Telling stories is one of the leading social media content strategies everyone knows about — but few people know how to nail a good story.
If you’re going to learn, learn from the best. Not me, the leading LinkedIn commentators who feature in this article.
The loudest voices on LinkedIn. People with personality.
Brand personality.
Because your brand voice is the secret sauce in any social media content strategy that drives engagement, recognition and conversions.
Developing a brand voice that stands out?
That’s a skill.
What are good social media content strategies?
Good social media content:
- Grabs attention
- Move emotions
- It’s relatable
- It’s relevant
- Leaves an impression (memorable)
- It doesn’t fish for vanity measures
- It doesn’t use AI
- It doesn’t make you appear like an amateur
I see this a lot on LinkedIn…and I know you see it too…
- Content that sounds like it was written by everyone else.
- Pointless content (i.e what’s your favourite biscuit for dunking?)*
- Generic content that cites stats, not stories
*I get it. Comments help you to reach a wider audience.
But is it a good social media content strategy?
Ultimately, the content you post should be who people remember you for.
Do you want your brand to be recognised for the best dunkable biscuit?
What do you want to be known for?
What do you want to be remembered for?
p.s. chocolate hobnob
Why is social media content crap?
AI is partly to blame for drab content. And in some cases, the over-reliance on AI is the problem.
Don’t use AI to write your content. Use it for ideas. Otherwise, AI will damage your brand reputation. And that could prove costly for MSPs.
Other times, the personality of the writer does not come across in their content.
Either they can’t write well, or they use a professional, corporate style which is stale, outdated and boring.
Nobody’s reading that.
If nobody’s reading your posts, you may as well not have a post.
I don’t mean to insult you or criticise your work, but if you’re using flowery language to sound professional, intelligent or important, you come across as a dick.
Pro tip: You don’t have to use fancy words when writing social media content. You simply have to communicate.
Here’s the reality:
Every piece of content trains people how to perceive you.
Your posts shape your brand reputation.
They influence what people associate your brand name with, whether or not you grow your audience and what opportunities come your way.
For MSPs, social media content strategies will determine whether you are memorable or forgotten.
Strategic content matters.
And telling stories is a social media content strategy that is proven to work time and again.
The people who build strong brands online are not randomly sharing meaningless content.
And by that, I mean content that has no relevant meaning to your audience.
The people who matter — the decision-makers — are not on LinkedIn to find out what the most popular flavoured crisps are.
Unless they’re the CEO of a crisp manufacturer.
The golden rule of marketing is:
A social media content marketing strategy starts with one question:
“What do I want to be known for?”
Once you answer that, you stop posting for short-term engagement and vanity measures and start creating assets that compound over time.
A few ways to create with more strategic intent:
- Talk about the problems you want to solve professionally, not just the ones currently trending
- Create recurring themes or formats that people begin to associate with you. Familiarity builds recognition
- Study which ideas genuinely resonate with your audience instead of guessing what they want
- Be selective with your opinions and interactions. Not every conversation deserves your attention
- Share your reasoning, not just conclusions. People trust the depth of thought more than surface-level activity
And perhaps most importantly:
Develop a brand personality.
Commentators with the strongest social media all have a brand voice which expresses their personality.
A brand personality still feels human.
That’s the key difference.
People buy from people.
The Social Media Content Strategy Challenge
Want to ramp up your social media content strategy?
Of course, you do, that’s why you’re still here!
Let’s get you started!
Write a personal story.
Not a success story.
Not a vanity story.
A failure story.
Most stories on LinkedIn don’t resonate with people because they boast about success.
People are jealous creatures. They don’t want to know about your success.
They want to know about your failures.
Because everybody fails and people need to know they are not alone in their miserable failures.
And they need hope.
Write a post about a failure that ultimately changed everything for you.
Because life changes when uncomfortable things happen:
- you failed, you learned, you grew
• you changed direction, and something different happened
• you left something secure and felt vulnerable
• you committed to a skill even when people laughed at your mistakes
What’s one mistake that made a significant impact on your life?
