The 8 day LinkedIn Content Challenge
One idea a day. Eight days. No more blank page.
I get it, thinking of things to write about every day, and ideas for LinkedIn posts, Twitter/X ideas, or other social media threads, is a pain in the arse. When you add in your blog and website, analysis paralysis takes over, so you just don’t write anything.
But there’s potential content everywhere. Walking down the street, reading or listening to the news, questions your customers ask, it’s all there for the taking, you just need a little focus. And that’s where the LinkedIn Content Challenge comes in.
Eight emails, then I stop. You’re not signed up to anything else unless you ask to be.
Why you never know what to post on LinkedIn
It’s not that you’ve got nothing to say. You talk about your work all day, to customers, to suppliers, to whoever’s unlucky enough to sit next to you at a networking breakfast. The problem is that the second you open LinkedIn and see the “Start a post” box, all of it disappears.
So you close the tab and tell yourself you’ll do it Friday. Friday comes. You don’t.
The blank box
Cursor blinking, mind empty, LinkedIn asking what’s on your mind. Nothing. Nothing is on your mind.
Posting in bursts
Four posts in one enthusiastic week, then silence for two months. LinkedIn notices. So do the people who followed you.
Saying what everyone else says
You read a post, think “yes, that”, and write the same thing slightly worse. Nobody engages, because they’ve already seen it.
Ideas that go nowhere
You had a brilliant thought in the car. It’s gone now. It’s always gone by the time you sit down.
Over-thinking every post
Is it too salesy? Too personal? Too long? Forty minutes later you’ve written nothing and you’re annoyed at yourself.
Waiting for the big idea
You’re holding out for something clever enough to be worth posting. Meanwhile the person with the ordinary ideas is getting the enquiries.
How the LinkedIn Content Challenge works
No workbook, no Zoom call, no group where you have to introduce yourself. Just your inbox, one email a day, for eight days.
Day 1
You put your email address in the box up there and press the slightly ridiculous button.
The first email lands and gives you one place to look for a post idea, with an explanation of why that place works and a way to turn what you find there into something you can publish that day.
You write it. You post it. That’s day one done, and it took you less time than reading this page.
Days 2 to 7
Same again, every day. A different place to find an idea each time, so by the end of the week you’ve got seven ways of spotting content that you didn’t have before.
Some of them will feel obvious once you’ve read them. That’s the point. The obvious ones are the ones you’ve been walking past for years.
Each post takes ten or fifteen minutes. If it’s taking longer, you’re over-thinking it, and I’ll tell you so.
Day 8
The last email pulls it together. You’ll have posted eight times in eight days, which is more than most people on LinkedIn manage in a quarter.
At the end of 8 days, you’ll see increased reach, better engagement, and hopefully will have started building LinkedIn habits that will stand you in good stead for the future.
Then the emails stop. What you do with the habit is up to you.
Where the LinkedIn post ideas come from
Each email points you at one of these. None of them require you to be clever, funny or famous. They require you to notice things, and then write them down before you forget.
Questions your customers ask
If one person asked it on a call, fifty people are typing it into Google. Answer it in a post.
Something in the news
Not your opinion on the news. What it means for the people you work with, in your industry, this week.
The thing you’re sick of explaining
Every business has one. Explain it once, properly, and point people at it forever.
What you saw on the way to the shop
A sign, a queue, a van with a terrible slogan. Everyday stuff makes better posts than you’d think, if you connect it to your work.
A mistake you made
Yours, not a client’s. What went wrong, what you’d do differently. People trust it far more than a success story.
Something you disagree with
Advice in your industry that’s wrong, or at least wrong for the people you work with. Say so, and say why.
Your existing content, chopped up
That blog post nobody read has six LinkedIn posts in it. You already did the hard bit.
What you’re working on right now
Not a sales pitch. What the job is, what’s tricky about it, what you learned. Behind the scenes beats the brochure.
The habit, not the post
The last email is about keeping it going once I stop nagging you. Because eight days is a start, not a strategy.
Why one idea a day beats a content calendar you never fill in
Everyone tells you to plan a month of content in advance. Lovely idea. How many months have you done it? A content calendar is a spreadsheet full of guilt. A daily prompt is something you can do with a coffee before the first meeting.
- Small and daily beats big and never
- Consistency is what LinkedIn rewards, not brilliance
- Posting regularly means people see you more than once, which is how they remember you exist
- You learn what your audience responds to by posting, not by planning to post
- Eight posts in eight days gives you real data on what works for you, not what worked for someone on a webinar
- Habits built in a week are easier to keep than plans made in a month
What you’ll have after 8 days on LinkedIn
Not a transformation. I don’t do transformations. But something measurably different from where you started, which is more than most free things on the internet manage.
