There’s one social media channel that freelance writers can’t miss right now.
You guessed it LinkedIn.
Why?
Because LinkedIn is business oriented. People come there for thought leadership, ideas and connections that can help them achieve their goals.
If you can establish yourself as an expert and build a strong personal brand around your business and what you do on LinkedIn, it will open many doors for you.
So if you want one successful freelance writingIt’s time to master LinkedIn.
Here are my five strategies – updated for those currently working – to ensure you manage your time effectively and give yourself the best chance to succeed on this platform.
Sound good? Continue reading.
If video is more your thing, check out below.
What Matters Now
Before we get into the strategies, you should know that LinkedIn’s algorithm has changed over the years. Many old tactics have stopped working.
Here’s what the algorithm rewards now:
- Comments over Likes: A post with 50 thoughtful comments will do better than a post with 500 likes. LinkedIn wants real conversations.
- Stores and sends: LinkedIn added these metrics to send analytics. This tells you that they value content worth keeping private and sharing.
- Golden hour: The first 60 to 90 minutes of your post are everything. LinkedIn first shows your post to 2-5% of your network. If they engage rapidly, it expands. If not, the post dies.
- Native content wins: External links now get about 60% less traffic than non-link posts. If you link, mention the link in the comments.
What is punished:
- Engagement bait (“Comment YES if you agree!”)
- Engagement sections and circular comment groups — LinkedIn now detects these
- Clickbait, vague stories and excessive promotional posts
In this context, there are five strategies that work now.
Five strategies for mastering LinkedIn
If you’re not already on LinkedIn, it’s time to jump on the platform.
To do this, check out this post.
LinkedIn has become the best platform for potential clients from freelancers. For most freelancers I’ve talked to, LinkedIn is where they get most of their clients these days – more so than job boards or cold pitching.
If you’re not creating a presence there, you’re leaving work on the table.
1. Write to Prospects, Not Other Freelancers
I see it all the time: people go to LinkedIn, join freelance writing communities, and connect with other freelance writers.
This is great for building relationships with peers. But that won’t get you customers.
If someone scrolls through your LinkedIn page, they need to know exactly what you do and who you’re targeting.
How to do it
First, look at your last 10 posts. Count how much freelancing advice is for other freelancers compared to content that interests your ideal client. If most of your posts are aimed at writers, you need to relocate.
Second, identify three to five topics that your ideal customers really care about. If you a freelance medical writeryou might want to talk about regulations, new research, or general content challenges facing brands in this industry. If you’re writing for financial services, it could be compliance, fintech trends or customer experience.
Third, write posts that show your expertise in those areas. Share an idea from a recent project (without mentioning the client’s name). Explain why a company’s content strategy works. Consider the industry trend.
The goal is that when a marketing director visits your profile, they see someone who understands their world, not someone who just talks to other writers.
LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritizes relevance over connectivity.
If you consistently post about a specific topic for a specific audience, LinkedIn recognizes your authority in that niche and delivers your content to more people in that space.
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2. Overcome your shipping anxiety
You don’t need to post every day. A lot of conventional wisdom says that to be successful, you have to constantly put yourself out there.
It’s amazing, and it’s why a lot of freelancers I know don’t have much of a presence on LinkedIn. They don’t know what to say. They feel imposter syndrome. That’s why they don’t write anything.
The truth: consistently posting once or twice a week for a few months can yield huge results.
How to do it
Choose a cadence that you can actually maintain. It works every Monday and Thursday. Also every Wednesday. Consistency is more important than frequency.
Block out 30 minutes on Sunday to plan your weekly posts. Write them down, schedule them using LinkedIn’s native scheduler, and then you’re done thinking about it.
If you don’t know what to write, start with these formats:
- A lesson you learned from a recent project
- A mistake you made early in your career and what you would do differently
- Explain why the content you admire works so well
- An approach that goes against what everyone else in your niche thinks is right
- The article you liked and your thoughts about it
Text posts with strong hooks and clear formatting are currently the most used. You don’t need fancy graphics or video. A well-written post with a catchy first line works.
