Welcome, Networkers, to my deep dives with top LinkedIn voices—how they grew, what’s working now, and what it looks like to achieve meaningful goals as a personal brand.

This week, meet Lara Acosta, She’s one of the fastest-growing creators on LinkedIn, zooming from zero to 156k followers in two years through her generous sharing and witty comments.

Welcome, Lara. Tell us about yourself.

I'm a personal brand strategist at my own company, LA Digital, which started as a personal branding agency. I initially worked with multi-seven and -eight figure agency owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs. writing their content.

And then I scaled my personal brand on the back of that experience, and went on to create my own courses based on what I learned. 

What’s your industry?

Marketing and creative, particularly focusing on online education.

What does LinkedIn do for you?

My God, what does it not do? 

LinkedIn acts as a massive funnel for my business; from top of funnel (content), middle of funnel (sales content), to bottom of funnel, which is my profile.

My profile is optimized for people to buy from me in different ways. They can sign up to my newsletter, which is free. Then they can sign up to a coaching call, which is medium-ticket, or they can buy my products or cohort.

And LinkedIn changed my life, by the way.

Main goals for LinkedIn:

• Continuously create and build my personal brand.

• Connect with like-minded entrepreneurs and potential clients.

• Challenge the traditional education system by demonstrating the power of online learning.

Lara’s content strategy

Who’s your target audience on LinkedIn?

CEOs, solopreneurs, freelancers, and entrepreneurs who want to grow their personal brands. The key differentiator is their attitude—they need to be go-getters passionate about self-education, they have the drive to keep on learning.

How do you decide what content to create and share on LinkedIn?

I've always created content for myself. I think, ‘what did Lara two years ago or even yesterday wanted to learn?’ Especially at the beginning of me building my personal brand. I was still learning. I didn't have any credentials except my university degree, and that's not even enough for anything.

How do you differentiate your content from others on LinkedIn?

People are teaching things they don't know. Every single thing I teach, I’ve done the testing and learning myself.

What makes your content successful with your audience?

Simply showing up every single day, teaching what I know, writing like I talk, maybe not in my main content all the time, but in the comments. 

A big part of success online is who you know, and who knows you in that halo effect that you create. You have to reverse engineer how to get that halo, and then you find the biggest creators and then you try to get to them in your network. 

It’s just being authentic and being consistent, it's also that element of networking, which I think a lot of people sleep on because it takes a lot of work and people are lazy.

How have you leveraged your connections with other influencers to elevate your own presence on LinkedIn?

I think this LinkedIn journey is quite lonely. And when I started on LinkedIn I was feeling burnout in my agency life that everybody kind of gets to: am I really good enough for this? And then meeting these two people—Jasmin (Alić) and Luke (Matthews)—who thought differently about the same thing, it was like, wait. We’re all working towards the same thing.

Networking can 100% change your life, especially on LinkedIn, because you're finding people that align with your goals, not with your lifestyle.

What challenges have you faced on LinkedIn? What’s made you almost—or actually—quit? What got you back on track?

I've never wanted to quit, but what’s made me want to take a break is hate. People can be very judgemental, which makes me really sad, because I'm a very positive person and I'm surrounded by very positive people. 

But I've not really been burned out from LinkedIn or wanted to quit because I couldn't do it. Honestly, I think LinkedIn changed my life for a reason and I want to stay and keep it up.

What are the processes you use to create content? 

• Schedule in advance ❌

• Batch create content ❌

• Optimize for SEO/keywords ❌

• Follow an editorial calendar ✅

• Have specific content pillars/themes ✅

• Repurpose content to/from LinkedIn or reuse on LinkedIn ✅

• Use AI in any part of the content writing process ✅

• Have team/human support for any part of your LI process ✅

• Keep a list of potential topics somewhere (Notes, Notion, etc.) ✅

• Design or source visuals including infographics and carousels and video ✅

What types of content do you post to LinkedIn?

• Text only ❌

• Photos of yourself ✅

• Photos of other people or things ❌

• AI generated images ❌

• Twitter screenshots ✅

• Infographics (or single graphic) ✅

• Other graphics (not yours) ❌

• Carousels ✅

• Video ✅

• Polls ❌

• Links to your company content ❌

• Links to other content ❌

• Reposts of others’ content (repost only) ✅

• Reposts of others’ content (with your thoughts) ❌

Lara’s biggest growth levers

What has contributed most to your growth?

