Hello Networkers! Here in Barcelona nearly everyone else—except me—seems to be on vacation (or holiday as we’d say in Europe). What are you doing this week? Hit reply and tell me if you’re at your desk or on a beach somewhere. (In which case….why are you reading this?!)

One guy who is definitely working this week is Roman Pikalenko. I met Roman on LinkedIn around a year ago when he was a general ghostwriter. Now he’s niched down, significantly, to climate tech, and it’s helped him meet his revenue goals. Read below for how and why he believes specificity in your audience and message helps you win on LinkedIn.

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

• LinkedIn becomes the platform of choice of corporate leaders, in lieu of writing opinion columns in newspapers. (Axios)

• Have you noticed a generational divide in what’s being posted on LinkedIn? You’re not alone. (Bloomberg, registration required)

• Former LinkedIn employee shares how she nearly 10x-ed her salary over 10 years. (Business Insider via Apple News)

Welcome, Roman. Please tell us about yourself.

I currently work as a premium Ghostwriter. I ghostwrite both LinkedIn content and educational email courses, specifically for climate tech founders that are in the funding stages between Seed to Series A, and climate tech investors that have a portfolio of investments.

What’s your industry?

The industry I serve is climate tech or climate in general, or some might call it green tech. I’m a ghostwriter for those industries.

What does LinkedIn do for you?

LinkedIn pays for my bills, provides me with a lifestyle.

For example, I just came home from the Philippines, I was there for four weeks. I would have gone there if I had a 9 to 5, but it would have taken much longer and I would be much stricter with my budget and spending.

LinkedIn has allowed me to quit my job and go full time with my own business.

As hard as it is, I’m not going back.

What are your main goals for using LinkedIn?

I'm very curious and experimental as a person and a business owner right now. My goal is to push my limits as a solo entrepreneur and see how many clients I can comfortably serve while maintaining quality and charging well.

I currently work alone, occasionally outsourcing specific tasks like brand strategy, but mostly I handle everything myself. The question I’m facing is whether there’s enough demand to transition into an agency model and, if so, whether I want to take on the additional challenges that come with hiring and managing a team.

Ultimately, I aim to become the go-to resource for content in the climate tech sector, which I’m passionate about. Climate tech companies often struggle with content and branding, and I see an opportunity to fill that gap. While there is a small movement in corporate marketing targeting sustainable businesses—sometimes labeled as ethical marketing—it can veer into impractical territory, like rejecting lead magnets altogether. My focus is on providing practical, effective strategies within this niche.

Roman’s content strategy

Who’s your target audience on LinkedIn?

I'm trying to reach climate tech founders in the founding stages between Seed and Series A, as they have budgets to work with ghostwriters. And I have three or four categories that I gravitate more towards:

• Food tech

• Energy tech

• Sustainable materials

• And possibly biotech, which I’d like to break in to

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

The easiest way I create content is by turning sales and client conversations into content. For example, if a prospect asks me a question during a sales call or on LinkedIn, I turn that question into at least three different content pieces:

1. The advice I gave them

2. The story of how they reached out and what happened

3. My opinion on the situation

For instance, a climate CTO once asked if they could hire a ghostwriter for a month before a product launch and then figure out a retainer for 15 minutes a day or a week. This confused me, so I turned it into content. My advice was clear: don't hire a ghostwriter one month before launching a major platform.

In addition to this approach, I sometimes use Perplexity AI for research, especially for sub-niches I'm less familiar with. I prompt it to give me topic-specific problems in that niche's voice and then spin those topics into different content angles. Sometimes I look at what others are posting on similar topics to brainstorm my own content ideas or ask AI to dive deeper into potential problems. But increasingly, my content is inspired by client conversations.

How do you differentiate your content from others on LinkedIn?

Being in a specific niche has been a significant advantage for me. While I've encountered a few ghostwriters or writers interested in climate tech, I haven't seen anyone actively targeting it like I do. That’s one edge I have.

Additionally, I offer more than just LinkedIn ghostwriting—I provide educational email courses, which gives me a broader range of services.

