Get Leads From Your LinkedIn On Autopilot | Founder @ Hat Tip

If you:

→ Make social content
→ Want to make social content
→ Tried making social content but were unsuccessful

… you’re in the right place.

Truth is, publishing content you’re proud of on a consistent basis is tough.

You get busy. Things come up.

And for most founders, content takes a backseat to whatever fire they’re putting out at their company that day.

That said, its 2025.

Content is king — and the benefits for B2B founders are clear:

→ Drive low-cost brand awareness
→ Generate inbound leads from a new lead source
→ Become a “thought leader” in your space (even though you may hate that word)

And after meeting tons of founders while working in influencer marketing, starting Hat Tip felt like a no-brainer.

You can still benefit from publishing high-quality social content — without worrying about blocking out time to write, being inconsistent, or if you’re making content the “right way”.

Hat Tip handles that for you—while maintaining your voice—through:

→ Bi-weekly content interviews
→ Product and industry-specific thought-starters
→ The will to edit and revise until you’re proud of the content being published

If high-quality, consistent social content sounds like something you’re interested in, DM me or visit the link in my profile to book a call.

Thanks 👋

Christian

📧 christian@hattipagency.com
🐤 Twitter @dibratto

Yesterday, I had the worst day I had in a while.

It felt like nothing could go right. 

I was frustrated and irritable, just trying to do the best work I can before I shut my laptop for the day. 

But, my YouTube vendor has been hounding me to record this one-hour YouTube video for over a week. 

So when I was finally able to, I sat down to record it.

27 minutes in, I realized my audio wasn't recording through my mic.

Enjoy.

Christian Di Bratto

Founder @ Hat Tip. Helping startup founders generate pipeline from social.

I've posted (almost) daily on LinkedIn since November 2023. Today, >60% of our pipeline at Hat Tip comes from my profile. What I wish I could tell every founder wanting to do the same:

1. Nobody cares enough about you to have something "cringe" alter their perception of you.

2. You'll be tempted to chase "growth hacks". Don't.

3. Give it 90 days, or don't start.

4. Your results from content are only as good as the system you build to make it.

5. You get out what you put in. Comments and DMs are your best friend.

6. Analyzing performance on a post-by-post basis is a death sentence for your sanity.

7. "I'm not getting any reach" and "my content isn't valuable enough" mean the same thing.

8. Treat social like an afterthought, and it'll treat you the same.

9. Everyone who has the power to buy from you on this platform can tell when ChatGPT writes your posts. Just saying.

10. If you only post what gets the most likes, you'll end up in the "buy a LinkedIn growth course, make a LinkedIn growth course" pyramid scheme. Did I just say that?

These are all facts and not up for debate.

My agency, Hat Tip, was doing $18,500/month of revenue before I had 2,000 LinkedIn followers. 

For context, there are accounts with 200,000+ followers that don't generate a fraction of that number.

I don't say this to brag, as that isn't the whole lot in the grand scheme of things. I do say it to clarify that you absolutely do not need a lot of followers to make this platform work for your product or service.

3 things I did to achieve this:

1. Avoid the urge to write for likes.

LinkedIn gurus will tell you to post about topics that get a ton of likes and reach...but do absolutely 0 for your pipeline.

Instead, I very intentionally wrote for who I serve - software founders and agency owners. Mainly I tried to solve the problems that came up in all of my sales/client calls.

2. Comment, comment, comment.

In my heyday, when I was really trying to win business, I blocked off 60 minutes per morning and did not get up from my computer before I left 40 thoughtful comments on others' posts.

 It was a complete slog, and I frankly hated it. But the eyeballs it brought me were invaluable (also made a ton of friends this way).

3. Free work. 

I was basically LinkedIn Costco at the time - if you were qualified, you were getting a free sample.

A very small portion of these people converted to clients, but that's fine. All that meant to me was I had to up the volume. 

I'm not saying it was easy, but if you're willing to come into the platform, it is absolutely possible to build a viable business off the back of it without a bunch of followers. 

The caveat is it takes actual work and time, which a lot of people won't tell you.

We grew a client's LinkedIn account from 4,800 -> 20,000 followers in 2.5 years. Here are the best-performing content formats we used to do it:

(it was actually 3,800, but we weren't reporting at the time. C'est la vie).

What we didn't do:

- Post sad selfie slop
- Use copy / paste post templates
- Try to "go viral"

The formats we found to work extremely well:

1. Templates

Most weeks, we create a template this person's audience can use to achieve a result, and explain how to use it. 

