Most consultants on LinkedIn end up in 1 of 2 places. Some post when a project leaves a gap, collect likes from other consultants and drift off by spring. Others spend 5 hours a week commenting and can't say which hour led to a client conversation.
Both share a cause: the week has no job, so nothing in it points a buyer toward talking to you.
By the end you'll have a 5-day plan that fits in 3 hours 30 minutes: 2 posts on 1 buyer question, 15 minutes a day of comments, a few follow-up messages, and a Friday review that keeps conversations apart from reactions.
Jump to the free Consultant LinkedIn Weekly Plan
LinkedIn marketing for consultants starts with 1 buyer group and 1 weekly topic
LinkedIn marketing for consultants works when each week serves 1 buyer group and answers 1 question that group is asking right now. Name the group by job title, company size and situation, then take the question from your recent sales calls. Every post, comment and message that week points back to it.
Serve 3 kinds of buyer? Pick 1 per week and rotate. The AuthorityOS guide to personal brand content strategy covers what your content is for overall; this plan is the weekly LinkedIn slice of it.
Write the buyer line
Use this shape: [job title] at [type and size of company] who [situation you can help with]. The situation carries the weight, because it makes a reader think "that's us."
The example here is Nadia Kerr (illustrative), an independent pricing consultant. Her line: heads of sales at B2B software companies with 20 to 150 staff whose average discount has crept above 20%.
Pick the week's question
Copy every buyer question from your last 5 sales calls, proposals or client emails, in their words. Pick 1 that your buyer group asks, that you can answer from your own work, and whose answer connects to a service you sell.
Nadia's month of questions, mapped to her services:
| Week | Buyer question, in their words | Service it connects to |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Why do our reps discount on the last call?" | Discount policy review |
| 2 | "Should we publish prices on the website?" | Packaging and price page rebuild |
| 3 | "How do we raise prices for existing customers without losing them?" | Renewal price increase plan |
| 4 | "What should a deal desk check before it approves?" | Discount policy review |
Week 4 reuses a service on purpose: the one that earns most of your revenue deserves more than 1 week a month.
Plan 2 posts, daily comments and relationship follow-up
A workable consulting week holds 2 original posts, 15 minutes a day of comments where your buyers read, and 3 to 5 follow-up messages to people who've engaged.
The 5-day plan, worked through
Time assumptions: Nadia drafts from existing client notes, so 2 posts of about 700 characters take her 1 hour. A useful comment takes about 5 minutes, and so does a follow-up message. If you're drafting from scratch, double the Monday block.
| Day | Activity | Time | What it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Draft both posts from the week's question and schedule them | 60 min | Turns 1 buyer question into 2 angles |
| Monday | Comment on 3 posts from the watch list | 15 min | Puts you where buyers already read |
| Tuesday | Post 1 goes live; reply to every comment that day | 20 min | Keeps the thread going while people are in it |
| Tuesday | Comment on 3 posts from the watch list | 15 min | Keeps your name in front of the same small group |
| Wednesday | Watch list comments, then 2 or 3 follow-up messages | 30 min | Moves an engaged commenter toward a conversation |
| Thursday | Post 2 goes live; reply to comments | 20 min | Shows how you work, using an example |
| Thursday | Comment on 3 posts from the watch list | 15 min | Adds 1 useful point to a buyer's thread |
| Friday | Follow-up messages, then the weekly review | 35 min | Records conversations and picks next week's question |
That's 210 minutes. LinkedIn lets you schedule a post from 10 minutes to 3 months ahead with the Clock icon, so Monday's session can load both posts.
Post 1: the teaching post (Tuesday)
Post 1 answers the question with a check readers can run themselves. Every number in Nadia's posts is illustrative, and at about 700 characters it's well inside LinkedIn's 3,000-character limit for posts.
Most of the discount in a software deal gets agreed in the last week, after the buyer has already decided.
In 1 review of 140 closed deals, 60% of the total discount went out in the final 7 days. The buyer had picked the vendor weeks earlier. The discount was paying for a signature date.
3 checks you can run on your last 20 deals:
- When was each discount first requested: week 1 or the final week?
- Who raised it, the buyer or the rep?
- What did you get back? A longer term, case study rights or a faster signature?
If most discounts land late and come back empty, the fix is an approval rule, and it can be 3 lines long. I'll share the one I use on Thursday.
What's the latest-stage discount you've seen approved?
