Last Tuesday I opened LinkedIn to write a post and closed the tab eleven minutes later having written the word "The."
That's it. The.
If you've been there, this list is for you. It's not a strategy guide. It's the actual list I keep in a note on my phone for days when my brain refuses to cooperate, cleaned up so it makes sense to someone who isn't me.
Quick note before we start: you don't need all 27. Honestly you need maybe five. But different ideas work for different people, so I'm giving you the whole pile and you can dig through it.
Stories
1. A mistake. The bigger and dumber, the better. My most-commented post ever was about sending a proposal to the wrong client. Two competing clients, same industry, one very bad Monday. People eat this stuff up because everyone's done something similar and nobody talks about it.
2. Your first job. What it paid. What it taught you. What you'd tell that kid now.
3. The time you almost quit. Job, business, whatever. There's a version of this post that's cheesy and a version that's honest, and the difference is usually whether you include the part where you didn't handle it gracefully.
4. Something a customer said that stuck with you. No names. But that offhand comment that changed how you think about your work? That's a post. I still think about a client who told me "I don't pay you to agree with me" like, six years later.
5. Before and after. Three years ago vs now. If you have numbers, use them. If you have old screenshots, even better. Receipts beat claims.
Opinions
This is where comments come from, by the way. Stories get read, opinions get argued with. And the algorithm loves an argument.
6. Popular advice you think is wrong. Everyone says post every day. Do you actually believe that? I don't. I posted twice a week for a year and it went fine. Say the thing.
7. Your industry's sacred cow. Every field has one belief nobody questions. Question it. Politely, but question it.
8. A trend you're skipping. Careful here. The goal is "thoughtful skeptic," not "old man yells at cloud." I've crossed that line before. It's not a good look.
9. A hiring take. Half of LinkedIn is hiring and the other half is job hunting, so hiring opinions basically always find an audience.
10. Something you changed your mind about. Underrated format. Admitting you were wrong makes people trust everything else you say a little more. Counterintuitive but it works.
Teaching posts
11. Your exact process for something. Not "how to write proposals." More like "how I write a proposal in 45 minutes, including the template I steal from myself every time." Specificity is the whole game here.
12. Break down something that worked. A post that took off. An email that got a reply from someone important. Show the actual thing, then explain the why. Two paragraphs of why is plenty.
13. Your tool stack. People are nosy. Let them be nosy at you.
14. A tiny case study. Problem, attempt, result. Three paragraphs. You're writing a post, not a whitepaper, and honestly the whitepaper version would get skipped anyway.
15. Advice for someone starting out in your field. This format is older than LinkedIn itself and it still works, which tells you something.
16. Explain a concept like the reader is brand new. Jargon-free. You'd be shocked how many senior folks quietly save these because they never actually learned the basics properly. Nobody admits this. Everybody does it.
For the days you have ten minutes
17. One observation plus one question. "The best marketers I know are all obsessive readers. Coincidence?" Post it. Walk away. Done.
18. A screenshot with your take. Stat, chart, book quote. Two sentences from you. That counts as a post, I promise.
19. A small win. Not a milestone. A Tuesday-sized win. "Finally fixed the onboarding email that's been bugging me since April" is more relatable than any award announcement.
20. An actual question. Not engagement bait. A real one, where you'll read the answers. Book recommendations work great for this.
21. Repost your old stuff. A post from six months ago reached maybe 5% of your audience. Change the hook, run it again. Nobody notices. The two people who notice don't care.
Personal-ish
22. A habit that changed things for you. Skip the 5am routine stuff, it's been done to death. But something specific, like "I stopped checking email before 11" plus what actually happened after? That works.
23. What you're reading. With one takeaway. The takeaway is the post, the book is just the excuse.
24. Shout someone out. Tag them. Costs you nothing, means a lot, and their whole network sees it. There is no downside to this post. None.
25. Behind the scenes. What a random workday actually looks like. Half-finished drafts, messy notes, the unglamorous middle of things. Polish is overrated and people can smell it anyway.
26. Your why. You get to post this maybe three times a year. Use it wisely.
27. Gratitude, but with a story attached. Not "feeling blessed." More like: three years ago nobody replied to my pitches, yesterday a company I admire reached out to us first, and here's what changed in between. The story is what saves it from being fluff.
Okay but here's the real problem
Ideas were never the issue. You just read 27 of them in five minutes.
The issue is that your best ideas show up in the shower, in traffic, halfway through someone else's boring meeting. And by the time you sit down to actually write? Gone. Completely gone. So you stare at the blank screen and conclude you have no ideas, when really you had four great ones this week and saved zero of them.
So, a few things that actually help:
Keep an idea bank somewhere. A phone note, a doc, a content tool like ScoutHook if you want something that also helps you turn one saved idea into several posts. Where you keep it matters way less than the fact that you keep it.
Batch your writing. Three posts, one sitting, Sunday evening. Tuesday-you will be so grateful.
And steal formats, not content. When a post stops your scroll, screenshot it. Later, figure out the skeleton underneath it. Then put your own story on that skeleton. Every good LinkedIn writer does this. Every single one.
Last thing
Pick five ideas from this list that sound like you. Ignore the rest. Rotate those five for a month and pay attention to what your audience responds to, because it won't be what you expect. It never is.
And if a post flops, who cares. It's out of everyone's feed by tomorrow anyway. The people winning on LinkedIn aren't the ones writing perfect posts. They're the ones who kept posting while everyone else was staring at the blinking cursor, writing the word "The" and closing the tab.
Go write something.