Month: February 2026

The paradox: high reach, little movement

You post on LinkedIn. The views go up. You get likes, “nice post”, “relatable”. And then you check your calendar. No extra conversation.

The more visible you become online, the more invisible you seem to the people who really matter. Your ideal clients live around the corner, sit in your ecosystem, are friends with your current clients. While you dive into your content calendar, they simply scroll past your post among hundreds of others, when they actually just want to talk to someone.

This piece isn’t about “how to game the algorithm better”. It’s about two other questions: why should LinkedIn be the heart of your client development in the first place? And why does being visible in the feed feel safer than directly approaching someone?

The fear beneath all that content

You don’t just post because it’s efficient. You also post because it feels safer than actually approaching someone. Direct contact feels vulnerable:

• you can get a clear no
• you show that you need new clients
• you’re afraid of coming across as pushy
• you can be personally rejected

LinkedIn feels more comfortable. You throw something out into the world. If nobody responds, it’s “the algorithm”. No no, no yes, no conversation. Just noise.

In cockpit conversations with entrepreneurs, directors and partners, I see the same pattern: they hide commercial doubt behind content activity. Busy doing. Little movement. I did the same for years myself, until I had to honestly admit: my best clients never came through the feed. They came because someone dropped my name in a real conversation. (Neyrinck 2025)

What research has been saying for a long time (and you unconsciously confirm)

Mark Granovetter showed back in 1973 that new opportunities rarely come through your inner circle, but through weak ties: acquaintances, friends of friends, people one or two steps removed (Granovetter 1973). Recent work by Rajkumar and colleagues based on a large-scale LinkedIn experiment confirms that especially “moderately weak” ties generate new jobs and opportunities (Rajkumar et al. 2022). Morgan and Hunt showed in the mid-90s that sustainable business relationships are built on trust and commitment, not on one clever line in a campaign (Morgan & Hunt 1994). Wasiluk and Löfsten show that physical and social proximity accelerate that trust: organizations that sit close to each other, geographically and relationally, share knowledge faster, build trust faster and do business faster (Wasiluk 2020; Löfsten 2022).

In summary:

• new opportunities run through weak ties, not through mass reach
• trust grows where people see and hear each other more often
• algorithms can support that, but never replace it

As a commercial copilot, I see exactly the same thing: the trajectories that really matter at Add Business never start with “I saw your LinkedIn post or email”. They start with a name, a warm introduction, a conversation, proximity. (Neyrinck 2025)

The inversion: from feed to people

Most companies play the same game:

1. Open LinkedIn
2. Collect connections
3. Make posts
4. Wait for someone to respond
5. Hope that “something” comes out of it

My work starts from a different inversion:

1. Determine who you really want to work with (DNA-fit, ecosystem, stage).
2. Find out through whom you’re already indirectly connected (weak ties, shared context).
3. Make direct contact, outside the algorithm.
4. Only use LinkedIn after that for verification and follow-up.

In my own practice, I combine DNA-discovery, ecosystem-mapping and weak-ties theory into concrete workflows: who do you choose, why exactly them, and what do you write to them in a way that’s both human and sharp. This isn’t a theoretical exercise, but something I’ve refined over years in real client trajectories. (Neyrinck 2025)

The 1-2-3 method: from offline signal to real conversation

To make that structural, I work with a simple rhythm: 1-2-3.

1. a postcard with a personal, handwritten letter.
2. a LinkedIn connection with a soft request for contact
3. a phone or live conversation.

That’s all there is to it. But you do it consistently.

• 3 to 5 postcards per week, depending on how busy my consultancy work is
• in approximately 25 to 30 active weeks per year
• good for about 75 to 100 very deliberately chosen contact moments

Not to “the market”. To 75 to 100 people of whom you know in advance: if a number of these get into conversation, it changes my year. And the contacts will undoubtedly be “enriching”, regardless of the outcome.

Research on direct mail shows that physical, personal messages are almost always opened and stick much better than emails (Scribe Handwritten 2025; Letter Friend 2026). The card is your first, tangible signal that you’re taking the initiative, not the algorithm.

As an alternative or addition, you can apply the same principle with something else that breaks through the noise:

• a short, handwritten letter in a regular envelope
• a small, meaningful artifact (for example, a cockpit card with your notes on it)

As long as it’s personal, handwritten and clearly for them, it works.

LinkedIn connection with intention

A few days later, you send a personal connection request on LinkedIn:

• reference to your card (“I sent you a card last week…”)
• a brief explanation of why you’d like to connect
• no pitch, no pressure, no “book here”

LinkedIn doesn’t become a lead generation engine here, but a verification screen. Whoever types in your name sees your profile, your blogs, your cases. What was in your card matches what they see online. (LinkedIn Algorithm Report 2025; Neyrinck 2025)

The conversation

The third step is the conversation. That can be a phone call, a Teams call or a coffee.

Your goal isn’t “selling in 30 minutes”, but a cockpit conversation:

• what’s really going on in their commercial reality?
• what paradoxes do they feel between growth, team and structure?
• where can a commercial copilot help in the cockpit — and where not?

With 3 to 5 cards per week, a rhythm emerges of a small but stable number of first conversations and a subset of second and third conversations with real depth

Sources

• Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360-1380.
• LinkedIn Algorithm Report. 2025. “Your LinkedIn Reach Is Down 40%. Here’s Why—and What’s Next.”
• Letter Friend. 2026. “Handwritten Direct Mail Response Rates: Analyzing the Psychology.”
• Löfsten, Hans. 2022. “Entrepreneurial Networks, Geographical Proximity, and Their Effects on Firm Growth.” Journal of Small Business Management 60 (6): 1234-1256.
• Morgan, Robert M., and Shelby D. Hunt. 1994. “The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing.” Journal of Marketing 58 (3): 20-38.
• Rajkumar, Karthik, Guillaume Saint-Jacques, Iavor Bojinov, Erik Brynjolfsson, and Sinan Aral. 2022. “A Causal Test of the Strength of Weak Ties.” Science 377 (6612): 1304-1310.
• Scribe Handwritten. 2025. “Printed vs. Handwritten Direct Marketing ROI.”
• Wasiluk, Agnieszka. 2020. “Inter-Organizational Trust as a Statement of Social Proximity.” Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation 16 (3): 67-92.
• Xpert Digital. 2025. “Why Your LinkedIn Success Is a Mathematical Illusion.”
• Neyrinck, Marc. 2025. Internal cockpit notes and blogs on www.addbusiness.be about weak ties, proximity, DNA-fit and commercial resilience.