I posted on LinkedIn every day for 90 days. Here is everything I learnt.

At the Second Brain Summit in October 2024, I heard Anne-Laure Le Cunff share her concept of Tiny Experiments. The Tiny Experiment asks you to adopt a scientist mindset to understand what you can learn from anything. Like a scientist, each tiny experiment follows a set structure:?

1. Define your hypothesis
2. Set a tiny, low-risk experiment
3. Run the experiment
4. Measure the results
5. Analyse and iterate?
6. Decide: Keep, adjust or scrap?

The reason this approach immediately resonated with me is that I am someone who needs a system that supports me, without restricting me. Treating any work project as a tiny experiment allows me to understand, before I commence how it contributes to my broader strategic priorities and provides an opportunity to reflect on lessons learnt to inform how I proceed. It also allows me to proceed intentionally, ensuring I use my non-renewable time resources effectively.?

For anyone who followed my Tiny Experiment I hope this debrief explains why it looked like I was throwing 90 different things at the wall to see what stuck (I was…). If you are curious about conducting your LinkedIn Tiny Experiment, I hope this provides insight into what to expect. You can also learn more about Le Cunff’s work and Tiny Experiments on the Ness Labs website.

Step 1: Define your hypothesis

My hypothesis at the start of my experiment was?

‘If I post on LinkedIn every day for 90 days, I expect to improve my writing, find my post preference and increase my account analytics.’?

To test this hypothesis, I knew I would need to track the following data:?

• Engagement trends over time (before, during and after the experiment);
• Comparison of different post types (text only, text with photos, etc);
• Impressions and reach trends;
• Time spent on crafting different post types; and
• Qualitative feedback (including my writing confidence, challenges, and feedback from others).?

Step 2: Set a tiny, low-risk experiment

Arguably the most important step when conducting a Tiny Experiment is to frame the experiment using the structure ‘I will [action] for [duration]’.?

For this experiment, I chose ‘I will post on LinkedIn every day for 90 days (11 November 2024 - 8 February 2025).’

It was also important to understand and document the challenges I would likely encounter and the observations I would like to track throughout. Here is what I came up with for my experiment:?

• posting daily requires high content generation;
• I wanted to experiment with different content types and writing styles;
• concern people might get tired of seeing my posts; and
• mindful of the emotional challenge to see posts I was proud of perform poorly, or not connect with others.?

Step 3: Run the experiment

My Tiny Experiment ran from 11 November 2024 to 8 February 2025. During this time I:?

• posted daily (except for one unexpected week off at the end of 2024);
• tested different content formats, styles and engagement strategies including text-only posts, personal stories (with and without photos), carousels, videos, polls and links; and
• balanced engagement efforts including responding to comments, optimising post timings and responding to DMs.

Throughout the experiment, I regularly monitored my LinkedIn analytics. However, as someone who is intrinsically motivated, I was mindful that I didn’t want to place too much emphasis on these. This became incredibly important as people followed and unfollowed or when posts didn’t receive the engagement I thought they would.?

As the experiment progressed, I started noticing several trends:?

• Engagement was higher than in the 90 days before the experiment, suggesting the experiment had an impact.?
• However, I was travelling in the 90 days prior which meant I was not as active on LinkedIn as I ordinarily would have been.?
• The people who engaged with my content shifted and evolved, suggesting I connected with different segments in my network.?
• People in real life would mention they liked a post, which was not always my most recent post, indicating my posts remained in feeds longer than before the experiment.?

Step 4: Measure the results

Like a true scientist, I measured the results of my Tiny Experiment using quantitative and qualitative measures.

Quantitative Metrics

Note for the following qualitative metrics: I am not a numbers person. Instead of teaching myself to code, or manually interpreting the data, I used ChatGPT’s Python integration to help with the analysis. As a result, some of this data may be inaccurate. However, based on my interpretation of the results they appear accurate.?

Deciding how to measure the results of this Tiny Experiment was an experiment itself. Initially, I compared the 90 days to everything I posted pre-experiment to cover 365 days. However, this was an inaccurate comparison as it compared different periods. Under this initial approach, my hypothesis to increase analytics was false.

LinkedIn Engagement and Impressions Metrics

Instead, I broke it down into 90-day blocks for a like-for-like comparison. I used two preceding 90-day blocks to account for my extended travel in the 90 days before my experiment. Here’s how my engagement varied across the three time periods:?

As you can see, my engagement increased significantly during the experiment compared to the two previous 90-day blocks. Compared to the second period, reactions increased 87%, shares 211% and comments 171%, indicating my Tiny Experiment significantly impacted engagement. The results indicate I was able to drive more conversations, reactions and shares, suggesting people resonated with what I was sharing.?

Impressions saw a similar increase.?

