Don’t Treat LinkedIn™ Like a Vending Machine

May 13, 2025

Connect

Avoid This Common Mistake on LinkedIn

Hey!

For two long years, I made a huge mistake on LinkedIn.

Well, mistakes, really.

When I first came to LinkedIn in 2021, I was a "real" writer (yes, I reminded myself often). I had a New York Times Bestseller (and reminded myself of that even more).

But when it came to copywriting and running a business? I was a rookie.

My Biggest Mistake:

I treated LinkedIn like a vending machine.

I would post just to get leads.
I’d get leads and then disappear.
I made excuses for being inconsistent.

The truth? We're all busy. We all have competing priorities. But I had this idea that I could “show up” only on my terms—and still expect results. Spoiler: it doesn’t work that way.

The Shift That Changed Everything:

I stopped thinking of LinkedIn as a vending machine and started treating it like a garden.

Cheesy? Yes. But most true things are.

Here’s what that looked like:

Planting Seeds: Researching, posting thoughtful content, and engaging meaningfully.
Nurturing Growth: Offering help for free, responding to DMs, commenting on other people's posts, and cheering others on.

And here’s what I learned:

Growth doesn’t happen overnight—it takes time and consistency.
You can’t harvest if you don’t cultivate the connections you already have.
Showing up consistently builds trust—long before someone becomes a client.

What About You?

We’ve all made mistakes in business—big ones and small ones. The key is learning from them and planting something better for tomorrow.

What’s one mistake you’ve made in business—and how did you turn it around?

I’d love to hear your story. Hit reply and share!

Free Download: Nurturing Your Network Engagement Checklist

You don't have to start at the beginning

Here's a permission slip most people never get on LinkedIn: You don't have to tell a chronological story. You don't have to start at the start. You don't have to give the setup, the background, the "so a little context first." You can drop your reader straight into the moment that matters and trust them to keep up. Because honestly? The announcements, the introductions, the team-offsite hype, w...

Do you know your brand relatives?

Do you know your brand relatives? Not your competitors. Your relatives. This might be the single most underrated concept in personal branding, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. Here's the family tree. Brand Fraternal Twins Same industry. Same audience. Different delivery. Think Brené Brown and Simon Sinek. Both talk about leadership and human behavior. But Brené leads with vulnerability ...

LinkedIn is a long game. The algorithm isn't.

LinkedIn is a long game. But the algorithm isn't. And confusing those two things will quietly wreck your momentum. Here's the mechanic almost nobody talks about. LinkedIn's feed system actively retrieves content from roughly the past 30 days. That's the window it's working with when it decides what to surface and to whom. Which means: If you disappear for a month, you're not "slowing down." You...

Don’t Treat LinkedIn™ Like a Vending Machine

My Biggest Mistake:

The Shift That Changed Everything:

What About You?

Get Notified When Enrollment is Open for my Next Masterclass Cohort!