Post 2: the example post (Thursday)
Post 2 keeps Tuesday's promise. It names Nadia's part, the client's part and 1 limitation, the shape a LinkedIn case study post follows in more depth.
Here's the 3-line discount rule I set up for a 70-person HR software company this spring.
Up to 10%: the rep decides and logs why.
10% to 20%: a manager approves, and the buyer gives something back.
Above 20%: the CFO approves in writing within 1 business day.
The head of sales trained the team and ran it. My part was the deal review that showed where discounts leaked, and the rule itself.
Over 2 quarters, requests above 20% dropped from 1 in 3 deals to 1 in 8, and the win rate held steady. List prices also rose 6% in that time, so I wouldn't credit the rule with all of it.
Got a discount policy that reps work around? Message me with where it breaks and I'll tell you which line I'd change first.
Comments: the 15-minute watch list
List about 15 people: buyers in your group, writers those buyers follow, and peers who serve the same buyers differently. Keep their profile links in a spreadsheet.
A useful comment adds 1 thing the post lacked: an example, a number or a question the author can answer. Nadia's, on a sales leader's post about quarter-end pressure:
I saw the same thing at a 70-person client: most of the discount went out in the last week. What stuck was asking for something back above 10%, usually a longer term. Did your team try a hard cutoff date, or approvals?
Follow-up: who gets a message and what it says
Message people who showed interest: substantive commenters, people who replied to your comments, and anyone who reposted with a note. Free accounts can directly message only their connections, so for anyone else, reply in the thread or send a connection request with a note.
Spend those notes carefully. LinkedIn's current page on personalized invitations says a free account can add a note to 3 connection requests a month, at up to 200 characters each. The older messaging page still says 5, so plan on 3.
Sam (illustrative), a VP of Sales who commented on post 1, is already a connection, so Nadia's first message only asks about his situation:
Thanks for the comment on the discount post, Sam. You mentioned your reps offer 15% before procurement even asks. Is that a few reps or most of the team?
At about 150 characters, the same words would fit an invitation note for someone who isn't a connection yet.
If Sam replies with detail, you've got a conversation, and the guide to turning LinkedIn conversations into discovery calls picks up from there.
The Consultant LinkedIn Weekly Plan has Nadia's full week filled in, plus a blank copy for yours.
Review the conversations and next steps the week created
A Friday review takes 20 minutes and answers 1 question: which conversations did this week start, and what happens next in each? Keep conversations and reactions in separate tables, because a post can earn 4,000 impressions and start nothing while a 300-impression post starts 2 conversations.
A conversation here means someone describing their own situation in their own words. Tag each as buyer or peer, since peers send referrals and buyers need a different next step.
The conversation log (illustrative week)
| Day | Person and role | Started from | Their situation, in their words | Next step | Check back |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tue | Sam, VP Sales, 60-person software company (buyer) | Comment on post 1 | "Reps offer 15% before procurement even asks" | Asked how widespread it is | Fri |
| Wed | Priya, CFO, 110-person fintech (buyer) | Message after an earlier case study post | "Our board wants gross margin up before our Series C" | Answered her question, then invited her to a 30-minute call | Booked |
| Thu | Leo, revenue operations consultant (peer) | Comment on post 2 | Serves the same buyers on CRM setup | 20-minute call to swap notes | Booked |
The reactions table
| Post | Impressions | Comments | Comments from your buyer group | Conversations started |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Post 1, Tuesday | 2,900 | 18 | 6 | 1 |
| Post 2, Thursday | 1,400 | 9 | 4 | 1 |
For the impressions, open LinkedIn's post analytics: select the Me icon, then Posts & Activity, then the impressions count or View analytics on the post.
A free account shows only the 3 most recent profile viewers from the last 90 days, and only while your own viewing setting shows your name and headline, so the conversation log stays the record.
Decide next week's topic
Each Friday, keep next week's question from your 4-week list unless a buyer in the log raised a better one. After 4 Fridays, review the month with 3 rules:
- A topic that started 2 or more buyer conversations gets another week, from a new angle.
- Reactions without conversations usually mean you reached peers, so sharpen the buyer line.
- Conversations that stall after 1 reply point at the follow-up message; ask a narrower question.
Write your buyer line and pick this week's question today, then block the 8 slots from the plan before Monday. Before post 1 goes live, check that your profile tells a visitor what you do, using the LinkedIn profile guide for coaches and consultants.