What you’ll notice
- More people seeing your posts, because LinkedIn shows regular posters to more people
- Comments and messages from people you’d forgotten were connected to you
- Post ideas turning up on their own, in the car, in the shower, at the school gate
- It taking less time each day, because the first few were the hard ones
What you’ll have
- Eight published posts, which is eight more than last week
- A list of places to look for ideas that works for your business, not a generic one
- A rough idea of which of your posts get engagement and which don’t
- The start of a habit, and eight emails you can go back to whenever it slips
Who the LinkedIn Content Challenge is for
This is for you if you know you should be posting on LinkedIn and you’re not, or you post in bursts and then vanish, or you’ve got plenty to say and no idea how to turn it into posts. It’s not for you if you want a ghostwriter, or a template that makes you sound like everyone else, or a guaranteed number of followers by Tuesday. There are people for that. I’m not one of them.
Why take LinkedIn content advice from me
I write for a living, and for myself
I’ve been writing for the web since the 90s, for clients and for my own business. Most of my work comes from people who read something I wrote, on this site or on LinkedIn, and thought “she seems to know what she’s on about”. That’s the whole marketing strategy, and it’s the one I’m teaching you.
I know what search engines and LinkedIn both want
Thirty years of SEO means I understand what people are searching for and what makes them click. LinkedIn is the same problem in a different box. Post about what people want to know, in the words they’d use, and the algorithm looks after itself.
I’m not selling you a system
There’s no upsell at the end of day eight. No masterclass, no “founding member” price. The challenge is free because it’s useful, and because some of the people who do it end up hiring me for the stuff they don’t want to do themselves. That’s it. That’s the business model.
What people say about working with Nikki
Clients, course students and people whose sites I’ve fixed. Same person, same approach, same swearing.
Want the emails to carry on after day 8?
The challenge stops when it stops. If you liked the tone and want more, there’s a weekly newsletter called SEO F*cking What. Google updates in a paragraph instead of a panic, the AI search hype next to the real numbers, and LinkedIn, sometimes. Separate list, separate sign-up, so you only get it if you ask.
Tell me about the newsletterWhat the LinkedIn Content Challenge costs
It’s free. No card details, no trial that turns into a subscription, no “just £7 to unlock day five”. Eight emails, one idea a day, and then I leave you alone. The only thing it costs you is ten minutes a day and the excuse you’ve been using.
LinkedIn Content Challenge questions
Is the LinkedIn Content Challenge really free?
Yes. You give me an email address, I send you eight emails. There’s nothing to buy at the end and nothing hidden in the middle. If you later decide you want help with SEO or content, you know where I am, but the challenge doesn’t depend on it.
How much time does it take each day?
Reading the email takes two minutes. Writing the post takes ten to fifteen if you don’t over-think it. If you find yourself at forty minutes, stop, post what you’ve got, and move on. The point is to publish, not to polish.
I’ve only got a handful of LinkedIn connections. Is it worth it?
More worth it, if anything. Posting regularly is how you get seen by people outside your connections, because LinkedIn shows posts to second and third-degree contacts when people engage with them. Nobody starts with a big audience. They start posting and the audience turns up.
Does it work for other platforms, or just LinkedIn?
The ideas work anywhere. The emails are written with LinkedIn in mind because that’s where most B2B businesses should be, but the same post idea will do for Twitter/X, Bluesky, a Facebook business page or your blog. Finding the idea is the hard bit. Where you put it is up to you.
What if I miss a day?
Then you miss a day. The emails keep coming, and they don’t expire. Catch up when you can, or skip it and carry on. This isn’t school. The only person keeping score is you, and I’d suggest you stop.
Will you sell my email address or add me to other lists?
No. You’re on the challenge list and nothing else. The weekly newsletter is a separate sign-up. If you want it, there’s a link above. If you don’t, you’ll never hear about it again.
I run a B2B business. Isn’t LinkedIn just recruiters and humblebrags?
There’s a lot of that, yes. There are also the people who buy from businesses like yours, reading in the gaps between the humblebrags. The challenge is about being useful to those people, not adding to the noise. If you post things your customers want to know, you’ll stand out precisely because most of your feed doesn’t.
Eight days. Eight posts. So, what are you waiting for?
Put your email in the box, press the silly button, and the first idea lands in your inbox. That’s it. You can go back to not posting on day nine if you really want to.
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