How to Earn First 1000 Linkedin Followers With These Easy Steps

In February 2025, LinkedIn.com saw 1.77 billion monthly visits (Source).

I have been doing LinkedIn growth in the most backward way.

I would get up in the morning, open LinkedIn, and begin to post what I believed were interesting updates.

Cliched inspirational sayings, industry news, and my two-cents worth, and those awkward “do you agree or disagree?” posts which nobody likes and yet they still get attention.

I was doing all that the gurus instructed me to do. Be regular, hashtag, interact. Check, check, check.

But after half a year of this practice, I had 200 followers. In the meantime, I saw other colleagues who posted hardly ever and yet had thousands of interested professionals who read their content.

It was not logical at all.

It was at that time that I found the true secret at a networking event in downtown Chicago. I was talking to Sarah, a marketing director who had increased her followers from 0 to 5,000 in only eight months. She was not sharing inspirational nonsense and reposting corporate news.

Rather, she was talking about certain issues that she had in the workplace and how she had resolved them precisely.

She did not make her posts to attract all the people, but she addressed other marketing directors who had to deal with budget reductions, unrealistic timelines, and pushy stakeholders.

She did not have the headline of Marketing Professional | Digital Strategy Expert. It was the “Helped 12 SaaS Companies Triple Their Lead Gen Without Increasing Ad Spend | Here s How.”

This was the moment when I understood that LinkedIn is not about broadcasting to all people. It is all about reaching out to the right people by solving their particular problems and hitting their particular pain points.

My strategy was different. I began to be helpful instead of attempting to sound impressive. I began posting to someone instead of posting to everyone. I began to share what I learned about my failures instead of sharing what I knew.

The results? I increased my following to 2,400 in 10 months. It is not that I solved some algorithm code, but I finally realized that LinkedIn values authenticity and value more than the vanity metrics.

This guide is all that I would have liked to have been told when I was looking at my pathetic little network wondering why no one was interested in my content.