RESULTS:

POST 1: 105,635 impressions
POST 2: 104,899 impressions
POST 3: 79,054 impressions

2. Good/bad callout

We take examples of people/companies doing [what their company does] well, and highlight how well they do it, as well as companies doing it poorly, and highlight why it doesn't work.

RESULTS:

POST 1: 445,056 impressions
POST 2: 416,989 impressions
POST 3: 358,956 impressions

3. Niche memes

We post memes that, frankly, only this person's audience would care about. You and I would likely find them boring, but that doesn't matter.

RESULTS:

POST 1: 416,489 impressions
POST 2: 316,322 impressions
POST 3: 173,385 impressions

4. Industry-specific, data-backed commentary.

This person operates in a space that is always changing and where people are always looking for a leg up. Using their data, we're able to create hyper-relevant commentary on what's working/what's not that he can share with his audience.

RESULTS:

POST 1: 92,041 impressions
POST 2: 56,122 impressions
POST 3: 34,071 impressions.

NOTE:

These results are not typical. This client is far and away the most committed to social that we have.

They show up to their content interviews prepped and present. They're willing to test ideas and believe in the process.

And beyond the 17K follower increase, they book "hundreds of meetings per year" off social – their words, not mine.

--

DISCLAIMER: A lot of people like to fake reach and impressions numbers. I have permission to verify these. If you want help on social but are skeptical of these, DM me and I'll validate.

Everything I pay for to run and grow my content agency past $1M ARR:

OPS:

Comms – Slack
Call recordings: Fireflies.ai
Video call recordings: Riverside
Content – Notion
(Simple) Graphics – Canva
Client Feedback: SurveyGate (Eli Rubel)
Scheduling – Calendly
Payroll – Deel
Bookkeeping – Intuit QuickBooks
Contracts: Agree.com
Systems-building: Shiv Agarwal (Airtable Wiz)
Site: Webflow

Writing:

Content – Our hands.
Editing/Copy Chiefing – Claude (Anthropic)
Research for clients – ChatGPT (OpenAI)
Edits/Review – Loom

Growth:

Sales Nav – LinkedIn (pls make cheaper)
DMs – Also LinkedIn, but free.
Email nurture: beehiiv

Takeaway: Holy cow.

I think I'm accidentally building the Chick-Fil-A of content agencies.

We're a couple of months into collecting NPS responses at certain touchpoints in the client journey. 

So far, the lowest ranking we've been given was a 9 out of 10, making our NPS a 10 for the time being.

I'm extremely proud of this, as it's a commitment I made from our very first client two years ago, across our entire client base now.

There are 3 things we do that I feel lead to this score:

1. Out of scope work when it makes sense.

People tell me "this won't scale" and "you'll get taken advantage of". They're right, but fail to acknowledge that I don't care. If it makes the client happy, it makes the client happy.

2. Fast comms.

This is the lowest lift way to delight clients, and I frankly don't get how it's not the norm across service providers. 

Myself and the entire team have a mandate to respond to, or at the very least. acknowledge client messages as soon as they come in. 

It's free, but goes a long way in making clients feel heard and taken care of.

3. Proactivity at all stops.

I won't lie and say we're perfect in this regard because I don't think "perfect" exists. 

But I quite literally schedule time on the weekends to think through ideas for clients that are sometimes out of scope and/or would require extra lift on our end.

One of these ideas came to fruition in the last 2 weeks, and booked 6 calls for a client.

That's how we're making great service compulsory at Hat Tip. 

If you're a founder who wants to build a social presence while enjoying this service, DM me.

PS - We're using SurveyGate (by Eli Rubel) to collect this data!

3 years ago: 0 clients, 0 team, no network.
Today: 15 clients, great team, awesome network.

Building Hat Tip has been one of the most valuable learning experiences I've ever had.

But it wasn't my first crack at entrepreneurship. Hell, it wasn't my 2nd, 3rd, or 4th either.

I've (quite literally) been going at this since Grade 2.

Here's everything I tried before landing on this agency:

1: Snack stand business. Six-year-old me made business cards and realized nobody walks down my street. Lost a few hundred bucks on supplies and learned my first lesson about market research.

2: Call of Duty beta codes. Buying for $1-$2 on Twitter and selling for $5-$6, made a few hundred and felt rich. This taught me the value of finding arbitrage opportunities online.

3: Concert ticket reselling. Flipping Toronto concert tickets on Ticketmaster for $300-$400 monthly profit. Worked until I realized the legal gray areas and decided to move on.

4: QR code menu startup. Launched Grubster dot CA during COVID, realized I was too early and couldn't sell to restaurants. Burned through hundreds on domain and hosting costs.