Return on Time Investment

During the experiment, the amount of time I spent on LinkedIn also increased. This was an important metric because my goal is to be more intentional with how I spend my time. I also wanted to share the reality of the time it takes to consistently post on LinkedIn as it is easy to compare ourselves to people who post frequently and wonder why we can’t do the same.?

During the Tiny Experiment, I knew posting daily would require amending my priorities and putting other initiatives on hold. If you are conducting a similar experiment, this is an important metric to consider.?Here is how much time I spent on LinkedIn during each time period, including the return on time investment across the three time periods, per 1,000 impressions received.

These results indicate the extra time I spent refining and designing my content for LinkedIn during the experiment did not significantly increase the impressions I received based on that effort.?

There are two ways to interpret this:?

1. Regardless of the time I spend crafting content for LinkedIn, the time taken to reach 1,000 impressions remained consistent at one hour.?
2. Even though I spent double the hours on LinkedIn to maintain efficiency, creating templates accounts for a significant portion of this time, which will result in a longer-term investment.?

There are benefits to both interpretations. Under the former, my concern about people experiencing content fatigue was unsupported by the data. The latter means I can continue to benefit from content I previously created, reducing my frequency of posts but maintaining (or improving) time per 1,000 impressions.?

Here’s how this return on investment looks from the perspective of engagement:?

This indicates, that the content I shared during the experiment was more shareable, encouraged more discussions and received consistent reactions to the pre-experiment periods.?

Top Posts

The final quantitative metric I want to highlight is my top posts. To analyse these I identified the broad themes and post types. These were important because I wanted to understand what most connected with others. It was also important to understand the types of posts that most resonated with others so I could focus my attention on creating more of this content moving forward.?

For these categories, I focused on the conversion rate from the number of impressions to engagements (Divide the total number of interactions by the total impressions; Multiply the result by 100 to get an engagement rate percentage). I did this on the presumption if someone likes content they will engage with it and understanding the conversion rate helps identify content resonating with others. If you are someone who looks at content but doesn’t engage with it, this is a reminder to engage with the posts that co. If someone is relying on this metric they may stop sharing this type of content if the conversion is low.?

Here is a breakdown of the themes that consistently appeared in my top posts, across all time-periods:?

Personal and workplace mental health (Psychosocial Hazard) posts consistently connected across all three periods. I anticipated this, as it is the content I most share. The success of trust during the experiment was also a nice surprise, as this forms part of my second Tiny Experiment (Every 4 weeks, I will post a poll on LinkedIn for you to choose the theme of my posts, allowing us to deep-dive and learn together throughout the year.). Sadly, posts around tomorrow (the future of work) and yesterday (historical context) performed poorly across all periods. I say sadly because these are some of my favourite posts.

During the experiment, I also experimented with different types of posts. Across all periods, I was experimenting with text-only posts, adding links, photos, carousels, polls and sharing my lived experience.?

Everything I read said Polls typically perform well, however these results indicate mine don’t. In the context of themes, it is not surprising personal posts, with a photo were the most engaging combination across all periods. Interestingly, when I used carousels to explain business concepts (eg my 4-week trust deep dive), these did not make it into my top posts, yet carousels sharing my personal experiences did. The drop during the experiment period with text and link posts was also interesting. This may have been because most of the links during the experiment were added in comments, or the significant increase in my posts meant the algorithm prioritised my non-link posts.?

Qualitative Reflections

Equally important, were my my qualitative findings. To effectively measure these throughout the experiment I continued to reflect on two questions:?

Here are those reflections.?

What felt good??

Reflecting on what felt good, I can summarise these into three main categories.?

Experimenting with my established writing habits and what I write about

I already had established a consistent writing habit so this experiment allowed me to explore different writing styles. Typically I prefer to focus on long-form content, like articles, however, I wanted to try something different. Some of my posts were well thought out in advance, and some were the expressions of frustration I experienced at the moment (see if you can spot those ones!).?

Knowing I was posting every day also forced me to take risks and share things I might otherwise not have shared. Many of these posts had been sitting in my drafts for weeks, months, or even years yet I wasn’t ready to share them. Surprisingly, these posts resonated most, because they shared a secret many of us have and feel like we are the only ones to experience. Sharing these experiences has led to conversations and opportunities I may not have had otherwise. They have also given me the confidence to keep sharing these ‘secrets’ because I understand the importance of normalising these often taboo or stigmatised topics.?

Discovering which content formats resonated??

I enjoyed testing new ideas for content and finding creative ways to integrate them into my core themes. One that I’m most proud of was my carousel entitled ‘Can our brain predict how our job will impact our mental health?’. Wanting to keep my content fun and interesting led me to a website that lets you create a font of your handwriting. While most people won’t realise it’s my handwriting, several posts from my trust deep dive (and in this article) were written using my font. Had I not been conducting this experiment I may not have found a resource I now love. My second Tiny Experiment was also developed as I thought of new content formats others might like.

