I hit 20,000 followers on LinkedIn in August 2025. The song itself is worth celebrating. After all, who doesn’t like a milestone number?
However, it has also led to a lot of reflection on where and why I started on the platform. This was the first year that I set a clear growth soil for LinkedIn, and achieving it gave me a reason to pause and ask: what did this growth actually arise? What has changed on the way? And what will come afterwards?
In this article I will share the strategies that have fueled my growth, the opportunities that are accompanied by 20k, and the challenges I have had to navigate along the way. I will also share how I intend to approach LinkedIn (and more content) in this next phase.
Let’s go in.
Hetting 20,000 followers was not the plan (in the beginning)
When I first started to post on LinkedIn for the first time, figures I think of. In the beginning I was looking for community after losing my job in 2020.
When I found work again, my focus shifted. I went back to the use of LinkedIn to make contact with other professionals and to learn from people in the content marketing room. But I was more focused on work and community than in content. I only shared about 10 LinkedIn reports between 2020 and 2022.
However, in 2022, after joining Buffer, the message took a new goal. My profile became one Proof-of-Concept Lab, And I first tested every advice I wrote for Buffer (such as finding your niche or setting in content pillars) for my own account. If it worked for me, I knew it would resonate with our readers.
Some of those experiments worked better than I expected. They helped me to define my niche, make contact with the right target group and to build a platform that unlocked opportunities that I could not have imagined in 2020.
Reaching 20k was not on my radar then. It was only early 2025, after crossing 15k, that I set a clear goal: prove that the strategies of Buffer really work by applying them themselves. I thought touching 20k the advice we would share and perhaps even open the door to brand partnerships – what it did, rather than I expected.
Yet I have never seen followers as the only measure of success. On LinkedIn, growth looks like well -considered comments, people who refer to my work in their own messages, and conversations that go beyond a single update. The milestone is important, but those signals are more important.
What drove my growth drove
The only habit that has constantly practiced rewards during my LinkedIn trip is coherence. Not exciting, but very true. Setting up a sustainable postcadence has always been on the basis of my LinkedIn strategy, and it is a tactic that keeps coming back the Buffer’s data about consistency.
Except that he appeared, the growth came from experiment. I tested everything I wrote about on my own account: find a niche, choose content pillars and then limit the “Venn Diagram Middle” where what I liked overlap with what my audience needed. That overlap became my content, Sweet Spot.
Defining my audience made the difference. Over time, it became clear that I spoke with early to medium career professionals who wanted to build international careers in marketing and creative industries. When I leaned on that, my content began to connectfully connecting.
Sharing more personal reflections also helped; Those messages often traveled further than I expected. And from 2020 to 2025 my growth looked like this:
- From 0 to 10k: Five or six years between landing my first external job and participation in Buffer in 2022.
- 10k to 15k: a much faster two years.
- 15k to 20k: the fastest milestone after nine months, built on the base of all the lessons I had learned
Apart from my own actions, there were also external turning points. Creator Camp was a big one – the first time I was committed to a clear postcadans (seven days immediately at the beginning).
It is proof that intentionality connects. Once I knew what worked and with whom I spoke, my growth accelerated.
What growth unlocked for me
Building an audience immediately shaped my career. At the beginning of 2025 I started landing from brand partnerships – something that I never thought possible when I posted out of necessity. That only happened because I was committed to LinkedIn, set a goal and appeared consistently. Now partnerships feel an option that I can choose to tap, not just a happiness break that I cannot control the flow of.
In addition to partnerships, visibility changed how people see me in the industry. I am invited to podcasts, YouTube channels and in articles as a contributor. The recognition is validation, but more importantly, it helped me to reach the people I give the most: early to medium career professionals trying to build international career.
What I did not expect to hit 20k
All this probably sounds great – consistent growth, brand partnerships, new opportunities. And that’s it. But when I’m honest, I also feel strange about it. This is why.
LinkedIn feels narrower to scale. In contrast to other platforms, people come here with specific goals: find jobs, build networks or learn something that is linked to their career. That means that my content must fit with those lanes to perform. I did not expect that growth would feel limited, but it does.
The balance becomes more difficult, not easier. Too much lifestyle content risks credibility. Too much “advice” risks to sound generic. I went too far in both directions – messages that are so polished that they feel sterile, and others so personal or “beyond” that they confuse my audience. The Sweet Spot is where personal reflections connect with professional lessons. But the larger the audience, the harder I found it to hold that middle way.
Visibility provides pressure. With 200 followers I could post freely. At 20K, every design feels heavier. I catch myself fully processing or completely shelters. Ironically, the experiment that fed my growth is now more difficult to retain. That is the most unexpected part of touching this milestone.
I’m not just a professional. This has been the most difficult part to articulate. My life includes much more than my work, but on LinkedIn every part of me has to come through the professional lens. That filter keeps my content relevant, but it also completes me and my personal brand.
So yes, visibility is a privilege. But it is also a responsibility and I am still figuring out how to wear without losing the curiosity and trial and trial-and-arror spirit that brought me here in the first place.
What is the following
Hitting 20k should feel like a finish line. Instead, it feels like the starting line for something new. For years my goal was clear on LinkedIn – build a platform that I could use for Buffer experiments, make contact with our audience and prove that the strategies we have recommended actually worked. I did that. Now the question is: what will come afterwards?
I don’t leave LinkedIn. People there rely on my content, and I still enjoy the process of testing ideas and sharing lessons. But I am ready for a new phase – one in which the focus shifts from proving the system to experiment more freely. At the moment I have decided that it means that it will be detached on LinkedIn itself, and go to new spaces where the bet feels lower and I have more freedom.
That’s why I kick things off with a new challenge: grow to 1,000 followers on threads. It is the first experiment in Proof of conceptA new series in which I will share what happens when I test different growth strategies on platforms and sizes.
Threads is the perfect place to start because the playbook is still being written. In a last 30-day experiment I learned that open questions, timely answers and the accession to conversations were much more effective than polished one-off messages. This time I will lay those lessons with strategies that we have identified, such as:
- Usage tags to reach specific communities.
- Post several times a day (Instead of four times a week, like me on LinkedIn).
- A mix of parts of Text-first messages with occasional photo To remain faithful to the atmosphere of the platform.
So while 20K is a milestone on LinkedIn, it is just the start of my journey as a maker. It is the point where I ask: what else is possible if I treat content as an experiment again?
#reached #followers #LinkedIn #feel #strange