I can create a comprehensive marketing funnel, including building landing pages, buying custom domains, and setting up automations. For example, I'm currently writing a 20-day sales sequence, setting up re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers, and creating link trigger automation for those who repeatedly click on a "book a call" link but don't follow through. These tasks often involve integrations with tools like Zapier. So, when clients come to me with specific problems, I have a wider array of deeper solutions to offer than a typical ghostwriter. My content also reflects that.

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 ✅

• Polls ❌

• Audio ❌

• Video ✅

• Carousels ✅

• Photos of yourself (selfies) ✅

• Photos of other people or things ✅

• AI generated images ❌

• Infographics (single image) ✅

• Other people’s graphics ✅

• Links to your company content ❌

• Links to other content ❌

• Reposts of others’ content (repost only) ❌

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

• LinkedIn newsletters ❌

• Responses to community articles ❌

• LinkedIn Live events ❌

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?

It’s about seven to nine hours a week, total, including content creation. It can go up to 20 if I’m involved in a lot of sales conversations.

I post 12 posts per week pretty consistently, and do outreach and respond to comments.

Wednesdays and Thursdays are 100% client fulfillment days. I try to stay off LinkedIn those days, besides responding to comments that come directly to me.

I only engage with others’ content around 15 minutes every few days, and usually not on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

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

I batch write my content on the weekends, usually on Sundays, and spend 15 minutes engaging on some days.

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

DMs are essential to my business. Ever since I switched to climate, not only have DMs helped me create conversations, they’ve led to sales or sales calls, and have also allowed me to build my network and relationships.

For example, there is a serial investor in food tech space that jumped on a sales call with me, though he didn’t buy. But we’ve kept in touch to exchange ideas ever since, and he has a podcast that I listen to regularly.

Roman’s biggest growth levers

What has contributed most to your growth?

I'm focused on building connections with the right people, which has been key to my growth, especially in the early stages. Since I began taking the climate tech niche seriously, starting last December, I've made it a priority to limit my exposure to as many people in personal branding as possible. I’ve unfollowed people in pods and disconnected from gurus and influencers who don't align with my focus.

I've also reduced engagement with my peers because my following was built on a different premise—helping young marketers build their personal brands on LinkedIn. This approach led to a diluted network, which I realized wasn't aligned with my new focus. For almost two years, I was deeply involved in the personal branding space, which attracted a wide range of people, but not the climate tech professionals I'm now targeting.

I also realized that engaging with big creator accounts, as much as I enjoy their content, would attract followers who aren't relevant to my niche. For instance, someone running an alternative protein biotech company isn't going to be in a big LinkedIn coach’s comments. So, I've become hyper-focused on connecting with the people who matter most to my new direction.

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

At the moment, as I'm experimenting with content sprints of 12 posts per week, I track what's working primarily through engagement—looking at how people are reacting, whether the right people are commenting, and if I'm attracting the climate founders I'm targeting.

However, I've noticed that despite my content being hyper-focused on climate, I’m not seeing much engagement from climate professionals unless I initiate it. This is partly due to the existing quality of my network and the fact that many in my target audience are less active on LinkedIn.

To address this, I'm focusing on playing the long game by adding the right people to my network, even if they're just lurkers initially.

My real tracking, though, is sales-related metrics. I track how many cold messages I send, responses I get, the time spent on outreach, the number of inbound messages, the effectiveness of my Loom videos in outreach, and the number of sales calls and closed clients. I also track the time spent on client fulfillment and revenue metrics, like new and recurring payments.

(Stephanie’s note: Roman seems to have a really detailed spreadsheet to track everything—I’m jealous and want to learn how to do that from him!)

While engagement is visible and easy to notice, it has little impact on my revenue. The real growth comes from the background activities, like initiating conversations and consistent outreach, which aligns with the outreach-heavy mindset of my target audience, particularly seed-level founders.

How do you stay up to date on changes on the platform?

I don’t worry about this, really. I’m getting the right responses from the right people, it’s moving in the right direction, and that’s what matters to me.

How Roman makes money

How do you generate revenue in your business?

My revenue comes through three streams:

1. Inbound leads, mainly through LinkedIn DMs

2. Referrals from people in my network

3. Outbound on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is currently responsible for nearly 100% of the revenue in my business, and it all comes from ghostwriting and marketing services.