Increasing my interaction with others?

I have always believed in engaging with content on my feed that resonates, but this experiment took this to a new level. The 171% increase in my comments during the experiment meant plenty of people challenging my perspectives, sharing their insights and teaching me new things. These interactions also informed much of my latter content, as I knew it would provide value to at least one person. As my experiment progressed people would mention my posts in conversation. This was a great way to continue the conversation and is one of the reasons I’m sharing these results publicly.?

What was challenging??

I found this Tiny Experiment a challenge. I have always viewed LinkedIn and other social media as a necessary evil. Before this experiment, I would try to post 2 or 3 times per week, yet I regularly took breaks if I felt uninspired, overwhelmed or was spending extensive time in deep work. Here were the three most challenging parts of this experiment:?

Finding something new to say every day

This experiment was me throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. While I tried to stick to my key themes, I was curious to see what would most resonate. Occasionally it felt like I was lost and had no idea what I was doing. On these days I was ready to give up and let the experiment fade into the digital wasteland. I was also mindful of content fatigue (for myself and others), which is one of the reasons I wanted to experiment with different types of content. The challenge with this approach is people may have followed me because they liked one post, but then I switched to something more aligned with my key themes and I lost followers. Despite understanding this is why people left, I still experienced a sense of guilt and loss every time I saw that number decrease. I came to accept these fluctuations in my follower count and now spend less time looking at the metrics.

The emotional impact when posts I was proud of performed poorly

I am highly intrinsically motivated, so while I found this discouraging at times, I was posting for myself. Some of my favourite posts, that I was most proud of, were the same posts with limited engagement. It might have been a combination of the time I posted, the content or other factors that contributed, but it still hurt knowing others didn’t find them as exciting as I did.?

If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and I apologise for using this opportunity to share links to some of my favourite posts (including the current metrics as of 16 February 2025). If they resonate please give them a like so I know I’m not the only one to find them interesting:?

• Assessing User Trust with Meta & TikTok (295 impressions, 3 engagements)
• Are generalists the modern-day hunter-gathers? (188 impressions, 1 engagement)
• What analytics did you gather last year? (133 impressions, 3 engagements)

The time investment required to keep up with comments and interactions daily was demanding

This was my greatest challenge, for anyone considering a similar Tiny Experiment. While I loved the opportunity to engage with so many people and am grateful for everyone who engaged with my content I want to be honest about the reality of daily posting. Generally, when I post on LinkedIn and receive notifications I know exactly what post it relates to. During the experiment, I would have people commenting on something I shared 5 minutes ago, or 6 weeks ago. This required more effort as with each notification I had to remind myself of the post to help inform my response to the comment. I also know I missed several comments because of the speed my notifications were moving. When there are multiple comments on a post, this is generally grouped as one, linking to the most recent comment. To ensure I was responding to every comment meant having to scroll through all the existing comments to identify any I missed. This process became tedious towards the end of the experiment.?

Step 5: Analyse and iterate?

As with my qualitative data, as I was undertaking this tiny experiment, I repeatedly reflected on three questions:

Here are my conclusions.?

What worked??

Sharing personal stories

Personal stories about my lived experiences drove most of the engagement, with people responding to authentic storytelling. I was happy with this because I consider my role as part storyteller, consultant, historian, futures thinker and designer. I also enjoy storytelling, particularly when I can use my experiences to help others feel less alone. Knowing personal stories with text and a photo had the highest engagement gave me the confidence to incorporate my photography hobby into future posts. I also know I can use my platform to help others share their stories if they don’t feel safe to share themselves. To do this, I have created anonymous Google Forms for people to share their lived experiences with disability or workplace mental health. Moving forward, my goal is to share these on LinkedIn so we can reduce the stigma and move towards an inclusive and sustainable future.?

Posting daily allowed me to publicly fail 90 times

I knew going into this experiment that consistency is key and that increasing my posts would increase engagement. I also know the most successful people are the ones who have publicly failed the most. Throughout this experiment, I failed plenty of times, but I found something that resonated with others, meaning I was focusing my attention in the right direction. Posting daily allowed me to experiment with different content types, which I can use to refine what works for me.?

Publicly committing made me accountable?

There were many days when I couldn’t be bothered to post (the random afternoon posts if you are curious). Yet, I committed to posting every day for 90 days and I did (except for the unexpected week off at the end of 2024). Despite the days, it felt like effort, the experiment has increased my confidence in writing and sharing consistently. It helped me refine the role I want LinkedIn to play in my work and the value I can best provide others. I have also learnt what content most resonates, which I will continue prioritising.?

What didn’t work??

Content fatigue was real?

