I spend exactly 30 minutes per week on LinkedIn. Not 30 minutes per day — per week. Despite that, I've grown from 0 to 2.1K followers in 14 months, with a consistent engagement rate above 5%. Here's the system.
Content Pillars (5 min)
I have four content pillars: Creative Direction insights, AI Tool workflows, Founder Operations lessons, and Kansas City stories. Every post fits one pillar. This constraint makes content creation faster, not slower, because I never have to decide what to write about — only which pillar to serve this week.
The Batch Process (20 min)
Every Monday morning, I write all my LinkedIn posts for the week. That's typically 3-4 posts. I use a Claude prompt that takes my weekly observations and generates drafts for each pillar. Then I spend 15-20 minutes editing — which mostly means cutting. LinkedIn rewards conciseness.
Hook Formulas (Built In)
Every post uses one of five hook formulas: Contrarian Truth ('Most founders think X. They're wrong.'), Number + Promise ('3 things I learned from X'), Story Open ('Last Tuesday, a client asked me...'), Framework Reveal ('The system I use for X'), or Direct Challenge ('Stop doing X. Here's why.'). These aren't manipulative — they're structural. They tell the reader why they should keep reading.
Schedule (5 min)
I schedule posts for Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 8 AM CT using Buffer. That's 5 minutes of copying, pasting, and scheduling. The whole system — ideation, drafting, editing, scheduling — takes 30 minutes.