5: Influencer deal brokering. Taking 20% cuts from brand deals, got featured in Forbes. Sold >$500K in ads in a couple of years, but lost clients to bigger agencies. Revenue was unpredictable because everything was commission-based.

6: Founder-led content agency. Started with one Upwork client paying $2,000 monthly, now serving 15+ founders through Hat Tip. This taught me the power of positioning yourself as an expert in a specific niche.

Something tells me I'll be sticking with this one for a while.

h/t to Marshall Haas and Sam Parr for the format inspo.

Reminder: Copying a big account's "viral" post format sentence-by-sentence will never give you the same results.

Remember:

They don't have tons of followers because that post did so well.

The post did so well because they have tons of followers.

Your time and energy are better spent on trying to write something your ICP will like, save, and share.

We cracked 250,000 impressions on a post for a SaaS client that's different than what most expect, but is 100% the future of LinkedIn.

AI has made the cost of regurgitated slop effectively zero (scroll your timeline for 5 mins and you'll see).

That means all that's left to build a presence on this platform are things AI can't compete with you on:

- Stories unique to you
- Opinions you can state and justify
- Anything that leans on your expertise

So, for this client, we:

1. Used Gigabrain and a Lindy AI agent to scrape and summarize all recent / relevant industry news and concerns from stakeholders from the past few days.

2. Sent 4 headlines to the client to see if they had a take on any/all of them.

3. Synthesized their thoughts on one of them into a winning post (and tied it back to their company).

It's relevant industry commentary like this that both paints you as an expert and prompts comments on your posts – both leading to increases in (the right kind) of reach.

PS - Drop a comment if you want a tutorial on building the news aggregator agent that makes this 10x easier for you.

Brian Halligan (Co-Founder, HubSpot), gave a 41-minute podcast interview talking about growing HubSpot and building culture within it.

I listened on the way to my beer league hockey game last week, then listened again to note these takeaways (I found them interesting, and hope you do, too):

1. Customers are good validation, competitors are great.

Though most people thought HubSpot’s growth thesis around SEO and social was wrong, they found validation in large competitors (37Signals, Fogbug) executing the same playbook.

2. If you want to create a category, first define its enemy.

HubSpot created “inbound marketing” as a category by counter-positioning against “outbound” – historically associated with spammy messages.

3. Category creation is a lottery...be prepared to play more than once.

Though “inbound marketing” clearly stuck as a category, “inbound sales”, “content optimization system”, and “CMR” (Customer Managed Relationship) did not. 

4. The antidote to an underperforming metric is comp structure for those affecting it.

HubSpot fixed early churn issues by adding NPS as a metric sellers were compensated on, a commission clawback for fast-churned customers, and a retention threshold sellers had to hit before their sales accelerator. 

5. Great support talent lives in non-obvious places.

Brian would walk into Apple to fix his phone, and extend job offers to those he had positive experiences with. The pitch was “If you're making $40,000 standing on your feet all day, why don't you come sit and do the same?”

6. Culture is a product.

After having a culture enlightenment at a CEO group, HubSpot began scaling culture by: 

a) Writing a culture code. 
b) Appointing Dharmesh Shah (Co-Founder) as “Culture Czar”. 
c) Implementing NPS for employees. 
d) Implementing, hiring for, and evaluating on core values. 
e) Ensuring they built something people can get behind in the first place.

7. When asked, "what do you do when a customer is screaming at you?"

Brian: “Listen, and say you’re sorry”.

Also, The Library of Minds by Dara Ladjevardian and Delphi is a growing binge bank of content with leaders like Bryan. Wish I found it sooner - definitely check it out.

Hook-writing is the most in-demand skill on social right now.

Here are my 10 tips to write an undeniably great one:

1\ Create a Curiosity Gap 

The fundamental principle behind every hook: create a gap between what the reader knows and what they want to know after reading your hook. Every word must serve this purpose.

2\ Build Authority with Numbers 

Use specific figures relating to time, money, or volume to establish credibility. Examples include company size, revenue figures, email volumes, or years of experience. The more specific the number, the better.

2a.\ Use Ultra-Specific Numbers 

- Instead of "6 figures," use "$151,323.60." 
- Instead of "dozens of websites," use "37 websites in 22 months." 

3\ Start with Stories 

Story-based hooks naturally create curiosity. Add context about timing, circumstances, or unexpected outcomes to make it hit harder.

5\ Use Colons and Ellipses 

Include ":" or "..." in 99% of your hooks to signal there's more content worth reading. The sentence before these punctuation marks must create genuine curiosity.

