Dear Marketers with Emily Kramer & Friends

"Dear Marketers, Should your founder be an influencer (on LinkedIn)?

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"Dear Marketers, Should your founder be an influencer (on LinkedIn)?

Podcast + Newsletter | Episode 4 | How to build an executive thought-leadership presence on LinkedIn

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Mar 21, 2025

🎙️ This free edition of MKT1 newsletter covers Season 1, Episode 4 of “Dear Marketers with Emily Kramer & Friends” podcast, brought to you by Typeform, Framer & Tofu. Listen or watch the full version of the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Plus read the full newsletter below for an even deeper dive on the topic.

Question: “Dear Marketers, I’m Clare McClintock, leading Biz Ops & Marketing at Metronome, the usage-based billing platform that helps you launch products and iterate pricing faster. Our founder has about 5,000 LinkedIn followers and is starting to post more consistently. But how do we know if it's worth our time to lean into this? Should we be spending resources to help make our founder a LinkedIn influencer?"

Answer: Dear Clare & marketers, We get this question a lot from both marketers and founders. To use social to drive brand awareness and growth these days, it seems you have to have an influencer at your company. Humans want to hear from other humans and they want authentic, non-AI generated content. But, turning your founder into a social media thought leader isn’t an easy process. We’ll break down how to decide if your founder or someone else is a good fit for LinkedIn stardom, and how exactly to manage all of this.

In this newsletter & podcast episode:

Devon, Jenny, and I discuss the requirements for a successful influencer strategy on LinkedIn, how marketing can support founders or other execs to actually get the right content made, and how to turn some of that LinkedIn engagement into revenue.

Why every company wants a LinkedIn influencer exec and how we got here
Expert advice from Peter Conforti at Good Content—our first Dear Marketers “Phone-a-friend” segment.
How to decide if your founder (or another exec) is a good candidate for LinkedIn influencing
How to support founders and get the content made
- How to create a content calendar using “perceptions”
- How to capture your founders best ideas without spending hours writing
- How to drive engagement and turn Linkedin engagement into revenue

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“At my first tech job around 2010, I was ghostwriting bylines for the founder that PR pitched to media outlets. That was where you’d go to reach your audience back then. By 2015, everyone was building their own publication. And by 2020, we entered the LinkedIn era.” — Jenny Thai on Dear Marketers

Why everyone wants a LinkedInfluencer founder & how we got here

The thought leadership playbook has completely changed. Case in point: this newsletter gets more page views than the average Series C company blog. Traditional media outlets have shrunk, company blogs have been SEO’d to death, B2B influencers are on the rise, and social media algorithms actively deprioritize company posts.

Traditional distribution channels are also harder to crack. AI has caused search traffic to decline and made outbound easier to execute, so it’s harder for companies to stand out and make these channels work.

Blogs, company social media accounts and PR still have a role, but they’re no longer the best way to espouse your thought leadership. Today, a founder’s perspective on industry trends will almost always outperform a company update, and a well-timed LinkedIn post can do more for credibility than a press mention ever could.

The result? LinkedIn is now the go-to platform for founders and execs to build influence, and we’ve entered the age of executive LinkedInfluencing.

Does this mean every company needs a founder exec to be a LinkedIn celebrity? No, but it certainly means you need to at least consider this as a “channel” or growth strategy.

But, should you make your founder a Linkedinfluencer?

“I think everyone would benefit by having their executives more out on LinkedIn and talking all the time. I think the question is the extent to which you do it and whether you kind of go all in on it” - Peter Conforti, Good Content
"It depends. Yes, you should have a LinkedIn influencer from your startup if you have a clear goal in mind, you have a unique point of view to share with your audience, and you're willing to commit to this for the long haul. The flip side is no, you should not do it if you can't answer those questions. If this is purely a vanity project? Don't do it." - Jenny Thai, Vanta

Requirements

While our opinions on the podcast vary slightly on which founders should spend time building their personal brand on LinkedIn (see above quotes), we all agreed on a basic checklist. For a founder to be successful on LinkedIn, 3 things must be true:

1. Your founder has relevant and credible ideas & points of view:

Marketing can help tease these out, but the founder needs to be unafraid to share publicly. The more willing your founder is to be opinionated about topics related to your business, product, and audience the easier it will typically be to grow a LinkedIn audience.

"When you come across a piece of content on social media, the first thing you think—whether subliminally or explicitly—is: 'Why the hell should I listen to this person?’" — Peter Conforti

2. Your audience needs to be on LinkedIn:

A simple search for a title at a company type can get you an estimate of your audience size on LinkedIn. You can use more sophisticated tooling (like Clay or Attio) to look up who from your exact ICP or prospect list is on LinkedIn.

