Does posting on LinkedIn actually bring in customers?

75%

of decision-makers said thought leadership had prompted them to research products or services they hadn't been considering, in the 2024 Edelman and LinkedIn study

How does posting turn into customers?

Through trust built over time. Most buyers aren't in the market at any given moment. Edelman and LinkedIn's 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, drawing on the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's 95-5 rule, puts 95 percent of business buyers out of market at a time. Most of the people reading your posts are not buying this quarter.

The same report surveyed nearly 3,500 management-level professionals in seven countries. Posting is how a founder stays familiar to those buyers until they are ready.

What does the research say buyers do with it?

In the same Edelman and LinkedIn research, as reported by Ragan, 75 percent of decision-makers said thought leadership had prompted them to research products or services they had not been considering. And 86 percent said they were likely to invite the creators of consistent, quality thought leadership into requests for proposals.

Edelman also found that 91 percent of hidden buyers, the people who shape a deal without being in the room, say strong thought leadership makes them more receptive to a company's sales and marketing outreach. That is the realistic job of a founder's posts. They warm the market, so the sales conversation starts on better terms.

These are surveys about thought leadership in general rather than LinkedIn posts in particular, and LinkedIn co-ran them. Read them as a picture of how buyers behave, not a forecast for your own pipeline.

Why does it feel like posting isn't working?

Usually because it is judged on the wrong numbers, too soon. Likes and impressions are easy to count but say little about buying. The signals that matter are slower and quieter, such as a prospect mentioning a post on a call, a connection request accepted by someone you had been trying to reach, or an inbound message that opens with something you wrote.

Give it a few months of steady posting before deciding, and ask new customers where they first heard of you. A single question on a discovery call often tells you more than any dashboard does.

Who does it work best for?

Founders selling to businesses, with deals that depend on trust and take weeks or months to close, tend to get the most from it. If your buyers are on LinkedIn and your product needs explaining, your posts do some of that explaining before the first meeting. If your customers are consumers who buy on impulse, other channels usually matter more.