EP #034: Building trust at scale

Executive Summary

• Challenges of Attribution: Tracking the direct impact of LinkedIn posts on business outcomes can be difficult, as many interactions remain untraceable through traditional attribution methods.
• Real-World Success: Hearing from a client or colleague about how your LinkedIn content influenced a business decision underscores the platform's effectiveness in building trust and driving engagement.
• Building Trust at Scale: Consistently sharing honest, valuable content on LinkedIn helps establish trust with both your immediate network and a broader audience, even if they don’t interact directly with your posts.
• The Power of Consistency: Posting daily and maintaining authenticity, vulnerability, and a focus on adding value can lead to meaningful outcomes, both personally and professionally, over time.
• Encouragement to Share: Don’t wait for perfection—regularly sharing insights and stories on LinkedIn can have a significant impact, even without viral success, by building trust and connection with your audience.

Deep Dive

One of the most difficult aspects of posting on LinkedIn (and content marketing in general) is tracking attribution.

For example: someone sees your LinkedIn posts every day, they gain an interest in what you’re doing, and eventually, they fill out a demo request form on your website…will you ever know that LinkedIn played a role in that inbound?

For most companies, the answer is no.

That’s why I always love seeing success stories: someone tells me on a sales call that they read my posts each day, a client tells us they got funding from a post…

…or, as in today’s example, a friend connects the dots for me.

The inciting incident

Last week, I was in Palm Springs with my team for our annual off site. It was a blast. So much so that I skipped the only meeting I had booked during the week: my bi-weekly meeting with my executive coach, Dr. Jen Knight.

Fortunately, Jen was gracious about the no show. Not only that, but she let me know about a positive impact from a recent LinkedIn post:

In the post, I shared that on the basis of Jen’s advice, I’d hosted an event in San Francisco for friends, clients, and prospects.

The post did reasonably well - my average post gets 30-50 likes right now. So, while I was pleased with the post, it certainly wasn’t a viral sensation.

The impact

But then, Jen told me about the direct impact my post had on her business. Here’s her email (shared with permission):

This helped me realize how effective LinkedIn is at building trust, at scale, with people outside of my immediate network.

I would hope that my network - military Veterans, college & grad school classmates, coworkers, friends - would trust me. But it’s quite another thing entirely to attract an unknown person on the internet, add value, and gain their trust over time.

I like to think that trust is built the same way with both my network and my followers: by consistently doing the right thing.

For my followers, that means I:

• Post every day
• Be as honest and vulnerable as I can
• Aim to add value and share something that might help them

This is not without its cost. I’ve posted nearly every day for the last year. That’s a tremendous amount of intention and attention. However, every week I see some outcome like this - helping those I care about, building Executive Presence, and having an impact on other professionals.

The takeaway

It’s important to build trust in our workplace and in our personal life. We do that by constantly showing up, authentically, and adding value.

The same rule applies on LinkedIn - if you’re willing to put yourself out there and share what you know, you can build trust with a global audience in a way that is impossible to do in-person.

Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Share an insight. Tell a story. Be yourself. Don’t expect 1,000,000 likes. You don’t even need them.

You’ll be surprised at the impact you can have.