6\ Promise Listicles 

Craft lists using odd numbers (3, 5, 7, 9) or 10. Never use 2 or less, and avoid even numbers between 3-10. Combine with authority for max impact.

7\ Highlight Process Outcomes 

When sharing processes, lead with the end result and timeframe. Use "how" language and include step counts when possible.

8\ Make (Calculated) Bold Statements 

Avoid wishy-washy language like "could be" or "might help like the plague" 

Instead, make definitive statements that demand justification.

9\ Borrow Authority from Big Names 

Reference recognizable brands or figures to capture attention. Combine the company name, impressive metrics, and a promise of insights.

You've seen this get overused by a certain crowd here on LinkedIn, but they are worth doing here and there. 

Ex: "Company X is worth $Y. I studied their strategy - Z takeaways:"

10\ Cut Ruthlessly 

Remove any word that doesn't directly contribute to making someone press "see more." The hook must sound natural when read aloud while maximizing curiosity per character.

P.S. This was a small part of my 83-page guide for founders to generate pipeline from LinkedIn. Get it here: https://lnkd.in/eFFv7k9J

If there's one thing I've learned from helping 40+ founders grow a social presence, it's that these 7 mistakes hold them back more than AI or anything else:

1. Lack of strong POV. At least once per week, we have a client sit on the fence on if they want to share a (completely justified) hot take on their space. They're scared it will piss people off. That is exactly why they should do it.

2. Optimizing for LinkedIn "hacks". Posting at 8:01am vs 11:03am, or using one hook template over that another, or holding the selfie camera at a specific angle mean absolutely zero if your content isn't plain good.

3. Blindly outsourcing to Head of Marketing or contractor. This is coming from someone who owns an agency. There's a direct correlation between our list of most successful clients on social and level of buy-in from the founder themself.

4. Lack of a system. Every week, I talk to a founder who says some variation of "yeah, I tried posting, but fell off the wagon". If that's you, I don't blame you. You have a company to run. A proper content system fixes that. Whether it's an agency (I heard Hat Tip is good) or a team member, you have to build actual process around content, or it'll never work.

5. Being afraid to repeat yourself. Every time a founder says "didn't we already post about that?", I say "yeah, exactly". If it performed well, and is something you want to be known for, it is your duty to propagandize your audience with the take or belief.

6. Letting imposter syndrome win. It is insane to me that founders can raise funding from world-renowned investors, but posting on LinkedIn is where they feel imposter syndrome. People (team and investors) obviously believe in the mission. LinkedIn gives you the chance to make others, too.

7. Playing the comparison game. You aren't Adam Robinson, or a partner at a Tier 1 VC firm. You're a founder solving a unique problem, with a 1-of-1 story on how you're doing it. Put your blinders on, and focus on making the best damn content you can. At one point, you'll look up and realize you're on the same playing field.

I hope this post helped clarify social for you. If you want additional help, or even just to chop it up about LinkedIn, feel free to comment or DM me.

If my job was on the line and I had to generate demand from social for a B2B startup, here's the exact playbook I'd run to save my job 90 days from now:

Step 1: Decide on platform.

Most B2B startups' audience spends time on LinkedIn or X. One or both of those is a good bet 99% of the time.

Step 2: Pick (a) team member(s) to become "company cheerleaders".

Trying to grow from the brand account isn't enough anymore. The timeline is inundated with founders posting high-quality content that will completely overshadow your polished product demo.

To combat this, we need to put up our own fight with actual people from the company as well.

The founder / co-founders are ideal, but other leadership members can work, too.

One is great, two is better. So on and so forth.

Step 3: Map buckets.

Armed with our platform and leader, we need to figure out what they're going to talk about.

To do this, we'd devise content buckets that will help attract, nurture, and convert those we want to sell to. This is best done with top, middle, and bottom of funnel content buckets.

TOF: Industry takes, trends, contrarian opinions (brings new eyeballs)
MOF: Problem-focused content for your ICP's pain points (nurtures audience)
BOF: Product updates, case studies, social proof (converts followers)

Step 4: Prompts.

I'd come up with a list of 12-15 prompts that map to those buckets, which I'l ask the leader on a recorded interview.

Step 5: Interview.

I interviewed the leader with those prompts on a podcast-style conversation, recorded on Riverside so we can clip up relevant answers.

Step 6: Writing.

With the interview recording, I'd draft 10 LinkedIn posts. Each post gets mapped to the appropriate content bucket and optimized for LinkedIn's algorithm.

Step 7: Review/edits.

