Hellooooooo!
How have you been?

Diwali is here!! But howww!! It’s hardly halfway through October!
idk, this year has been WILD!!

Speaking of wild…
something kind of wild happened this week.

I crossed 10,000 followers on LinkedIn.

Which, if you told me this a year and a half ago, I would’ve laughed and gone, “Who’s even going to read my posts?”

But here we are. Ten thousand people later.

And I wanted to share the whole journey with you. How I went from being basically invisible to slowly figuring out how LinkedIn actually works for me (and how it didn’t), and what kept me going even when things weren’t exactly pretty.

In April 2024, I quit my job.

I had no big plans, no backups, no secret freelancing pipeline. I gave myself just two months to “try this freelancing thing” and see if it could work.

My parents were mildly horrified, but they came around eventually.

Since I’m a writer, visibility felt like the easiest way to stand out. I needed creators, founders, brands, literally anyone who could give me work, to at least know I existed.

For that, LinkedIn made sense.

No, I wasn’t sure!!!

If I had been into scriptwriting, maybe I would’ve chosen Instagram, but because my core service was writing blogs, LinkedIn was the obvious place to show up.

The funny thing is, when I started, I didn’t have much to show. I didn’t have any fancy results, no big clients, and not even the confidence to share what I was learning.

So instead, I started sharing stories, and not necessarily smart ones. Just stories.

My first few posts were completely random. I talked about quitting my job, how my parents reacted, my hobbies, my love for chess, and small pieces of my day that felt interesting at the time.

Basically, anything I was doing that could turn into a story.

I’d throw in a photo because everyone else was doing it, and somehow, those posts got a decent reach — around 1K or 2K, sometimes even 8K.

I wasn’t trying to be strategic back then; I was just happy someone was reading.

Then, three months in, one post suddenly blew up. It got 3 million views, and I genuinely thought that was the start of my “LinkedIn creator era.”

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

After that one viral moment, my next few posts barely crossed 700 views. Some didn’t even reach 500. I remember thinking, “Did I suddenly become boring?”

But I kept going, and to make it interesting for myself, I started creating little challenges.

Every month, I would give myself a theme to stay motivated — September was 30 days, 30 stories, October was no pictures, only text, and July was only blog-related posts.

These small challenges helped me stay consistent, but more importantly, they made me experiment.

Over time, I started noticing patterns: what people resonated with, what felt authentic to me, and how I could write in a way that didn’t feel like “content strategy.”

That’s when things started shifting.

A few months later, my posts started doing well again. Not in a viral, millions-of-views way, but they began hitting 10K, 20K, sometimes even 30K views, which was enough to show me that something was working.

The majority of my posts were (and are) still ~1500, but the frequency of a 10k post has increased!

Looking back, there wasn’t really a strategy. The only thing I did right was showing up as myself.

I didn’t try to sound smarter than I was or more “professional” than I felt.

I just shared what I was doing — how I was writing, what I was learning, what was working, what wasn’t, and sometimes, even my memes.

Because honestly, I think I’m a funny person, and I never wanted to lose that on LinkedIn.

My banner isn’t serious, my posts often aren’t serious, and I think that’s exactly what made people connect with me.

If I had to summarize what’s helped me grow, I’d call them my 5 P’s — the five things that really shaped how I show up online:

Purpose – Know why you’re showing up. It can start small — like getting clients — and evolve as you do.

Principles – Stand for something. Your opinions and beliefs make your voice memorable.

Proficiency – Keep getting better at your craft. Consistent improvement builds quiet trust.

Personality – Let people see the human behind the work. That’s what makes your content relatable.

Presence – Show up regularly. Not perfectly, just consistently enough to be remembered.

I didn’t start with all five. I began with Personality, and the rest followed naturally.

You don’t need to nail all five from day one. I definitely didn’t. I just started with Personality, and the rest kind of built over time.

There’s no magic formula, but here are a few kinds of posts that tend to do well for me:

I did an in-depth analysis of my LinkedIn content for 6 months!

I used to think I was getting reach only because of photos, so I stopped posting them for a while.

Later, I realized, if something works, it works. Now I mix it in occasionally, maybe one photo post every ten text ones.

If I had to pick one takeaway from all of this, it would be this — being visible is underrated.

Most people wait to feel “ready” before showing up, but honestly, no one ever feels ready.

I started posting when I had nothing to show, and that’s probably why it worked, because people got to see the whole journey instead of the highlight reel.

So if you’re still waiting for the perfect niche, perfect plan, or perfect first post, don’t!

Just start. Post something real. Keep showing up. It will make sense eventually.

That’s what I am going to do with my video content next!

The next milestone is obviously a 10x one!

100K followers.

It took me one and a half years to go from 0 to 10K, so two years for 10K to 100K feels fair. Am I being overambitious again? Obviously!!

That’s what we do here :)

If you’re somewhere at the start of your journey, I hope this gives you a little nudge to start sharing yours, too.

I wish you a safe, happy, and super sweet Diwali!! (we can complete our 10K steps post the sweetest festival!!)

I’ll see you next Friday!

Love,
Nikita