"A lot of people default to LinkedIn because that’s where they see other companies active. But for some industries, a different approach—like podcasting, newsletters, or YouTube—might be a better fit." — Peter Conforti

3. You have time and resources to dedicate

Making an impact on LinkedIn takes time. For every “viral” post there are at least 20 that didn’t hit. You’ll need to block off founder and marketer time to nail this and prepare everyone involved.

For context: I personally spend an hour or more per day on LinkedIn posting, commenting, and reading other posts–and this doesn’t include the time I spend creating my newsletter content and images that become LinkedIn Posts.

"Every marketer has been asked to make something go viral, right? You used to actually be able to make things go viral from company handles. And now that’s just harder and harder to do. So we’re looking to individuals to quote, unquote, go ‘viral’." — Devon Watts

This checklist may seem obvious…but I’ve seen companies try to make this happen with only 1 of the 3 criteria met. I put all of these requirements into a lovely venn diagram as well.

Example

"There's supply and demand. The founder has a supply of ideas and expertise and has energy around it. And then there's demand in the market for content on this topic that he's an expert." —Devon

For our question asker, Clare at Metronome, there are several factors that make this a pretty compelling case:

Their founder already has 5,000 followers (not starting from scratch)
He has actual credibility in pricing and billing (not just a random CEO with opinions)
He's been in tech forever and knows everyone (connections = distribution)
They have impressive investors (more distribution potential)
There's a massive industry trend and conversation happening: the shift from subscription to usage-based pricing, especially with AI companies (they can ride this tailwind)

This is exactly what you want—they have founder <> LinkedIn fit!

Should you choose your founder or someone else in your company to Linkedinfluence?

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. Or in this case… you can’t make them post on LinkedIn.” — Emily Kramer & Jenny Thai

In some cases, the founder isn’t the right person. They just don’t want their ideas out there on LinkedIn, don’t think it’s important for the business right now, or just don’t think it’s the best use of their time. If this is the case, you can’t force it.

The good news is if all the other boxes are checked, but your founder isn’t into the idea, we are seeing more and more companies use other executives, people in “evangelist” roles, or even a handful of employees as “spokespeople” on LinkedIn. Pick someone (or a few people) who have direct experience with your ideal customers’ challenges. Peter recommends in the pod that in early-stage companies you use your founder, and as you scale you start to build out a team of influencers.

Chief Evangelist example: Gong has a Chief Evangelist (who used to be their CMO)
Multiple employees example: Clay encourages employees and Clay agencies to build up their own followings on Linkedin. Their GTM engineers and marketers do a great job of this.
Marketing execs example: Lots of marketers at martech companies have built up a LinkedIn presence too, like Amanda at Sparktoro, Meg at Typeform, Branca at Attio, and Kyle at Jellyfish to name a few.

"Maybe what it really should be is the person who knows the most about the topic that you really want to talk about. It doesn’t have to be your CEO or founder. It doesn’t even have to be an exec, actually." — Devon Watts, Mercury

What if that person leaves the company?

"Yes, there’s always a risk with this. But the return you see investing in individuals over company pages makes it well worth it." — Peter Conforti

It might seem risky to make a non-founder an influencer for your company. Our conclusion: The pros outweigh the cons.

The way I see it, companies spend a lot of time and money to train their employees in other areas–to become a better manager, to diversify their skillset, etc. This really is no different. You are letting them invest time into learning a skill (social media and storytelling), which can benefit your company in a huge way when they are working there–and there’s a halo effect from this even after they are gone.

But it does mean you may want to build up multiple influencers if using employees or even executives as your main presence on LinkedIn.

How can marketing help a founder build a LinkedIn presence?

“You can’t expect a founder to just magically know what to post and carve out time to do it regularly. It’s not realistic. Marketing’s job is to make it easy for them—to systematize it. That might mean building a lightweight process, repurposing what they’re already saying, and helping them sound like themselves online.” - Kramer in episode 4

Now let’s get into the tactics. It’s one thing to decide that a founder (or another exec) should build a LinkedIn presence—it’s another to make it actually happen in a sustainable way.

Most founders don’t have time to sit down and write posts, let alone engage consistently. That’s where marketing needs to step in—not just as content creators, but as facilitators of a system that makes LinkedIn engagement easy, repeatable, and authentic for the exec.

What to write about

The biggest mistake companies make when building an exec’s LinkedIn presence? Posting just to post. If there’s no clear story or value-add behind their content, it won’t drive meaningful engagement—or support the business.

"You need to make sure whatever you’re doing on LinkedIn ladders up to your overall story. If your founder is going to be on LinkedIn, should their story directly align with the company, or should they carve out their own related niche?" — Jenny Thai

Start with founder perceptions

Perceptions, as we covered in Episode 2 of the podcast, are the storylines or narratives you want your target audience to associate with your company. Nearly all the content you create should support one of your perceptions (I recommend writing 3 or 4 max).

