How to Write a LinkedIn Post (and How Not To)
Nobody cried in their car. They cried in their content calendar.
LinkedIn is the one platform where adults voluntarily write like they are accepting an award nobody gave them. Every post is a parable, every parable has a moral, and the moral is always 'and that is why you should follow me'. You can smell the performance from three scrolls away.
The Full Truth
on A founder's humblebrag post that opens with 'I cried in my car today'
You cried in your car, scrolled to a $4M raise by line three, and called it 'staying humble'. The only thing humble here is the comment section's standards.
- 01
The cold open is emotional bait, not a story
Critical'I cried in my car today' promises a reckoning and delivers a victory lap. By paragraph three you are announcing a funding round. The tears were a hook, not a truth, and readers feel the bait-and-switch instantly. If the post is about the raise, open with the raise. If it is about the hard road, do not bury that road under good news four lines later. Pick the real subject and commit to it.
- 02
Twelve line breaks, one idea, zero rhythm
NotableEvery sentence sits on its own line to game the 'see more' fold, but the lines carry no individual weight. 'It was hard.' 'But we made it.' 'I kept going.' These are not beats, they are filler pretending to be profound. Earn the white space: each standalone line should land a specific image, number, or turn. Otherwise collapse them into real paragraphs and let the one strong line breathe alone.
- 03
The ending begs instead of giving
NotableClosing on 'What kept YOU going when things got hard? Drop it below.' turns a personal story into an engagement vending machine. It asks readers to do the emotional labor your post avoided. Replace it with the actual lesson you learned, stated plainly enough that a stranger could apply it tomorrow. Give value, do not extract it. The comments will come on their own when the post is worth commenting on.
I cried in my car today. Let me explain. Three years ago, everyone said no. Today, we closed $4M. Never give up on your dreams. What kept YOU going? Comment below.
We closed $4M today, and the only reason I know it was hard is that I still flinch when the bank app loads. For three years 'no' was the default answer. The fix was not grit. It was cutting our pitch from 14 slides to 3 and finally letting the product, not the founder story, do the talking. That is the slide deck change that moved the room. If you are stuck at 'no', cut your ask in half before you double your effort.
A barista handed me my coffee and said 'rough day?' and in that moment I realized something about leadership I'll never forget.
I snapped at my co-founder over a typo last week. That was the moment I realized I was managing my stress by outsourcing it to the team. So I started writing the hard message myself before forwarding the easy one. Smaller team, calmer Slack.
- 1Cut the cold open. Delete the first emotional line and start at the real moment: the decision, the loss, the specific number that actually happened.
- 2Pick one idea and exile the rest. If the post is about the raise AND resilience AND your barista, you have three posts. Ship the strongest one.
- 3Replace every empty standalone line with a real paragraph, and keep only the one or two lines strong enough to stand alone.
- 4Swap the engagement-bait question for a steal-able takeaway: one sentence a stranger could act on tomorrow without ever following you.
That was a stranger's linkedin post. Drop yours, I will go just as hard.
One coffee, from €2,99. No mercy.
A good LinkedIn post does one quiet thing well: it tells the truth about a specific moment, then hands the reader something they can actually use. No vulnerability cosplay. No fake humility wearing a Patagonia vest. Just a real point, made with enough spine to stand on its own. That is rarer than you think, which is exactly why it works.
- 01Open with the actual moment, not the emotional weather report. 'We lost the deal in the last five minutes' beats 'Today I learned something profound about resilience'.
- 02Make one point. A LinkedIn post is not a TED talk, a memoir, and a pitch deck stapled together. Pick the single idea worth a stranger's eight seconds.
- 03Earn the line break. Each one-sentence paragraph should carry weight, not just inflate your scroll depth. If a line says nothing, it is a speed bump, not a beat.
- 04End with a takeaway a reader can steal, not a question you are begging them to answer. 'Agree?' is not engagement. It is a tip jar.
- 05Write like you talk to a smart colleague, not like you are being deposed by your own brand. Contractions are allowed. Humanity is allowed.
- The car-cry cold open. 'I cried in my car today' followed by a story where you actually closed a $2M round. That is not vulnerability, that is a flex in a trench coat.
- The one-word-per-line cliffhanger ladder. 'Then. It. Happened.' You are not Hemingway. You are padding the preview text and everyone can tell.
- The fake-humble origin myth. 'A janitor once told me something I will never forget.' No he didn't. Stop putting wisdom in the mouths of strangers you invented.
- The engagement-bait question bolted onto an unrelated story. 'What's the hardest lesson you've learned? Comment below.' The algorithm sees it. So do we.
- The 'thoughts?' single-word sign-off after 400 words of monologue, as if you suddenly remembered other people exist and have opinions you do not care about.