Send the drafted posts to the leader for review (Notion or Docs). I'd ask specifically about tone, voice, and word choice preferences, then log all feedback to reduce edits in future rounds. 

Step 8: Post!

I'd post the content (each weekday, ideally morning local time) and actively reply to comments to maximize engagement. 

I'd handle the basic comments myself and compile industry-specific questions for the leader to answer personally.

Step 9: Report 

I'd do this weekly using a tracking spreadsheet. I'd monitor impressions, new followers, profile visits, and engagement rates, then summarize everything for easy leader consumption.

Step 10: Connections.

I pull a list of decision makers at our target account list and manually connect with 100 of them weekly. When they accept, the high-quality content we're producing will show up in their feed.

Step 11: ICP Profile Viewers.

Each Friday, I'd filter the leaders' profile viewers down to our ICP in Sales Navigator and export a list to send to our sales/GTM team for outbounding purposes.

NOT DONE - MORE IN COMMENTS:

Content truth few are humble enough to admit:

Consistent weak content performance rarely has anything to do with the algorithm, and far more to do on level of value in your content.

Rarely does an increase in the level of value not correlate with an improvement in content performance.

So, to help here is a week's worth of content prompts that, when answered, generate the most valuable content:

(1) In all of your/your team's prospect conversations in the last 4 weeks, what were the most common concerns, issues, pain points, or objections they brought up? Answer and overcome them in a post.

(2) What is the 1 result you undeniably know how to produce, and how can you lay it out in its simplest form for your audience to do, too?

(3) What is the most common mistake your ICP might make when trying to generate a result? State it, and lay out exactly how to overcome it (for a beginner to understand).

(4) What 3-5 things (stakeholders, systems, tools, etc.) does a [function you serve] team need to have in place to achieve the result they want? Share what they need, and how to set it up.

(5) Pick the 5% of customers having the most success with your product/service. What do they do, or how do they think about the motion that the bottom 95% don't? Clearly highlight how to graduate a reader from bottom 95% to top 5%.

PS - If you're a founder who wants to get this content out but doesn't have the time or systems to do it, DM me. I'll pick a couple to write free posts for.

h/t to Oren John for the tweet.

If your likes and comments are filled with the same non-ICP accounts with each post, do these 4 things:

1) Switch posting time. If you're posting at 8am sharp every day, you're likely mostly reaching folks on the platform at that time. There's a strong cohort of folks who get on earlier and later. Try reaching them.

2) Comment out* of network. 

Commenting on friends' posts is great. Only commenting on friends' post is a growth death sentence. Intentionally get out* of your network, and find other content you care about / can add value to. SalesNav's 2nd degree connections filter is a great way to do this (LMK if you want a tutorial).

3) Connect with / DM your ICP specifically. 

There are whispers that DMing with someone makes your content show up in their feed more. Anecdotally, I believe this. To that point, if you can have proper conversations in your ICP's DMs, all that's left is to make content they care about.

4) Refine who your content is pointed at.

It's VERY easy to fall into the trap of posting what gets the most likes and comments. Often, though, you'll find this doesn't correlate with what people care about (i.e. your ICP doesn't care about your commentary on an unrelated topic).

For every post you write, ask yourself: Would [ICP] care to like, save, or share this? If yes, post. If not, don't.

If you want to help executing any or all of these, feel free to DM me. I will send you some resources.

How to optimize your LinkedIn profile to convert maximum traffic (A-Z, save this):

1. Profile Picture: Clean headshot with your face clearly visible. Professional but not overly formal.

2. Banner: State your benefit on one line + add social proof underneath (logos work great). Right-align everything and leave padding so it displays properly on mobile.

3. Headline: Must include three elements - benefit statement starting with an action word, social proof, and your actual title. Example format: "Cut SaaS spend 20% before Q3 | Helped 50+ startups | Founder at XYZ"

4. Custom Button/CTA: Add a custom button. Founders skip this completely but it converts surprisingly well. Link to your newsletter, call booking page, or case study depending on your main goal right now.

5. About Section: Follow this structure exactly - Call out your ICP, state their pain points, agitate the problem, explain your solution, back it up with proof, end with a clear call to action.

6. Featured Section: Use this as your social proof shrine. Add one case study, your best-performing post, and a notable press mention or podcast feature.

7. Experience Section: Include your proper title and explain what your company actually does. Relax with the buzzwords or fluff.

Follow this framework and your profile becomes an always-on sales machine.

And if you want me to just optimize your entire LinkedIn profile for you, DM me.

taplio

Christian Di Bratto's Linkedin Analytics