The same framework works for a founder’s thought leadership. So before a founder (or any exec) starts posting, they need to be crystal clear on the perceptions they want to reinforce.

A founder’s content should either:

Directly reinforce the company perceptions. The founder’s content aligns with company messaging and helps amplify the brand’s story.
Expand perceptions beyond what the company can say directly. Some ideas feel more authentic coming from an individual rather than the company handle (e.g., bold industry predictions, lessons from failures, hot contrarian takes).
Own a unique but related perception. The founder’s content covers adjacent topics that aren’t central to the brand but help build credibility.

For example:

Company perception: “It’s easy to do prospecting for every company and contact who matches your ICP.”
Founder perception: "The SDR role will be obsolete in 5 years—AI will handle prospecting better than humans ever could." (I’m not agreeing with this it’s just an example)

There are multiple ways to contribute to the LinkedIn conversation

Whether speaking in a meeting, writing long-form content, or posting on LinkedIn, I use this same framework. There are 3 ways to contribute to a conversation:

Introduce a net-new idea: Share an original take, new framework, or unique industry insight.
Build on someone else’s thought: Add depth, a counterpoint, or an expansion to an existing discussion (do this in the comments of other Linkedinfluencers to build your following!)
Synthesize what’s happening in the industry: Summarize trends, patterns, or data points in a way that makes it easier for others to understand.

It’s really hard to come up with net-new ideas all the time—it’s much easier to build on someone’s thought or even to synthesize the existing conversation. When you think through these 3 categories to come up with ideas, you’ll have an easier time. It also makes the time you spend scrolling on LinkedIn worth it–it gives you great fodder for building on existing conversations and summarizing a topic.

How to get the content made

Once you know what a founder should post about, the next challenge is getting it out of their head and onto LinkedIn—without it becoming their full-time job. And doing so a minimum of 2x per week, not sporadically (that makes the LinkedIn algorithm very mad).

Capture their best insights without making them write

"A lot of the best content comes from off-the-cuff thoughts. Encourage voice notes—if they can record a 30-second take on a topic, marketing can turn that into multiple posts." — Peter Conforti

Most founders don’t have time to sit down and write posts from scratch. Instead, marketing should focus on capturing their thinking in real-time and turning that into content.

Tactics to make this easier:

Use a Slack channel as a parking lot for the founder’s ideas: Founders often drop thoughts into Slack—whether it’s a take on an industry shift, feedback from a customer, or a reaction to news. Lean into this. Create a private channel with the founder and 1 or 2 marketers where they can drop these ideas–no matter how small or simple. A simple “Hey, this is interesting” message could be expanded into a full post by marketing. This works better than having them dump ideas into your marketing general channel, where every idea seems like an urgent request.
Record a 30-60 min conversation once a month: Set up a Zoom, Riverside, or in-person meeting where they talk through key industry trends, recent challenges, and lessons learned. Use the transcript as raw material for posts or even use clips of the video you recorded.
Start a podcast or webinar interview series: If your founder comes up with their best ideas in conversation, get them in conversation with other influencers, customers, prospects, investors, etc. Record that conversation and use it as content. Then comb through the ideas shared and expand on them in non-video format. While this is a heavier lift, you can kill 4 birds with 1 stone: Get content for social; increase distribution through the guests you invite; woo prospects to buy by inviting them to chat; and give you fodder for even more content.
Batch content creation & batch editing: This will save you time on the writing, editing, review, and posting process. For all of the above methods, I’d consider batch content creation. Just make sure you also save some time for getting approvals on the final posts–whether that’s a time block on your founder’s calendar, a Slack process, or just one day every week you send a bunch of things for approval.

Make posting frictionless

"This is highly specific, but it comes up all the time: you need to get their LinkedIn login. People always ask, ‘Can I use a tool to get around this?’ And the answer is no. You just have to get the login." — Emily Kramer

Even if you create the content for them, posting is still a bottleneck. Founders get busy, forget to post, or hesitate to hit publish.

Get their LinkedIn login. Yes, really. They will forget to post, get busy, or deprioritize it. There’s no workaround here via LinkedIn either. To post or comment as another person, you need to be logged in as them.
Use a scheduling tool like Assembly (recommended by Peter) to automate posting while keeping them involved.
Pick a time of day a few days a week they will post, apparently this is good for the algorithm and good for marketers and founders to remember when things are happening.

