By now, you know why people keep advising you to post on LinkedIn. With a total of 1.2 billion members, LinkedIn has a substantial user base. However, only 1% of active users post content on the platform. And still, LinkedIn has the highest engagement rate among all social media platforms, according to an analysis by Buffer.
So there’s a huge opportunity for you to engage your prospects on LinkedIn, simply by posting once or twice a week, sharing what you know.
However, when I coach freelance writers on their LinkedIn strategy, I often encounter a recurring mental block — “I don’t want to give it all away for free!”
When asked, “What are you afraid of?” writers express concerns such as:
- Fear of losing your competitive edge — “I don’t want to share my processes and frameworks or my competitors will copy them.”
- Fear of losing potential clients — “What if my clients learn and execute my processes without ever hiring me?”
- Lack of trust — “What if someone else copies my content without credit or uses it without compensating me?”
So today, let’s address this specific mental roadblock that’s holding you back from posting freely on LinkedIn. Plus, we’ll wrap up with a look at the differences between the scarcity and abundance mindsets.
Sharing Your Knowledge on LinkedIn: Why It Works
To generate inbound interest, here are five reasons you should be giving it all away on LinkedIn…
1. Build Your Personal Brand and Nurture Prospects
Sharing what you know on LinkedIn builds authority. When you consistently share your insights, processes, frameworks, and results around one or two specific areas, people start associating you with those topics and perceive you as an expert.
Regularly discussing your insights and opinions on specific topics builds your personal brand, if that’s one of your goals.
Sharing your expertise on LinkedIn is also a great way to nurture prospects within your network. For example, I first interacted with this client in 2020, but we didn’t collaborate at that time. Over the years, she saw my content on LinkedIn. And then in 2024, when she had a comprehensive 18-page website to revamp at her new company, she reached out because she knew of my website revamp service from my LinkedIn posts.
2. Your Ideal Clients Won’t DIY It
The set of people who will do it themselves from your advice is mutually exclusive from those who will hire you. These two groups do not overlap.
One will take your free advice, follow it, and hope to see results. And the other will see your knowledge, processes, and frameworks and pay you to execute it for them. No amount of free content on the internet will make this set of people do it themselves.
3. Those Who Execute Your Processes Themselves Will Become Your Champions
Those who took your advice and did it themselves would’ve never hired you anyway. But if you shy away from sharing your knowledge freely, this section of followers will go and follow someone else’s advice. And you will lose out on building a loyal community of supporters who appreciate your insights.
For example, I once shared a cold outreach template in a LinkedIn post. A connection used it and received a positive response from a lead. He later wrote a LinkedIn recommendation for me.
Since then, I’ve seen him engage with so much of my content. And I highly appreciate that, whether or not he ever buys one of my services/products. So, build your army of supporters by being generous with your knowledge.
4. You Must Show Instead of Tell Your Expertise
There’s no other way to build trust with your potential clients. You have to share what you know openly.
The more you share your processes, frameworks, results, and how you’re constantly upgrading to serve your clients, the more credibility you will gain with your clients and the faster they will hire you.
Last year, I had two clients come in ready to work with me. They didn’t want a tech writer; they wanted me. They had seen my content on LinkedIn and were convinced I was the right person for their project. They didn’t shop around. We talked about the project specifics and got started.
This is what freely sharing your expertise can do for you. It will silently build your trust and credibility. Then, when a prospect is ready with the right project, they will come in ready to work with you.
5. Focus on Collaboration Instead of Competition
How can your peers and contemporaries collaborate with you or refer exciting projects to you when they don’t know what you’re all about? Openly sharing your knowledge, insights, and expertise allows people to see what you believe in, how you operate, what you excel at, and the values you hold close.
This kind of transparency invites collaborative opportunities, like brand deals, podcast appearances, interview features, guest article contributions, and more.
And the added visibility from these opportunities directly leads to more paying clients.
Scarcity vs. Abundance Mindset
It’s a win-win-win for you, your audience, and your paying clients when you freely share your knowledge on LinkedIn. It hurts no one.
This is the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset in our context. Take a look at these comparisons…
|
Scarcity Mindset |
Abundance Mindset |
|
You see knowledge as finite and hoard information. |
You see knowledge as limitless and share it freely. |
|
You believe that others’ success diminishes yours. |
You believe that others’ success creates more opportunities. |
|
You focus on the competition and safeguard your status. |
You focus on collaborative and collective growth. |
|
You are stingy with your knowledge for fear of losing your advantage. |
You trust in long-term returns and share generously. |
|
You’re stressed by limited resources and opportunities. |
You’re motivated by the many possibilities of creating new value. |
|
You’re hesitant to help others or give feedback. |
You’re open to giving and receiving feedback and helping others succeed. |
So, practice an abundance mindset and do your business a favor by openly sharing what you know on LinkedIn. You might just attract your next high-paying client.