Create a post answering the question.
Use the hashtag #thishurt and share it with the community.
The most valuable lessons usually come from experience earned the hard way.
Examples of Social Media Content Strategies
Once you’ve started, you can’t stop.
But I get it, ideas for story-telling LinkedIn posts are few and far between.
Here are a few content strategies to give you inspiration moving forward.
Share Relatable Stories
Stories work. Interesting stories. Relatable stories. Brave stories.
Andrew Middleton realised this when he announced to LinkedIn that he turned 66 and got a bus pass.
His post went viral.
So he reposted about his post going viral.
He went viral again.
5,604 reactions.
As far as social media content strategies go, resharing a viral post is genius!
Why Andrew Middleton’s post works:
💫 He immediately hooks you and raises curiosity. What happened next?
💫 His story is humble, emotive and inspirational. It moves the reader.
Shared Experiences
Shared experiences connect with people on an emotional level because they have a vested interest (experience) in the topic.
And people love to share their knowledge or what happened to them.
Take this LinkedIn post by Chris Donnelly. He told us everything he thought was great about ChatGPT.
7,770 other people shared their ideas, uses, and opinions.
Why Chris Donnelly’s post works:
💫 He blends education with personality. His content teaches practical use for ChatGPT, but the tone feels conversational rather than corporate
💫 His formatting is engineered for readability. Short lines, clean spacing and deliberate pacing create momentum that keeps people scrolling
I Need to Know Posts
Posts that address specific questions your audience wants to know immediately grab attention.
This post from Jonathan Peters-Newman asks, “How long does it take to start seeing results on LinkedIn?”
Practically everyone on LinkedIn wants to know that answer!
Why Jonathan Peters-Newman post works:
💫 He immediately taps into popular interest with a question he can answer given his knowledge and experience
💫 The post automatically appeals to a wide audience
Let Your Personality Shine
Personality is subjective. How do you want to come over? Professional. Amusing. Friendly.
Choose who you want to be, but note that the “ideal” persona is not always the most successful.
Take this example by Dave Gerhardt. As far as social media content strategies go its bold, but it works because it stands out.
It’s different.
Note how he is opinionated and direct Dave is.
But he’s not saying anything malicious or wrong, just simply saying it as it is. Zero hairy-fairy political correctness.
Why Dave Gerhardt’s post works:
💫 The content argues B2B companies are taking the wrong approach to AI and marketing. He immediately challenges the conventional playbook
💫 Short punchy sentences make the content digestible
💫 He writes like an operator, not a marketer. His posts feel grounded in real business experience rather than polished theory, which builds trust quickly
💫 Crucially, his brand personality — humour, blunt opinions and casual language — makes his insights sound human, not manufactured
Use A Fun Meme
It’s the New Year. LinkedIn users are returning to work after the Christmas break.
It’s cold.
Miserable.
People are demotivated.
Until.
Why Chris Walker’s post works:
💫 It’s simple, but motivational.
💫 He wins people over because the video hook is a classic hype phrase that signals momentum and community. It’s memorable because people already know the expression and comment on it to work colleagues — who may take a sneaky peek themselves!
💫 It’s low-effort to consume. When there is nothing to evaluate, no argument to address, and no comment to make, the engagement barrier is low. And people want to show they are raring to go.
What can you learn from these social media content strategies?
The common thread across all of these creators is not about sharing information.
It’s about communicating what they know in ways that are relatable, engaging and entertaining.
Even when they are commenting on something that everybody knows, their personality makes it feel different.
That’s what builds memorability.
That’s what builds trust.
And ultimately, trust builds your brand authority.
Want more social media content strategies?
Know someone trying to build a stronger presence on LinkedIn or other social media accounts?
Share this post with them.
Or send them the link below so they can download my free 4-step framework for writing content that drives conversions.
And if there’s a topic you want us to break down in a future issue, let us know in the comments.
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