The main contributor to my growth has been my network and community on LinkedIn. I did that by engaging a lot, a whole lot. And now those people remember me, and the people that don't know me, they'll look at my engagement and be inspired.

How do you track what’s working and know what to change?

I casually monitor likes, comments, and shares to gauge the reception of my posts. I don’t get into the nitty gritty of the analytics.

How much time does it take?

How much time do you spend each weekday on LinkedIn on comments or Direct Messages (DMs), outside of content creation?

I spend around 4-5 hours daily on LinkedIn, engaging with my network, and an additional hour or so on content creation.

Are you active on LinkedIn on the weekends, either posting or commenting or both?

Yes, I have no life.

How do you use DMs (direct messages) in the service of your goals?

I think people think that building a personal brand is that you post, and then money happens. 

It's actually an entirely different process. I think outbound—sending DMs—is where the money really is. You gain people’s trust quicker and it's an easier sale through your content.

How Lara makes money

How do you generate revenue in your business?

There are a bunch of ways. The first is passive income through info products. My first info product, which I sold on Gumroad, changed my life. It took me two hours and then I made $10,000. That was crazy money for a student, especially passively.

I launched that, and it acted as a lead magnet for people to buy my coaching, which became second stream of income. I also have my personal branding agency, which is higher ticket, around $2,500 and up. And now I have a program cohort (called Literally LinkedIn) as well.

I also do affiliate marketing, for companies likeTweetHunter, Taplio, and AuthoredUp, and I take sponsorships from Tapio, Riverside, Notion, and others. The last way I monetize is through keynotes and events, getting paid to speak.

LinkedIn obviously is at the heart of a lot of your revenue, because you're a LinkedIn expert and you're selling LinkedIn services. Do you feel like there would be an opportunity for you to sell something that was not LinkedIn related at this point?

Now I've shown I can grow Twitter/X, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. Essentially I've just become a social media person. I could do more of that. 

I think I could go and start another business. LinkedIn has given me the skills of building and successfully operating a business, so now I could start a donut shop and I think it could do quite well.

How do you quantify your success on LinkedIn?

It varies quite a lot. For example, in the last cohort launch, we onboarded 80 students into the cohort. And at the time I had like seven coaching clients and two agency clients. So that was a really high month. 

But last month my cohort ended, so right now I basically have five clients. It ebbs and flows.

Lara’s top tips

What advice would you give other Networkers who want to build and leverage their LinkedIn presence?

Understand that whatever you're currently doing can be multiplied on LinkedIn. Whether it's sales, content creation, or networking, LinkedIn amplifies your activities to a larger audience because the algorithm is amazing.

Is there anything else you want to tell me that I haven’t asked you?

I would say that people need to realize that personal branding is networking at scale and reputation at scale. And if you're trying to get a job or if you're trying to start your own business or even get investment, you need a personal brand. 

It's not just for people that want to be famous. It's also for people that just want to have a second chance at something.

You create your own luck through LinkedIn. And that's something people don't believe, but I've seen it happen multiple times.

Lara’s best post

Stephanie’s note: I’ve asked each Networker to give me one “best post,” based on their own criteria. This could be the post that means the most to them, that has gone viral, that has launched something new…and I’ve asked them for a few words, below the post, about why they think it’s their best.

Read this post on LinkedIn

Why Lara considers this her best post

Everything changed with this post.

How to network with Lara

• Lara Acosta on LinkedIn

• That’s Literally It newsletter

What’s new on LinkedIn? Here’s what caught my eye this week.

(Note that I strive to include links that are not firewalled, though some that would otherwise be gated are included here via Apple News.)

No, the “Open to Work” banner does not hamper your job search. (Forbes)

Is LinkedIn the hot new dating site? (Newsweek)

You might have seen LinkedIn’s new games, did you know LinkedIn has a newsletter about them, too? (LinkedIn)

LinkedIn will now automatically tag images or video generated with AI (Lia Haberman on X)

I’m always on the lookout for something that changes the way I use LinkedIn. It could be an idea, a tool, a process, or something strategic. 

Have a tip I should consider? Hit reply to this email and let me know!

I’m starting Tip of the Week with one of my - and Lara’s - favorite creators, Jasmin Alić. Jasmin drops value with every single post, and he’s also a genuinely kind and helpful person. This post is particularly juicy, including more than the promised 3 secrets.

Read this post on LinkedIn

That’s all for now—I look forward to seeing you again next week for another Networker interview.