What to do when your LinkedIn post gets no engagement

It had 10 comments. Five of those were me replying to other people.

I have 32,000 followers and only 5 people commented. And I wasn't even selling anything. I was promoting a LinkedIn Live I was doing with my friend Sarah Clay, talking about how to sell on LinkedIn.

Given that 99% of LinkedIn sales messages are awful, I genuinely thought people would be jumping up and down for this one.

When a LinkedIn post doesn't get comments, does it mean it failed?

Not necessarily, and my own numbers prove it.

A friend sent me a WhatsApp message: "Is this all it takes to be a LinkedIn Top Voice?" with three laughing emojis. A LinkedIn connection commented, "What happened to your post? Even I did better than you today." There was no smiley face on that one.

Here's what happened next. The LinkedIn Live itself had 25 people registered, more than that actually showed up, and it generated 85 comments during the session. Afterwards I had 12 DMs thanking me, several with follow-up questions about their own LinkedIn strategy.

So a post with 10 comments led directly to a Live with 85 comments and 12 private conversations. If I'd judged the whole thing by that first post, I'd have missed what actually mattered.

Why DMs matter more than public comments

Public comments are wonderful for engagement and appreciation. They tell you people are watching. But the meetings and the business conversions happen in the DMs, not underneath the post.

This is worth sitting with if you're chasing likes and comments as your main measure of success. A post with 200 likes and no DMs has done less for your business than a post with 10 likes and two people messaging you asking how you can help them. Vanity metrics feel good. DMs pay the bills.

What to remember when a post underperforms

When a post doesn't do what you expected, keep three things in mind.

• You don't lose business because a post underperformed. The people who were going to buy from you are still there.
• Most people are busy dealing with their own issues, so a quiet post from you won't register with them the way it does with you.
• The only thing that actually gets affected is your ego.

It's worth knowing your numbers in sales. Some numbers matter a lot. Others are just numbers, and it's easy to give them more weight than they deserve.

How to keep going after a quiet post

It's always better to try something and have it not work out than to do nothing at all. A post that flops is still a post. A post you never wrote teaches you nothing.

Consistency and small daily improvements will always win, on LinkedIn and everywhere else in business. Nobody builds an audience or a pipeline from one post, no matter how good it is. They build it from showing up on the days the numbers are good and the days they're not, and adjusting slightly each time.

There are over 140 short videos on sales, LinkedIn and mindset on my YouTube channel, if you want more on this.

Get in touch if you want to generate more sales or get better results on LinkedIn.