LinkedIn fatigue is real. Between motivation gurus, endless threads saying nothing at all, and selfies dressed up as thought leadership, finding genuinely valuable content on the platform is getting harder. And yet, paradoxically, it feels like everything has already been said, which makes you wonder whether it’s even worth contributing.
And yet LinkedIn is the only social platform I’ve chosen to stay active on. I work as a marketing and communication strategist, and LinkedIn allows me to maintain professional relationships that matter and reach people who share my work interests. I deleted Instagram, then Facebook; TikTok never stuck. LinkedIn, on the other hand, has been part of my professional life since 2008. Once I decided to stay, I found myself facing a practical dilemma: what do I write? And when?
What follows is the system I’ve built over time to decide what, how, and why to post on LinkedIn. It’s not perfect, but it works for me.
No editorial calendar (and why I don’t miss it)
I belong to the school of thought that considers the editorial calendar dead, or at least in a coma. Explaining how and why would take a separate article, and in any case, a proper answer always depends on context.
In my case, the reasons are three:
- I almost never have newsworthy launches (when I do, they tend to stay behind the scenes, so it doesn’t make much sense to use them as content triggers);
- I don’t like contributing unless I have something I genuinely consider useful to share;
- and finally, I’m human, I don’t always have valuable ideas at my fingertips, and a rigid content grid would end up feeling like a cage.
What works for me instead is a combination of small habits and minimal structure.
I aim to publish on Tuesdays and Fridays, a completely arbitrary choice but one with a logic behind it: Tuesday is usually the day I send Babepistole, my newsletter; Friday is when I publish on the blog. So when ideas are scarce, I can always fall back on sharing one or the other.
It’s a habit, not an obligation: if I don’t have ideas or content I believe in, I don’t post. When ideas come, I open LinkedIn, write, and schedule.
The Claude project for my “editorial plan”
How do you build a sustainable LinkedIn content strategy without relying on templates or rigid calendars? In my case, the answer comes down to two things: small publishing habits and a Claude project configured as an extension of my editorial mind.
I use Claude on a Pro plan and have created a project I call, with a certain sense of humor, my “editorial plan.” If you’re not familiar with the platform, projects are contexts you can set up to work consistently on a specific topic: they consist of instructions and a knowledge base of uploaded documents that provide the model with detailed background information.
In my project’s knowledge base I’ve uploaded
- my business plan (which contains my brand essence, how I want to work, and what resources I can draw on),
- a document on my marketing plan (what I offer, who I want to reach, what I want them to do),
- several writing samples from my blog, website, and LinkedIn,
- and a document with my style preferences and the things I absolutely can’t stand.
The project instructions are fairly simple: every time we start a chat, Claude must review all the documents to build context before responding. I refine them over time and update the documents as things evolve. It works remarkably well.
In practice, I use this project in different ways depending on the moment.
- When I have a vague idea, I ask Claude to check its alignment with my goals and values, or to suggest an angle for developing it.
- When I have a broad topic but don’t know where to start, I ask for several treatment options, always in keeping with my values, useful for the reader, and with as little self-referentiality as possible.
- When I’m short on ideas, I ask Claude to propose new ones that build on and complement what I’ve already published (the project draws on the memory of previous chats to enrich its context).
- When I’ve written something I’m not fully convinced by, I ask for reformulations or cuts; or I provide an outline and ask for two or three development options, then choose the one that works best and use it as my own starting point.
There are days when I leave Claude empty-handed, because nothing it proposed was convincing or nothing I produced satisfied me. It happens, and it’s not a problem.
Two principles guide my use of AI tools in general:
- I use them only to automate, speed up, or deepen activities I could already do well on my own,
- and I never use outputs as they are, because I always rewrite in my own voice even when the content seems correct.
The rules I’ve set for myself
Over time I’ve developed a set of personal rules that help me maintain my tone and avoid the most common traps of LinkedIn communication.
I make an effort to limit self-referentiality, though I don’t always succeed.
I systematically cut the engagement-bait closing questions, because “What do you think?” is my personal nightmare.
Absolutisms and motivational tones don’t represent me, so I ignore them whenever they surface in drafts.
I attach a photo to every post, either taken by me or selected from my archive, sometimes just for a shared color or mood; anecdotally, this seems to be the single thing that most supports reach.
In every post, I try to back up opinions with something concrete: a tip, an insight, something worth taking away.
And I keep my conversational tone consistent, neither higher nor lower than how I normally speak.
Why this system works
Building a Claude project around your communication guidelines, goals, tone, and strategy is the equivalent of creating a rudimentary duplicate of your mind, one that doesn’t suffer tired days and doesn’t wear out from use.
More importantly, it evaluates the questions you bring to it with enough rationality to help you break through creative blocks, manage content FOMO, and stay consistent with your positioning.
At the same time, it leaves you ample room to preserve your authorial voice, reduces stress, and frees up energy for creativity. And the upstream decision about when to post, combined with the commitment to post only when conditions are right, frees you from peer pressure and restores the satisfaction of genuinely contributing to professional conversation rather than adding noise.
It’s not a perfect method. But it allows me to maintain an online presence without sacrificing authenticity or precious time.
A note: this post started as a LinkedIn article published in August 2025 as part of a series called “Back to School August.” I adapted it for the blog, where I wanted it to live by my own rules. That’s a useful lesson in itself: content can be reused.
Cover image by Miles Burke via Unsplash.
