# LinkedIn as a self-experiment: 12 principles, real numbers > URL: https://4eck-media.de/en/blog/linkedin-as-a-self-experiment-12-principles-real-numbers/ > Language: en > Description: As of today, 26 July 2026, my LinkedIn profile has around 400 followers. For comparison: our TutKit.com YouTube channel has more than 24,000 followers, and on Facebook there are m… --- As of today, 26 July 2026, my LinkedIn profile has around 400 followers. For comparison: our TutKit.com YouTube channel has more than 24,000 followers, and on Facebook there are more than 110,000 spread across our own channels. We have run an agency since 2009, delivered more than 350 web and SEO projects and advise clients on AI and visibility. Yet on the one platform where our actual target group sits (managing directors and marketing leads in mid-sized companies), I have been all but invisible. It took me a long time to notice, because the other channels were performing and business is generally going well. As an agency, we are growing. It is still a little embarrassing. So we are starting an experiment. In public, with real numbers, including the months in which nothing works. I am about to join the linkedin game. So let’s play. ![Matthias Petri starts the LinkedIn self-experiment with around 400 followers](https://4eck-media.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/linkedin-selbstversuch.avif "LinkedIn self-experiment: 12 principles and real numbers") ## The experimental setup Over the past few weeks I have worked through 13 issues of the Content Playbook, an English-language newsletter in which people like Lara Acosta and Jake Ward lay out their LinkedIn strategies. Both have built seven-figure businesses with LinkedIn as their main channel. From those issues I distilled 12 principles that keep coming up. Whether these principles work in a German B2B environment, I do not know. That is exactly what we are now putting to the test. The rules: One post a week for 12 months; I want to keep up that frequency at the very least until the end of July 2027. Once a month I evaluate the numbers and publish them here on the blog. We measure what counts: followers from the target group, conversations in direct messages, project enquiries and invitations to speak or appear on podcasts. I note impressions as well, but they are not the goal (I explain why in principle 9). What we are not doing: no engagement pods, no bought followers, no artificial scarcity with countdowns, no outrage posts for reach. Tactics like these do appear in the playbook. They suit neither us nor German mid-sized business. ## The 12 principles ### 1. The idea decides, the wording only amplifies A strong observation with mediocre wording can work. A weak idea with perfect wording stays on the ground. It sounds obvious, but it changes the workflow completely: most of the time now goes into the question of which real event from the past two weeks can carry a post. Client questions, objections raised in proposals, findings from audits. The wording comes afterwards. ### 2. The hook is 80 per cent of the post The first two lines decide whether anyone clicks “see more”. So the opening gets roughly half the writing time. It is written in reverse order: the content first, then the opening, and at the end a question that opens a conversation. By now I have built my own library of hook patterns, from the counter-intuitive claim to the sober sentence with no emotive words at all (as a former police officer, I call that one the police-report hook internally). ### 3. Concrete moments instead of abstractions “Your website is not AI-readable” moves nobody. This sentence does: ask ChatGPT for the best providers in your industry and your region. If your competitor is named and you are not, you have a problem that your Google ranking will never show you. Pain is felt in moments, not in concepts. Every post needs a moment like that. ### 4. Evidence beats assertions LinkedIn is full of invented success stories, and readers know it. Anyone who shows screenshots, real numbers and client voices wins immediately. For us that also means: we are our own case study. This experiment is principle 4 in action, with all the risk that entails. If the numbers are bad, they will still be here. ### 5. Opinion makes the expert, information is a commodity Now that anyone can generate advice articles with AI in seconds, pure information has become worthless. What remains is a point of view. So I am going to take a position, even when it gets uncomfortable: on website-builder promises, on AI scaremongering, on SEO consulting with no data behind it. Disagreement is expected and welcome. ### 6. Repetition beats originality The feed shows each post to only a fraction of your followers, and a week later everyone has forgotten it. That is why the most successful authors repeat 10 to 15 core messages in ever-new packaging. It goes against my gut, which constantly wants to produce something new. All the better as a thing to test: we define our core messages and, after 90 days, we may well bring a post that worked back out with a new opening. ### 7. Write for the client, not for colleagues The classic agency mistake: content that impresses other agencies. Write