4 Female Founders & 1 Bloke Nailing LinkedIn 🚀 {Without Being Cringey}

here's why you should follow their lead >>

There are lots of photos today so this post may get cut off in your inbox. If it does, press ‘download entire message’ to read it all (or get the Substack app!).

At my best friend’s wedding last week, conversation over the dinner table soon turned to social media.

A lovely guest asked me about my job, then what I thought of TikTok, which led me to explain how my favourite platform right now (and the one I believe to offer the most potential for business owners) is LinkedIn.

If you’ve been reading my emails for a while, this won’t come as a surprise. I’ve written before about why the platform might be your biggest opportunity in 2025. In my latest ‘Ask Me Anything’, I referenced a workshop I hosted for travel specialists all about LinkedIn.

Then I read

Rachel Karten

’s latest

Link in Bio

newsletter featuring the survey results of more than 825 social media marketers. While it wasn’t a surprise to see that 92% of them consider Instagram the priority platform in 2025, it was somewhat validating to see that 52% of them consider LinkedIn to be the priority. That’s 2% more than TikTok.

All credit to the brilliant Rachel Karten and her Substack, Link in Bio

For almost all industries, Instagram is incredibly saturated. To succeed there in 2025, you need to be a content machine—churning out stellar short-form video and/or insightful (or v. funny) Carousel posts on the daily.

There isn’t room for half-measures or mediocrity. The bar is high.

And that can be incredibly overwhelming for business owners and social media managers. Unless you have huge amounts of time, budget—and preferably both—success will be very slow and difficult to achieve.

Why?

Because you have to cut through the noise of a gazillion other brands and businesses that are well-versed in Instagram. Many of them have the time/money to be creative—or the will to be maverick—and therefore stand out in a sea of sameness.

LinkedIn, on the other hand? It’s so much easier to stand out over there. This is a platform more used to corporate ‘grey’ content (as I call it). Creative, more human content is definitely on the rise, but it’s far, far off the saturation point Instagram’s reached.

It’s also where working professionals and those with money to spend hang out on a near-daily basis. This is not true of Instagram.

But I’m not going to go into all the benefits of LinkedIn here again, because I did that over in my other newsletter. Go give that a read.

What I’m going to do today is share five founders who are doing a brilliant job of marketing themselves and their businesses on LinkedIn. This is so you can see how it’s done, learn from their examples, and consider becoming an early adopter of a platform that could give you a far better ROI on your time, energy, and sanity than the one everyone else is already using…

Pay close attention to:

• Their banner images

• Their job titles (the line of text under their name)

• The type of content they share (the topic and the format)

1. Laura Riches, founder of Laylo

I often cite Laura as an example of great LinkedIn marketing. She’s a total pro at authentically selling herself and her boxed wine brand (in a way that never feels salesy) because she uses the platform as her visual diary, sharing photos and screenshots she’s taken and received throughout the week. What might seem like overly ‘candid’ or irrelevant photos are, in fact, examples of really good, really engaging storytelling marketing. It never feels contrived or corporate. P.S. Like Emmie below, Laura has raised significant investment through LinkedIn… it just goes to show the power of the platform and the types of people using it on a daily basis.

2. Katy Cottam, founder of Luna Daily

Katy shares press, insights about female founders (the lack thereof, the lack of investment for women-owned businesses), business updates, her thoughts on beauty trends, and workplace culture. As with Laura above, while some of the imagery is press clippings, most of it is selfies or iPhone snaps taken by her or her team. Katy features a lot. The result? An excellent engagement rate and 11k+ followers.

3. Eddie Shleyner, founder of VeryGoodCopy.com

Eddie is kind of a big deal on LinkedIn. To his 123k+ followers he regularly posts a mixture of ‘micro-lessons’ (shared as Carousels), polls, questions and thoughts shared as simple text-only posts, and stories about his life. When he promotes his courses, it’s frequently playful (and always unskippable). See what I mean? ↓

I’m also obsessed with Eddie’s banner image and ‘Featured’ section. *Chef’s kiss*

4. Alexis Grant, founder of They Got Acquired

Alexis shares a mixture of posts about her own life and journey as a mum and an entrepreneur (who has sold two businesses and is now building a third) as well as stories of the founders she supports through her latest venture, They Got Acquired. Her most popular posts feature—yup, you guessed it—photos of her/real-life moments.

5. Emmie Faust, founder of Female Founders Rise

Emmie shares lessons on growing and selling companies, online marketing, investing, being a woman in business (and a mum), and workplace culture. She does this using quote graphics, photos, news articles she comments on, and other people’s quotes/imagery/graphics. It’s a really nice mix of education, inspiration, and personal, relatable content. Every post generates very high levels of engagement and it’s working really well for her. How do I know? Because Emmie routinely extols the benefits of LinkedIn.

I hope that round-up has left you feeling a little more LinkedIn-inspired 🤩

Now, I’d love to know: is there anyone you admire on LinkedIn that I should be following?

If you enjoy reading Making Time each week, there are a few ways to let me know: “like” this post, leave a comment, share Making Time, and/or upgrade to a paid subscription. Each of these means the world. Thank you.