Should a local media brand post on LinkedIn?

"I would never ever do WilCo Guide content on LinkedIn if it wasn't for the algorithm, because nobody's following me on LinkedIn. The point is LinkedIn will literally put my content about Williamson County in front of these bankers in Williamson County."

Why does LinkedIn work for local?

Two reasons: who's there, and how the algorithm treats places.

The small businesses, the realtor and the guy who owns the restaurant are on Facebook and Instagram. The bankers, the government people and the big players are on LinkedIn. If you want the regional bank's marketing person, that's where you find them.

Then there's geo-relevance. When you post about specific towns that few people post about, LinkedIn notices and shows your posts to the business people in those places, follower count or not.

What results have other operators seen?

A local media operator in another Texas city started posting about his town and got:

• At least one inbound call or message a day after about two weeks.
• Calls from business owners, a revitalization director and a bank.
• At least five bankers and city leaders reaching out within a few weeks, even though his likes looked modest.
• One post with 90 likes and 32 comments.
• An offer of money from the head of downtown development, so he'd keep hosting his dinner series.

A guest on my podcast who runs a Texas newsletter said he posts about four to five times a week on LinkedIn and comments on about 10 posts a day. In his first week, VPs and university executives booked meetings with him. I've also seen a part-time newsletter founder post that a city government signed on as an advertiser.

Those are their numbers, not mine. I suspect it works less well in a very big market like Austin.

What should I post on LinkedIn?

Not news. First-person proof that you're helping the community.

A peer's example was simply this: I've been doing these dinner clubs downtown, and we've generated over $20,000 in revenue for local downtown restaurants. Super personal, super first person. This is me, I'm here, I'm helping the community this way. Decision makers see it, want to meet you, and some offer retainers.

Post about the economic good you do. A lot of organizations, like development groups and nonprofits, have money to give to people doing good things. They want to support you because you're helping in roundabout ways. If your brand covers a whole county, you have even more to post about, and the bigger players in that county start paying attention.

It can't be content AI could write. It has to be: here's what I did, here's what I saw downtown, I went to this meeting and here's what happened.

Should I post from a brand page or my own account?

Your own. Posting from a brand account on LinkedIn won't work. A team member posting for you won't work as well either, because people want to meet the individual. Every post should be tied to you personally.

Tone matters too. LinkedIn is more businessy and conservative, more by the book. Twitter is casual and off the cuff, which is how most people succeed there. I aim for about one LinkedIn post a day and a few on Twitter.

How do I keep up without much time?

Mine what you already have:

1. Record your conversations, then use AI to find the interesting pieces.
2. Run podcast transcripts through a custom GPT to pull out ideas.
3. Rewrite the ideas in your own words. The point is to get concepts, not copy and paste.

Don't spend three hours on a polished post that six people will see. Speed matters more. A few reusable graphic templates help, though. Even a single good image acts as proof of work and makes your page look legit.

How do I split LinkedIn and Instagram?

Channel	What goes there
Instagram	Normal local news for the public
LinkedIn	The business of the county, ad results, partner announcements
Twitter	Reusable text

My suggested weekly LinkedIn mix: three posts about WilCo Guide, two about greetform, one personal. We set Monday and Thursday production sessions, and I want advertiser language to shift toward "Partner."

For software, I'd skip Instagram entirely. Nobody goes to Instagram looking for software. For a B2B product I chose YouTube and LinkedIn. The legacy local media operators I want as customers are on LinkedIn, and when they hear about me, they go look for proof.

This was inspired by peers' results. I haven't measured revenue from it at WilCo yet.