about agency topics and you attract agencies. Our posts are aimed at managing directors and marketing leads, and every text has to pass the mum test: would someone with no technical background understand what this is about? “llms.txt and schema markup” then becomes “we make your website as readable for AI systems as a book with a table of contents”. We cannot avoid technical terms entirely. But they get explained. ### 8. People buy identity and feeling, not a service Nobody buys a website project. What is bought is the outcome behind it: being found, being ahead of the competition, no longer having to worry about the technology. The posts should make exactly that picture tangible, with stories instead of lists of services. ### 9. LinkedIn is an access platform, not a reach platform The principle that convinced me most. There are millions of decision-makers on LinkedIn, and one of the playbook authors reports a post with 75 likes that brought in more than 200 enquiries. Reach is pleasant, but the value lies in access to the right 50 people. That is why we measure conversations and enquiries, not impressions alone. And that is why a follower count of 400 is less dramatic than it sounds. ### 10. A system beats a heroic effort Consistency comes from routines, not from motivation. Mine looks like this: content time in the morning before the first email (I am an early riser anyway, and the coffee is black), an idea store for every client question and every objection, and a stock of prepared posts for busy weeks. Larger pieces of content such as talks are mined for everything they have: one speaker deck supplies material for weeks. ### 11. Your own analytics are market research Once a month I look at which posts performed one and a half times better than my average. Those topics are validated and get built out, into articles, talks or series. One thing matters here: the numbers judge the posts, not me. Fallow phases are factored in; every author has them. ### 12. Give first, then ask deliberately At most every fifth to tenth post is allowed to sell something. The rest delivers: knowledge, insights, mistakes others can learn from. And once a month there is a direct request, for an introduction or a speaker slot, for example. Apparently almost nobody does this, even though people like to help. We are testing that too. ![LinkedIn-Profil von Matthias Petri mit 403 Followern zum Start des Selbstversuchs](https://4eck-media.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/linkedin-experiment.avif "LinkedIn-Experiment von Matthias Petri: Start mit 403 Followern") ## The benchmark Starting point on 26 July 2026: around 400 followers, zero live enquiries via LinkedIn. Interim goal by the end of January 2027: 2,000 followers from the target group, seven qualified project enquiries, at least two speaker or podcast requests. Every month an update appears here with the real numbers, the best and the worst posts and what we have adjusted. ## Logbook This section grows as we go. Here I document what has happened since the start. ### Week 1 (20 to 26 July 2026) On the profile: follow button activated, profile URL shortened to linkedin.com/in/matthias-petri-4eck, about text rewritten. Plus seven posts published: - “Your preview image has about one second”: why AI-generated poster infographics sink in the feed, and what a motorway billboard has to do with it (88 impressions, freshly online). - Website launch for Bolzakademie Rostock: holiday camps bookable directly, accessible to WCAG 2.2, told from a father’s perspective (330 impressions). - A networking confession: why I dodge events, and what a single meeting with AI consultant Katrin Berndt set off regardless (564 impressions, 5 comments). - A find during the relaunch for AWO Müritz: an emoji in the URL slug. It works technically; the question is whether you should (627 impressions). - The SEO tip you are almost ashamed of: the Yellow Pages. With Sistrix data on why business directories are having a comeback right now (244 impressions). - “I force my son to work in the agency unpaid”: a holiday-job argument as a parenting question, the strongest post so far (2,472 impressions, 16 comments). - Quiz question: what does the domain ending .eus stand for? Answered via the launch of ime.eus for a Tokyo-based corporate group (891 impressions, 3 comments). ![LinkedIn-Post von Matthias Petri mit seinem Sohn bei 4eck Media und 2.472 Impressionen](https://4eck-media.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/linkedin-ferienarbeit-post.avif "Ferienarbeit bei 4eck Media: LinkedIn-Post mit 2.472 Impressionen") First observation after a week: the most personal post with the most provocative opening tops the list, with almost four times the second best. The purely technical posts trail behind. That matches principles 3 and 8, and it confirms the playbook thesis that the hook decides everything. If you want to follow the experiment: on LinkedIn you will find me as [Matthias Petri](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthias-petri-4eck/), where the self-experiment is running live. And if you are struggling with LinkedIn yourself right now, rest assured: the two of us were in the same boat only recently.