LinkedOut: getting my stuff back from LinkedIn

I read something a while ago about how useful it can be to audit social media posts – see what people respond to, how many likes and comments and so on:

Which topics got the most Views and Likes? This is usually a good indication of “popularity.”

Which topics got the most comments? This is usually a good indication of “resonance.”

Which topics got the most shares? This is usually a good indication of “status” (meaning people resonate with your writing so much they want to have it represent them too).

You don’t have to be a data scientist about it. Just look for broad trends: what’s working, what’s not, and where do you see a topic that readers are clearly engaging with (even if it’s “small signals”) that can be expanded into a longer asset?

Better to start with some data than no data.

So I did that for a while, copying the link to each LinkedIn post and making a note of the numbers as I went along. I did it for roughly a year, saving it to the Notes app on my iCloud account.

But I’m trying, in 2026, to do things a little differently:

1. Use my own website as much as possible, rather than social media or newsletters or anything else tbh.
2. Take existing work off social media, or at least copy it here.
3. Be radically transparent¹, sharing openly things that may have been buried in my Notes, so that others can see what I’m doing and learn from it – or perhaps help me to avoid mistakes in what I’m doing.

So I thought I would share here what I saved to my Notes. Over time, I intend to create duplicates of (some of?) these LinkedIn posts here on my website.

(You may have seen that I am doing something similar with another social media platform, taking what was previously on Instagram and putting it here with the label Outstagram. There’s a LOT still to do.)

The list below covers quite a few LinkedIn posts over the last year (or so ?). It’s absolutely not comprehensive: I never did bother to add to my Notes the posts that got little traction.

Post	Link	Views	Likes	Comments	Shares
Idea for a Book? Write a Proposal	Link	1669	49	10	1
Recently I Phoned A Friend	Link	1344	41	17	3
Save Your Work!	Link	1290	43	9	2
HTCTW in Sofia (LinkedIn)	Link	1055	53	21
Therapist and inner clown / shadow	Link	1584	27	36	1
Wanted to be an artist (LinkedIn)	Link	1979	89	39	3
Next year I’ll meet people IRL	Link	1573	87	34	1
AI and Speechwriting (Brian Jenner pic)	Link	1626	45	12	1
Inner Critic, Inner Child	Link	1106	30	7	2
How to Engage an Audience (Kheron Gilpin)	Link	1113	43	10	4
Digital Commonplace Book (LinkedIn)		880	20	8
Pleasure of Print Newspapers	Link	1204	16	40
Speechwriter’s Conference, The Hague		2459	51	10
On this iMac I wrote…	Link	1048	38	13	2
CHECK Whitwham teachers post in Jan2
The Editor asked me to ghostwrite his wife’s story	Link	827	23	7
In interviews the best material spills out (at the end)	Link	790	12	12	1
Writers to be bestseller on Amazon don’t need to sell 1000s	Link	1002	21	11	2
Exhilarating to read complaints about AI	Link	790	17	10
A Book Proposal Is…	Link	1082	26	7	3
Ask Someone To Read Your Writing Aloud	Link	1781	16	3
Stuff around you as you work (Hunter Davies)	Link	1803	20	4	1
Burgh House Day 3	Link	1063	62	18
A copywriting course that isn’t about AI (Ogilvy sketch)	Link	389	18	5	2
Bought the copywriting course	Link	602	22	2
Unless you know the subject AI output is 💩	Link	2076	50	10	1
Asking how I have helped writers	Link	1607	11	14
Ilma Hungarian childhood bedroom exercise	Link	702	25	10
Holey man	Link	4626	155	51	6
Keep working (PLF promo)	Link	4192	83	47
Ray Bradbury says “don’t think!”	Link	1870	38	6	4
AI in the paper shredder	Link	8946	37	46
Tempting to make career path seem designed	Link	2297	38	55
Autumn in Lancashire	Link	1633	79	21	1
Writing about AI	Link	3690	25	11
Five years making and selling art	Link	859	36	6	2
Document your obsessions	Link	1854	30	5
Writers have stopped writing	Link	6473	86	28	3
Platinum Signing Service (sending out my books)	Link	3300	25	18
How to contact you (not on social media messaging)?	Link	5265	32	6

***

What to do with this data?

I don’t want to become any kind of data scientist about this: life is already overwhelmingly driven by data. But hey. I just realised that I can paste all this into a spreadsheet and sort it. Yielding, among other things, this:

Most views

• AI in the paper shredder
• Writers have stopped writing
• How to contact you (not on social media messaging)?
• Holey man
• Keep working (PLF promo)

Most likes

• Holey man
• Wanted to be an artist (LinkedIn)
• Next year I’ll meet people IRL
• Writers have stopped writing
• Keep working (PLF promo)
• Autumn in Lancashire

Most comments

• Tempting to make career path seem designed
• Holey man
• Keep working (PLF promo)
• AI in the paper shredder
• Pleasure of Print Newspapers
• Wanted to be an artist (LinkedIn)

Most shares

• Holey man
• How to Engage an Audience (Kheron Gilpin)
• Ray Bradbury says “don’t think!”
• Wanted to be an artist (LinkedIn)
• Writers have stopped writing
• Recently I Phoned A Friend
• A Book Proposal Is…

Based on this data, I suppose I can prioritise the posts that I bring back to this website. On every metric, the post that I’ve called Holey Man has done well. So that’s where I have stared, copying over not just the post itself but all the comments, with links back to the people who left them.

Read HOLEY MAN (on my website!) here.

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If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here's the link. Thanks, JPF.

¹ I mean, people are losing trust in online stuff VERY quickly.

² Oops, forgot to include the link here. May add it later.