Why comments before posts
A post goes to your network and, if it does well, a little beyond. With a few hundred followers, that's a small room. A comment on someone else's post goes to their room: people who already care about the topic, reading next to someone they already trust. If what you write is useful, some of them click through to see who you are.
Comments are also cheaper to get right. A post has to stand on its own. A comment only has to add one thing to a conversation that already exists. For most founders, that's a much easier habit to keep than posting every day.
None of this needs to be a growth hack. In our experience it works for the same reason it works at a conference: the people you meet in the hallway after a talk are the ones who remember you.
The 15 minutes
- Minutes 0 to 3: pick three posts. Not the first three in your feed. Look for posts from the groups below, from the last day or so, where the comment section is still small enough that yours will be read.
- Minutes 3 to 12: write three comments. About three minutes each. Read the whole post, find the one point you have something to say about, and say it. Skip the post if you have nothing to add.
- Minutes 12 to 15: reply on your own threads. Go back to anything you posted or commented on in the last few days and answer the people who replied. This is where conversations turn into DMs.
Three comments a day is about 60 a month. That's enough to be recognized by the handful of people whose threads you keep showing up in, which matters more than being seen once by thousands.
Whose posts to pick
- Your customers and the people you want as customers. Commenting on what they post about their own work is the most natural way to be useful to them in public.
- Founders one or two steps ahead of you. Their audience is the one you're trying to build, and they tend to reply to thoughtful comments.
- The people your buyers follow. Analysts, operators and practitioners in your space. Their comment sections are full of exactly the people you want to meet.
Skip the viral posts with two thousand comments. Yours will be buried, and the audience is too broad to matter.
What a good comment does
A good comment does one of three things: it adds a number or detail the author didn't have, it offers a specific counterexample, or it asks a question only someone who does the work would ask. What it never does is restate the post.
Take a founder posting that cutting onboarding from 7 steps to 3 lifted activation from 31% to 44%.
Great insights! Simplicity always wins. Thanks for sharing.
That could go under any post about anything. Compare these, which each do one of the three jobs:
I wonder how much of the lift came from fewer steps versus reaching the first useful screen sooner. Those often look like the same thing until you split them.
Curious whether 44% holds at 90 days. Short onboarding sometimes moves the drop-off later instead of removing it.
Both are specific to this post, both show how the commenter thinks, and both give the author something to answer. The second one disagrees a little, which is fine. Respectful disagreement with one specific point is one of the most reliable ways to start a real exchange.
A few habits that help:
- Lead with the point. The first line is all most people read.
- Keep it to two or three sentences. If it needs more, it might be a post of your own.
- Use your own experience when you have it. “We saw the same thing when…” beats a general opinion.
- Don't end every comment with a question. When you do ask one, make it one you actually want answered.
Replying on your own posts
When someone comments on your post, they've done the hard part: they started a conversation with you in public. Answer every thoughtful comment, and answer with something more than “thanks!”. Pick up their point, add to it, or ask what they'd do. A post where the author is clearly present in the comments reads very differently from one where they posted and left.
The same goes for replies to your comments on other people's posts. If someone engages with what you wrote, that's a person who found you interesting. Keep going.
Where Replya fits
Replya is a Chrome extension that drafts five comments under any LinkedIn post, in the tone you pick and shaped by the role and expertise you give it. It also drafts replies to comments on your own posts. It's built for exactly this routine: the drafts give you a starting point, you pick the closest one, change what you'd say differently, and post it yourself. Nothing is posted without you. The free plan covers 10 comments a day, which is more than the three this routine needs.