I do not have experience in marketing or maintaining a consistent content schedule. To overcome this, I developed an initial content calendar and did what I was supposed to do to make this easy (batch content, content pillars etc). However, I have learnt I require an adaptive structure - with enough systems to support me, without restricting me. In the beginning, I did batch my content, however towards the end, I lost momentum and ended up coming up with a post on the day. This made it difficult to maintain the high quality I expected of myself and I felt some of my posts were not of the standard I expected of myself. I hope this was not visible to those seeing my content, but if it was I apologise. Towards the end of the experiment, I realised the approach I should have taken, which I will use moving forward.?

People use LinkedIn as a platform for a quick scroll?(I think)

As someone who has built LinkedIn into my daily routine, I was curious to understand how others use the platform. In some of my posts, I put the onus on others to contribute their perspective on a topic without providing a detailed prompt. These posts performed poorly, which I interpreted as how people engage with the platform. While I view LinkedIn as a place to learn new things, engage with other perspectives and share my own, I understand that is not how everyone sees LinkedIn. When I check LinkedIn, I treat it as a deep focus block - I’m sitting at my laptop, listening to my focus playlist without distractions. For others, LinkedIn is the place they go while waiting in line at the coffee shop.?

Historical and future posts did not resonate?

Paradigm Makers ’ 3 strategic pillars are to understand the historical context, identify opportunities for today and create new paradigms for tomorrow. For me, the history and future are equally as important as today because to create an inclusive and sustainable future we need to understand how we got here. I understand my ability to view the world through this lens is uncommon as most people are rightfully concerned with the world today. The reason I focus on all three time horizons is that work today is a direct consequence of the decisions the collective we made over the last hundred years. Understanding what we did yesterday, can inform how we can change work for today, and consider what tomorrow could look like. Despite these posts not resonating, I will continue to post however will be experimenting with how I share so others can also appreciate.?

What surprised me??

Screaming into the infinite abyss?

Throughout this experiment there have been times it felt like I was screaming into the infinite abyss. I saw the number of impressions and members increase, yet engagements remained the same. Halfway through the experiment, I realised these LinkedIn posts were my equivalent of a stand-up comedian conducting a trial show (the chance to practice and prepare for the big comedy festivals). I was testing new material for an audience, waiting for their feedback, before I shared it more broadly. The distinction is that comedians get real-time audience feedback, whereas I relied on people to actively engage with my content early so the algorithm picked it up and spread it to a wider audience, or for someone to mention it in person. Without this real-time feedback, it was difficult to understand if the content performed poorly because of the way I expressed it or because of the algorithm.?

Conversations people love to have in person did not translate well to LinkedIn?

When I tell people I am designing the future of work the conversation typically shifts to what that means or my vision for the future. People are curious because it is not a common answer to 'what do you do'. As previously mentioned, I am unsure why these posts did not perform well on LinkedIn. I am committed to including them though, so I will keep experimenting with how I can make them connect.?

People remained engaged?

A massive thank you to those who regularly engaged with my posts throughout the experiment. I loved seeing people I know are not regular LinkedIn users go from tentatively liking a post, to adding a comment and then continuing the conversation. There were days I felt like I was not having an impact, but stepping back and looking at the entire experiment in the context of what came before, I see the return on my investment. I am also proud of the conversations I could facilitate and the people who reached out to say my post made them feel less alone.?

Step 6: Decide: Keep, adjust or scrap?

Adjust. Moving forward I will not be posting every day. While yes there are benefits to posting every day, the type of posts I want to share require significant investment to draft. It is also unrealistic for me to spend 240 hours per year on LinkedIn. Instead, I would prefer to invest this time in long-form content. This does not mean I will stop posting on LinkedIn. Instead, I will be intentional about prioritising personal stories (with photos) and finding a way to share posts around understanding the historical context, identifying opportunities for today and creating new paradigms for tomorrow.?

If this article inspires you to conduct a similar Tiny Experiment, I would love to see your debrief once you are done!?

If you have any feedback on any of the content I shared during the experiment or continue to share, I would also love your feedback using the Pixar Braintrust approach to feedback:

? Say what is wrong, missing, isn’t clear and what makes no sense.?

? Be offered at a timely moment before it is too late to fix the problem.

? Not make demands and doesn’t need to include a proposed fix. If it does, the fix is offered only to illustrate a potential solution, not to prescribe an answer.?

? Be specific

How does this link to Paradigm Makers' essential elements??

I was recently discussing Paradigm Makers Essential Elements with someone and the conversation turned to how I use these in my day-to-day work. I realised even though they underpin everything I do, I rarely share how I think about them when developing something like this. As a Tiny (tiny) experiment, consider this a trial sharing how my work relates to the Essential Elements. If you find this useful, please let me know as I will continue to share this behind-the-scenes insight.?