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Michael
Michael

Posted on • Originally published at getmichaelai.com

Decompiling the LinkedIn Feed: A Technical Guide to B2B Lead Generation

#ai #automation #n8n #developer

Look at your LinkedIn DMs. I'm guessing it's a graveyard of cringe-worthy sales pitches and bot-sent connection requests. For most developers, LinkedIn is just a place to host a digital résumé. But what if you treated it less like a social network and more like a complex, distributed system you could engineer for B2B growth?

Let's stop thinking about 'engagement' and start thinking about system design. This is the B2B playbook for tech builders who want to generate leads and build authority without selling their soul.

1. The LinkedIn Graph: It's Not Magic, It's a Scoring Algorithm

The LinkedIn feed isn't random. It's a weighted graph where your content is a node, and its visibility is determined by a relevance score. The algorithm's goal is to maximize user session time. It does this by prioritizing content that sparks immediate interaction—what they call the "golden hour."

Think of it like a simple scoring function:

function calculateRelevanceScore(post) {
  const weights = {
    likes: 0.5,
    comments: 2.5,  // Comments are heavily weighted
    shares: 2.0,
    dwellTime: 1.5, // How long people stop scrolling
    firstHourVelocity: 3.0 // Engagements in the first 60 mins
  };

  let score = 0;
  score += post.engagement.likes * weights.likes;
  score += post.engagement.comments.length * weights.comments;
  score += post.engagement.shares * weights.shares;
  score += post.metrics.avgDwellTimeSeconds * weights.dwellTime;
  score += post.metrics.firstHourEngagements * weights.firstHourVelocity;

  // The algorithm also considers creator authority and network relevance
  score *= post.author.authorityScore * post.networkRelevanceFactor;

  return score;
}
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Your Job: Write content that maximizes this score. The key is to optimize for comments. Ask open-ended questions. Post slightly controversial (but professional) takes. Share code snippets and ask for feedback. Your goal is to trigger a conversation in the first 60 minutes.

2. Your Content Strategy as a CI/CD Pipeline

Don't just "post stuff." Design a content delivery pipeline. Treat your B2B brand building like you treat software development: with a process, testing, and deployment schedule.

Plan: The PRD (Persona Requirements Doc)

Who is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)? This is your user persona. Don't just say "CTOs." Get specific:

  • What's their tech stack?
  • What open-source tools are they using?
  • What technical challenges keep them up at night?
  • What newsletters do they read?

Your content must solve a specific problem for this specific persona.

Build: The Content T-Model

To build authority, you need both breadth and depth. Structure your content strategy like a 'T':

  • The Horizontal Bar (Breadth): High-frequency, low-effort content. These are your daily text posts, comments on other people's posts, and quick polls. The goal here is visibility and engagement.
  • The Vertical Stem (Depth): Low-frequency, high-effort content. These are your weekly deep-dive articles, technical carousels, or case studies. The goal here is to build authority and capture leads. 
const contentPipeline = {
  cadence: 'daily',
  tasks: [
    {
      type: 'T-Horizontal',
      frequency: '3-4 times/week',
      format: ['text-only post', 'comment on 10 influencer posts'],
      goal: 'Maximize reach and trigger algorithm'
    },
    {
      type: 'T-Vertical',
      frequency: '1 time/week',
      format: ['technical carousel', 'dev.to cross-post', 'in-depth article'],
      goal: 'Build authority and direct to lead magnet'
    }
  ]
};
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Test & Deploy

A/B test your headlines. Try different formats (text vs. carousel vs. image). Post at different times. Use a scheduler to deploy your content, but be online right after to engage with comments. The first hour is everything.

3. Social Selling: A Protocol for Human-to-Human API Calls

Stop sending spam. Think of outreach as a well-defined protocol with error handling.

The Handshake: The Connection Request

Never use the default. Your connection request is the initial handshake. Reference a piece of their content, a shared experience, or a mutual connection. It's a POST request with a personalized payload.

The Payload: The Value Exchange

Your first message after connecting should never be a sales pitch. That's a 400 Bad Request. Instead, send a value payload. This could be:

  • A link to a genuinely useful open-source tool.
  • An insightful question about a project they posted.
  • An introduction to someone in your network.

Your goal is to move the relationship state from connected to trusted.

The Callback: Asynchronous Follow-up

Here’s a simplified async function for what this looks like:

async function initiateConnection(profile) {
  try {
    const connected = await sendConnectionRequest({
      profileId: profile.id,
      message: `Hi ${profile.firstName}, saw your post on microservices architecture. Great point about service mesh overhead. Would love to connect.`
    });

    if (connected) {
      // Wait for a few days before sending the first message.
      setTimeout(() => {
        sendMessage({
          profileId: profile.id,
          body: 'By the way, since you\'re into microservices, thought you might find this new service mesh benchmark interesting: [link]. No strings attached.'
        });
      }, 3 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
    }
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Connection request failed or was ignored:', error);
  }
}
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4. Employee Advocacy: Your Distributed Network for Authority

A solo founder trying to build a brand is a single server. A company that empowers its employees to post is a distributed system. It's more resilient, has greater reach, and is infinitely more scalable.

Why does it work? People trust engineers more than they trust brand logos. An engineer sharing a technical win is credible. A brand account sharing the same story is just marketing.

How to implement it:

  1. Create a Content Hub: A simple Notion doc or private GitHub repo with content snippets, interesting articles, and company news.
  2. Make it Easy: Provide pre-written (but editable) posts. A simple "Click to Share" link goes a long way.
  3. Incentivize: Don't mandate it. Instead, celebrate employees who build their personal brand. Frame it as a skill that helps their career, not just the company. It's a win-win.

Conclusion: From Code to Connection

Stop treating LinkedIn like a chore. Start treating it like the powerful B2B operating system it is. By applying principles of system design, algorithm optimization, and protocol-driven communication, you can build a predictable engine for lead generation and authority.

You're a builder. Go build your network.

Originally published at https://getmichaelai.com/blog/linkedin-for-b2b-advanced-strategies-for-lead-generation-and

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