One of my biggest challenges with content creation on LinkedIn is this:
1 - I want to create high quality content
2 - I want to show up every day
When I started on LinkedIn, I had an “advantage”:
I had no design skills.
I don’t mean I was bad at design. I don’t mean I was a beginner. I mean absolute zero. I had never used Canva, or Figma, or any other design software.
With that in mind, all of my early posts were text posts.
This meant that my content lacked visual appeal.
It also meant I could write, post, and enjoy that sweet dopamine hit as the likes and comments poured in, every single day.
For a long time, that was working just fine. And then disaster struck: I learned Canva. And I started getting fancy.
Some of my recent carousel covers
Pretty soon, good writing was no longer enough.
I started thinking about brand, and colour, and composition, and fonts. I used Midjourney to create carousel cover images. I created simple graphics to illustrate concepts.
All well and good, except that now, every post took 3-4 hours.
This quality-centric approach has allowed me to build a reputation for good content. But it comes with a major downside: Most top creators are posting 4-5 times a week.
I post once or twice a week, at best.
So what’s the solution? How can I maintain a high standard, but double, or even triple my content output?
I believe the answer is finding the right Content Tempo.
Content Tempo
In music, tempo refers to speed. It can be fast, and exciting, and frantic. Or it can be slow, and thoughtful, and gentle. Neither one is better than the other.
The most interesting music moves between the two.
We can apply this thinking to content, and find a tempo that allows us to shift between fast content and slow content.
Slow Content
Definition: Long form, brand building content
Content Types: Infographics, Carousels, Videos
Time To Create: 2-4 hours per post
Fast Content
Definition: Short form, top of mind content
Content Types: Text only, Photo, Static Image
Time To Create: 20-30 minutes per post
Why Create Slow Content?
Slow content is where your personal brand is built.
This is where you “become somebody” on social media.
It takes a lot of time to create. You can spend hours on a single post.
But slow content is where you’ll share your best work.
It’s worth doing, precisely because all that extra effort adds up to content that is more original, more creative, more valuable, and more memorable than what everyone else is doing.
This is why creators like Joe Burns, Zoe Scaman and Josh Lowman have quickly blown up on LinkedIn.
Joe Burns
Joe Burns is Strategy Lead at Quality Meats Creative.
He shares insightful, original thoughts on strategy, coupled with fun, thought provoking, hilarious, and sometimes absurd imagery on every page.
It’s been dubbed “dopamine design” and it’s not hard to see why. Here are the first four pages from a 40 page carousel Joe created.
He does a lot of interesting things with content, but he is best known for his comprehensive deep dives on the strategy behind brands like Figma, Airbnb, OpenAI and Lovable.
Josh and his team spend weeks creating a single LinkedIn post.
These posts have driven hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
Zoe Scaman
Zoe Scaman is the founder of Bodacious, a strategy studio.
Most of the time, her content is just text and nothing else.
No imagery. No carousels.
No hooks. No photography.
No embellishment of any kind.
Her writing and her ideas are so good, her content succeeds anyway.
Why Create Fast Content?
So slow content is where the magic happens.
Fast content won’t build your brand. So why bother?
Fast content is about maintaining cruising altitude. It supports your slow content. It keeps you in your audience’s mind while you’re working on your next significant post.
Fast content is not bad content.
It can still offer value to your audience. It can be a punchy little reminder, or a quick win. It can answer a frequently asked question. It can offer a glimpse of your life outside work.
She balances her long form content with short, straight-to-the-point posts of just a few sentences.
Her slow content builds her personal brand, and builds her authority as a buyer psychology expert.
Her fast content ensures she remains present on the platform, and keeps her audience engaged until her next deep dive.
Do What Works For You
So what’s the right way to do this?
How much slow content? How much fast content?
It will be different for everyone - how much time you have, whether you’re creating on your own or with help, the type of content you enjoy creating and consuming, and the season of life you’re in right now.
It has changed for me over time. Right now, I am midway through a LinkedIn coaching cohort, and have very little time for content creation.
My content goal is simply to maintain my personal brand, not to grow it.
Once the cohort is complete, I’ll ramp back up to growth.
Find the content tempo that works for you.
To finish, here are three content tempos that might work for you - Maintenance, Balanced and Growth.
Maintenance
A minimalist approach for entrepreneurs who want to maintain their personal brands during busy periods.
Content Creation Time: 2 hours a week
Slow Content: 2 posts a month
Fast Content: 6 posts a month
Balanced
A moderate approach for the busy entrepreneur who is actively growing their personal brand.
Content Creation Time: 4 hours a week
Slow Content: 4 posts a month
Fast Content: 6 posts a month
Growth
An aggressive approach, best suited to an entrepreneur whose business is built on social media, and/or who is working with a team.
Content Creation Time: 10+ hours a week
Slow Content: 8 posts a month
Fast Content: 10 posts a month
P.S. My LinkedIn course and community, LinkMinded, is closed for now, but I'm thinking about running another cohort before the end of the year.
Would this be of interest to you?
LinkMinded is for entrepreneurs who want to:
Build a profitable personal brand
Grow their audience on LinkedIn
Attract and convert ideal fit clients
Be part of a LinkedIn community dedicated to creative entrepreneurs (coaches, consultants and agency owners)
Reply GROW if you're interested, and I'll keep you in the loop.
Nice Work is written by Sam Browne.
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