3. Focus on engagement
If you want to master LinkedIn, realize that this is a long-term strategy. A marathon. It will take a while for people to find you.
But you can speed things up.
Commenting on other people’s posts and sending contact requests to prospects is more important than sending.
Sarah Greesonbach he calls it “walking the marketing dog.” Just like you should take your best friend for a daily walk, you can do the same with your marketing.
How to do it
Make a list of 20-30 prospects: marketing directors, content managers, editors or founders of companies you want to work for. Watch them all.
Spend 15-20 minutes per day scrolling through their posts. Leave a thoughtful comment when you see something worth commenting on. “Great post!” not. or “So true!” These are ignored. Instead:
- Share a related experience: “I saw something similar while working with a fintech client last year…”
- Add a helpful resource: “This reminds me of (something specific) that drives it further…”
- Ask a real question: “How did you go about doing this (specific problem)?”
Do this consistently and your name starts getting in front of the right people. They see you in their notifications. They click on your profile. They remember you.
Ed Gandia It has a technique called the 3-2-1 method: send 3 contact requests, 2 comments, and 1 post per day.
If this seems too much, choose a smaller number.
Do three things every day on LinkedIn. Three contact requests. Two comments and one post. Or just three thoughtful comments.
4. Optimize Your Profile for Customers
Your content should be customer oriented. You should also have a profile.
Go back to your profile, edit it and accept it as a sales page. You are selling yourself.
How to do it
Start with your title. Don’t write “Freelance Writer”. Write something that tells prospects what you do for them: “I write content that helps B2B SaaS companies convert leads” or “Financial services content writer | (Company 1), (Company 2), (Company 3).”
Rewrite your about section in the second person. Address the reader directly. Tell them what problems you’ve solved, who you’ve worked with, and what results you’ve achieved. Add a call to action at the end.
Highlight clients you’ve worked with, talk about wins for them, share testimonials with people who were impressed with the results, get in touch with you portfolio siteand show how you can help others.
Add your best work to the Featured section. Attach two or three pieces that show the quality of your writing. If you have a case study or review, please include it as well.
Mention specific clients in your experience section. “Wrote 50+ articles covering AI in banking, payments and credit card strategy for client A” is better than “Wrote articles for various clients”.
Most job applications and even freelance writing gigsI want to see your LinkedIn page now. Brands and hiring managers check this before contacting them.
Make sure it works for you.
5. Create Your Idea Brain
Remember when I said that so many people get stuck because they don’t know what to write?
Here’s the solution: write down 10 ideas every day in a notebook or notepad.
Most will be bad. But if you have 70 new ideas at the end of each week, it’s probably worth developing 5-10 of them.
How to do it
Set a daily reminder. Every morning with your coffee or every night before bed. Open your Notes app and write 10 thoughts. These can be post ideas, article ideas, what you’ve learned, questions, or anything.
Don’t judge them. Just write. The goal is volume.
Review the list at the end of the week. Start with those that feel worth developing. Turn these into posts.
But if you’re really stuck?
turn it over AI writing tools Like ChatGPT. Writer’s block should never be a thing anymore.
Open it up and ask for ideas for 10 LinkedIn posts about your niche. Then, if you need to, ask more and you have a starting place to explore your own thinking to expand or distort what the AI gives you.
Twenty to thirty minutes a day on LinkedIn can make a big difference
As a freelancer, if you can spend 20-30 minutes a day on LinkedIn, it will pay off.
Most freelancers I talk to now say that LinkedIn is their best source for inbound leads. A few years ago it was job boards and cold pitching. But the platform has changed.
And it pays off in different ways. It’s great to get customers. But you also build a larger network with other freelancers, which means more referrals and more job security. The bigger your network, the more stable your income.
Don’t delay logging into LinkedIn anymore. Put in the time and effort and it will pay off.
Sean Ogle
Sean Ogle is the founder of Location Rebel, where he has spent the past 12+ years teaching people how to build online businesses that give people the freedom to do more of what they want to do in life. When he’s not in coffee shops in Portland or on the beaches of Bali, he’s sneaking into some other high-end establishment where he probably doesn’t belong.
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