“Don’t post and ghost”: How to engage with content after it’s posted

"You can’t just give a presentation at a conference and then ditch the conference. You have to show up and mingle. The engagement afterward is what makes the difference." — Emily Kramer

Don’t post and ghost has 2 meanings:

Don’t post and then close LinkedIn and not engage with the comments
Don’t forget to run campaigns to turn LinkedIn engagement into revenue (more on this in the next section of this newsletter)

Engage after posting

One of the biggest LinkedIn failure points is when an exec wants to be active but only thinks about posting—not engaging.

Most founders fail on LinkedIn because they don’t engage:

They miss the most critical engagement window (the first 60 minutes after posting)
They lose momentum because people stop commenting if they don’t get responses
They fail to build a real network because they don’t interact with others’ posts

"LinkedIn loves engagement. They love to see it, and they’re going to reward you for it. If you post and ghost, that is not going to be a good recipe for success." — Peter Conforti

Tactics for driving engagement:

Block time for engagement: Founders should spend at least 15-30 minutes after posting to respond to comments.
- Relatedly, don’t prep responses to comments in advance: This will be a huge waste of time, the poster needs to be able to dedicate that 30 mins 2-3 times a week to comment in their own voice or this isn’t going to work out well.
Engagement pods: Send the post to internal teams, customers, or friendly industry peers to comment right away. Lots of founders I know have what’s Whatsapp groups and Slacks for this very purpose. Also, it seems LinkedIn doesn’t love it when all the earlier comments come from co-workers, so ask for comments from outside your company.
Encourage the founder to comment on 2-3 posts from other leaders in their space before posting their own. Engaging in other conversations first increases the chances their own post gets visibility.
Put any relevant links in the comments not in the post: And wait til someone else comments on the post before sharing.

"The easiest way to get started is by commenting. You don’t have to write an original post every day. Just engage with what’s already happening in your industry." — Peter Conforti

Turn LinkedIn engagement into revenue

While the primary goal of LinkedIn posting should be awareness (of the problem you solve, the solution, and your product specifically), it is possible to turn organic posting into cold hard cash (or an annual subscription to your software).

To do this, you can cross your fingers and hope that having a big presence on Linkedin will drive engagement, or your GTM team can treat likes and comments as intent signals (which I just wrote about in a long newsletter). To do this, you’ll need to make a list of people who engage, match it up with your CRM, and build campaigns for contacts in your ICP.

Here’s how:

Get the contact info of all LinkedIn post engagers

Use a tool like PhantomBuster or TexAu to scrape engagement data
- Extract names, job titles, and LinkedIn URLs from a founder’s post.
- Enrich these contacts with their emails and company info.
- Use this list for targeted outreach or retargeting ads.
Manually copy & paste commenter’s info if it’s a small list
- Click "likes" on a post and copy names into a spreadsheet.
- Look them up in LinkedIn Sales Navigator and qualify accounts.
- Send to sales or marketing for follow-up.

Peter actually just wrote about making engagement tables in this LinkedIn post(so meta).

Run-signal based campaigns

Once you capture a list of people who engaged with a founder’s LinkedIn post (likes, comments, shares), you can turn those signals into targeted outreach.

Engage directly in LinkedIn: comment back, DM, or send a connection request with a note if someone in your ICP comments (within a 24 hour period, preferably shorter)
Promote the founder’s post via LinkedIn:
1. Post it as a thought-leader ad from the company page to get more reach
2. Use LinkedIn Retargeting Ads (after the company reshares the post from the company page)
3. Create a “matched audience” in Linkedin for “people who engaged with your company’s posts” and run ads against this list.
Identify & prioritize warm accounts for outbound: Match with data in your CRM and trigger sales outreach via personalized LinkedIn DM or email.
Enrich net-new leads and add to nurture sequence: If a net-new person (not in your CRM) likes or comments on multiple posts.

"We try to set up a system for the thought leader where all they have to do is show up, contribute ideas, and we execute the rest. That’s the only way it works long-term." — Peter Conforti

Examples of founders going all in on LinkedIn

Here are founders that consistently post, and get noticed because they sound authentic and aren’t afraid to say controversial and/or thought-provoking things:

Alina Vandenberghe - Chilipiper
Adam Robinson - RB2B
Mac Reddin - Commsor
Immad Akhund - Mercury
Andrew Gazdecki - Acquire.com
Waseem Daher - Pilot
Cecilia Ziniti - GC AI

Back to the question…

”It takes a long time to build on LinkedIn. It’s wildly unpredictable and you're kind of at the whim of others. It's not like paid where you can control what goes out or even like email where you know who's on the list. It's difficult to predict, and you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to crack the code. But at the end of the day, it's time and authenticity that are going to win.” - Emily Kramer

To answer the original question: Should your founder become a Linkedinfluencer? If they want to and your audience is on LinkedIn, it’s probably worth investing marketing time into. If they really don’t want to, don’t force it.

Check out the full podcast episode: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.