about our clients. I’m guilty of this too, even although I know how valuable they are for sales

My theory is that’s because it takes a bit more effort to tell a story about a client than it does to pluck a story about our own life out of our head.

When we tell a story about someone else we have to remember what we did with them and recall those details that make the situation meaningful. We also have to think about telling the story in the right way … because some situations are sensitive and we may need to obscure the identity of our client or even change elements of the narrative so the people we work with don’t feel vulnerable and exposed.

Yet for all that telling stories about our clients is a bit of an effortful juggling act, it’s also super worthwhile. Build a wardrobe of client stories you can pull out to show your services in action. use next week to get you started.

Here are your client story prompts.

• Tell a story about your first ever client.

• Tell a story about your favourite client.

• Tell a story about a client you found really difficult but tell the story with respect and affection. What did that experience teach you?

• Tell people about a new business conversation you had this month.

• Think about a common problem you solve. Then think about a client project where you solved that problem. Tell that story.

• Think about a project you absolutely loved. What did you love about it?

• Think about the transformation you create for your clients. Tell a story that illustrates that.

• Think about a project that didn’t go the way you expected it to. What happened? What did you learn?

• Think about a client who taught you a valuable lesson. What happened? What did you learn?

• Tell a story about a client you’d absolutely love to work with but haven’t worked with yet. What is it about them that you’re drawn to? What makes them your dream squeeze?

• Have you ever had a client who changed the direction of your business? Maybe they asked you to do something new. Maybe they trusted you to deliver something bolder than you’d ever attempted before. Tell that story.

If you’re struggling to think of stories look back through your record of work each month. That list of names and projects will spark ideas.

See if you can come up with 7 client stories. Then pop time in your diary this week to write the posts. You can batch-write them all at once or allow yourself half an hour a day to write, post and engage.

Content prompts for Week 3

Not all content is equal when it comes to making the tills ring. Different types of content do different things. If you think about the stages of attracting clients as a journey where people move from being strangers to neighbours to friends to fans (thanks to the brilliant Col Fink for this excellent metaphor for content marketing) different types of content work well at each stage.

The focus of #LinkedInFest25 in Week 4 is to convert neighbours into friends (aka paid up clients. I encourage you to play with content that helps you make sales.

The number one type of content for closing those sweet, sweet dealios is client stories. That’s why I encouraged you to spend a whole week last week sharing client stories. Hopefully, you got some enquiries as a result.

Nothing sells like a customer transformation story. They’re the ultimate proof that you deliver the goods. If you spent last week thinking up customer stories to tell, here a few ways to change up the way you tell client stories this week.

Slice and dice a case study

A case study is the story of a project told in your client’s own words, because their account is more credible than yours. Case studies take time and effort to produce … they’re probably about 10+ hours work by the time you’ve done your client interview, written your case study, and got it signed off. So, you want to get mileage out of that investment. You do that by chopping a case study up into bite size morsels and running them as a series of posts.

Use a testimonial as a springboard for a story

Testimonials are often underused on social media. People tend to post them with an awkward message saying: “Aw shucks look, someone said nice things about me.” Don’t do that. Tell a cool story about your client instead and use the testimonial as the accompanying image.

Go deep on a detail

One reason why we find customer stories hard and intimidating is we try to give the whole story arc of a project in a single post. I know because I do the same myself. Instead, just pick a single interesting detail, maybe a lesson you learned, or a cool thing that worked really well, or even something you screwed up. Grab a detail and write a client story post about that.

Here are some other types of posts that sell.

Show people the real problem

This is real expert problem solving mastery where you educate your clients about what’s really going on for the. Real problem content looks something like this, “The people I work with think they have this problem, but the real thing going on is this hidden problem over here. Oh, and by the way I fix both these problems for you with this offer over here.”

Show people your approach

Walk people through what will happen when they sign up to work with you. Talk about why you do things the way you do. Share a framework you use and talk about why it works. Breakdown a client win.You’re giving people a taste of what it’s like to work with you without doing the hard sell. (This is why free webinars and workshops are powerful for sales).

Show your offers in action

Customer stories achieve this. Another great way to do this is to showing behind the scenes of your offers. We bloody love sneak peeks, nosy little monkeys that we are. This can be as simple as a photo of a resource and a bit of a teaser blurb about why it’s so cool. It can be a video of you prepping to give a workshop, sharing some of the things you plan to cover. It can be a breakdown of an aspect of the experience you offer and why it matters. It can be a chat with a client about something you’re doing with them and how they’re finding the ride. Whip up your skirt and show a bit of behind-the-scenes ankle. Show people what it’s like to work with you. Share aspects of the experience you offer.

Make offers

I know we’re all terrified of being salesy, but it’s actually OK  to make offers, especially if you spend most of your time on social media being a good egg and sharing entertaining, thought provoking, human content and bigging other people up. Know what happens when you NEVER sell? People don’t know what you do or what you can do for them. Close your week with a sales post. I dare you.

See you on LinkedIn. #LinkedInFest25.

*The story of the photography class is told in Atomic Habits by James Clear. This story originally comes from Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, with the events reframed as occurring in a ceramics class. However, Clear learned that story was adapted from a conversation Orland had with Uelsmann about his photography teaching experiment.