How do you quantify your success on LinkedIn?

I'm still figuring out the numbers when it comes to meetings and clients closed—it's something I'm actively working on. Right now, I'm focused on increasing the response rate to my outreach. By outreach, I mean simple connection requests without a sales pitch. People accept the requests, but often don't respond, so I'm trying to improve that.

One concrete metric I can share is revenue. My goal is to consistently hit $10K per month, not just as a one-time achievement, but consecutively, unlike some influencers who hit a milestone once and then talk about it all year. For a solopreneur who used to be a bartender, that’s quite good.

Roman’s top tips

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

One of the significant challenges I faced on LinkedIn was transitioning into the climate tech niche. Driven by passion rather than prior knowledge or experience, I set out to validate this niche by aiming to connect with at least 200 people and over 50 businesses within the sector.

What made me want to quit is the absurd amount of people joining engagement pods and that being prevalent on LinkedIn. I can give you an extensive list of people that I know for fact, are in engagement pods. Seeing numerous individuals join these pods and personal branding "gurus" boast about their successes or adopt contrarian stances purely for attention was incredibly disheartening. At times, it made me want to punch my screen and quit the whole thing. Although I never truly considered leaving—given how much I depend on the platform—I did lose some of love for LinkedIn.

So now my priorities have shifted. I focus on metrics that matter, like sales and calls. Recognizing that with 22,000 followers, diving into a new niche essentially meant starting from scratch, I became more patient and strategic. I accepted that it might take up to a year to cleanse my network of less relevant connections and cultivate an audience that truly values my content.

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

I’ll give you my top four pieces of advice.

1. The cleaner you start, the better. By that I mean the quality of your initial network. For that to be done, you really need to understand what you do, who you do it for, and how. For me, since I’m ghostwriting for climate tech people or founders, then I better make sure that my network is full of them.

   This may involve cleaning your initial network, disconnecting from friends or former colleagues. Do it and don’t feel bad about it.

2. Limit the number of accounts you take advice from. My framework for this is:

   a. Do I really enjoy their content: is it funny, engaging, entertaining?

   b. Has any of their advice been actually useful to me, have I applied it and seen results.

   The best of the best is that both of these two things is true.

3. Really understand your audience. If you don’t know who they are and what their problems are, you’re going to have difficulty creating content to reach them.

4. There is no value in going “viral” unless you’re selling a low-ticket offer for which volume would be valuable. Focus on sales to your niche instead. If you’re not a productivity coach, even though a productivity post might get more impressions, don’t post about productivity.

Is there anything else you want to tell other Networkers?

What I’ve realized is that I need to stop thinking solely within the context of LinkedIn. LinkedIn isn't everything, and only a small percentage of businesses can truly thrive by focusing exclusively on this platform.

Even those businesses who do thrive—like coaches—should still have another platform or an email strategy in place.

However, this approach doesn’t apply as well to other industries. For instance, climate tech founders, especially those focused on fundraising, rarely spend time on LinkedIn. To reach them, you need to build deeper, longer funnels with more touchpoints to nurture these potential leads and build trust more effectively.

That's why I don’t worry much about organic engagement on LinkedIn. Instead, I recommend that unless you're targeting coaches or consultants, you shouldn’t rely solely on LinkedIn. It should be just the top of your funnel—use it to generate traffic, but ensure you have a more robust strategy in place to maintain and deepen those relationships over time.

Roman’s best post

Stephanie’s note: I’ve asked each Networker to give me one “best post,” based on their own criteria.

Read this post on LinkedIn

Why Roman considers this his best post.

This post, from for months ago, is the transformation showing that I used to be a bartender and now I'm running a six-figure business. It resonated really well. It’s a relatable post that shows the contrast to where I am now.

How to network with Roman

• Follow Roman Pikalenko on LinkedIn

• Get Roman’s Climate Founder’s Storytelling Blueprint email course

I see lots of people spinning their wheels on LinkedIn and wondering why it’s not working. My friend Ada Udeogu explains why a hit-or-miss strategy isn’t working and what to do to turn it around.

Read this post on LinkedIn

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!

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