The Attribution Problem: How to Know If Your LinkedIn Is Working
Most CEOs measure LinkedIn like a paid-ad campaign — and quit right before it starts working. They want credibility, but they track it like lead generation, looking for a clean line from a post to a closed deal. When that line does not appear in a spreadsheet, they conclude nothing is happening and stop. The mismatch between what they want and how they measure is what causes premature quitting.
Attribution is hard, not hopeless
The honest truth is that you usually cannot trace executive visibility to revenue in a dashboard. That does not mean it is not working. It means you are measuring the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Think of it like a conference. You go, you give a talk, you have conversations, and months later business shows up that you can trace back, loosely, to being there. No one demands a spreadsheet proving the conference’s ROI line by line — they understand the value is real but diffuse. LinkedIn is the same: a continuous, compounding version of showing up where your market is.
Dark social: most of your audience is invisible
Here is the part that breaks the dashboard model. Somewhere between 70% and 90% of the people consuming your content never like, comment, or otherwise show up in your metrics. They read. They form an opinion. And then, when the moment is right, they act — privately.
I had a friend from the Naval Academy I had not spoken to in fifteen years. He followed my content for eighteen months without a single like or comment. Then one day he sent one message, introducing me to a CEO. We signed that client two weeks later. Zero visible engagement, one real outcome. That is dark social, and it is far more common than the metrics suggest. The question “how did you hear about us?” almost never captures it — which is why it is the wrong question.
The performance curve
There is a predictable shape to this. Month one often brings a spike of novelty. Month two frequently dips as that wears off. And then, somewhere after that, the flywheel starts to spin — the audience compounds, the dark-social effects accumulate, and inbound begins. Quitting in month two means quitting right before the part that matters.
The four metrics to track (before revenue confirms it)
You can know you are on track well before a deal closes. Track these leading indicators:
- Impressions — is your reach growing over time?
- Precision — are you reaching the right people, not just more people?
- Profile views — are people, having seen a post, coming to learn who you are?
- Follower growth — is the audience compounding?
Underneath all four are the qualitative signals that precede them: the comments from people who matter, the “I’ve been following you” openers in meetings, the inbound DMs. Those soft signals show up first. Learn to probe for them — ask the right questions instead of “how did you hear about us” — and log them. The revenue confirmation comes later. The signal that it is working comes early, if you know where to look.