LinkedIn founder voice playbook with post templates that travel
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Prompt
You are a LinkedIn ghostwriter who has grown 30+ founders past 50,000 followers. Build a voice playbook for a founder in [industry] whose personality is [voice_traits].
Include:
- Voice principles (5-7 rules, written as clear do's and don'ts)
- 4 content pillars with example hooks for each
- 5 ready-to-post templates (different formats)
- Rules for responding to comments in voice
- Weekly cadence and timing
- "Do not say this" list (common phrases that kill authenticity)
Write the playbook in the founder's voice, not corporate voice. Make it usable tomorrow.Customise this prompt
Fill in 2 variables to personalise this prompt
Preview
You are a LinkedIn ghostwriter who has grown 30+ founders past 50,000 followers. Build a voice playbook for a founder in [industry] whose personality is [voice_traits].
Include:
- Voice principles (5-7 rules, written as clear do's and don'ts)
- 4 content pillars with example hooks for each
- 5 ready-to-post templates (different formats)
- Rules for responding to comments in voice
- Weekly cadence and timing
- "Do not say this" list (common phrases that kill authenticity)
Write the playbook in the founder's voice, not corporate voice. Make it usable tomorrow.
Example output
# LinkedIn Voice Playbook — Maya Okafor, Founder/CEO, NorthwallAI
**Industry:** Applied AI for financial services compliance
**Voice traits:** Dry humor, technical depth, direct, allergic to corporate-speak
---
## Voice Principles
1. **Never start with "I'm excited to announce."** If it needs that preamble, it's not actually exciting. Lead with the thing.
2. **Specific numbers always beat adjectives.** "38 compliance officers" > "many teams."
3. **Name the emotion you were actually having.** Fear, confusion, irritation, pride — use the real one. Not "humbled."
4. **One idea per post.** If you have two, post twice.
5. **Shorter sentences than feel correct.** LinkedIn is read on phones, between meetings. Three lines is plenty.
6. **Never say "thoughts?" at the end.** Ask a real question or don't ask.
7. **Dry humor lives in the specific detail.** "Spent 9 hours yesterday reading a PDF that was itself a scan of another PDF" is funnier than "compliance is hard."
---
## Content Pillars
### Pillar 1: "What I Saw This Week" (40% of posts)
Observations from customer calls, team, or the industry. Specific, small, not self-promotional.
**Example hooks:**
- "A compliance officer showed me her spreadsheet today. It was 11,000 rows."
- "Overheard at a conference: 'Our AI strategy is we're not allowed to use ChatGPT.'"
- "A customer just told me they've hired 4 humans this year to check what the AI wrote."
### Pillar 2: "Founder Lessons, Unvarnished" (25%)
Real mistakes with the real number attached. No hero arcs.
**Example hooks:**
- "Burned \$180K on a GTM hire I fired in 11 weeks. Here's what I missed."
- "Our first enterprise deal closed because I stopped demoing."
- "I wrote our pricing page in 20 minutes and it was wrong for 14 months."
### Pillar 3: "The Technical Bit" (20%)
Short, high-density technical explanations that a non-expert can almost follow.
**Example hooks:**
- "Why our model refuses to answer some questions — and why that's the feature, not the bug."
- "RAG isn't a silver bullet when your regulators change the rules every 18 months. Here's what we did instead."
### Pillar 4: "Quiet Recruiting" (15%)
Show the team and the culture. No "we're hiring" posts — hiring signals come through texture.
**Example hooks:**
- "Friday afternoon at Northwall. Someone's reading the SEC's 2012 enforcement archive 'for fun.'"
- "The question in our last team interview: 'Tell me about a time you were wrong and didn't course-correct fast enough.'"
---
## 5 Ready-to-Post Templates
### Template 1: The Customer Observation
```
A [customer_type] showed me [something specific] today.
[One concrete detail that sounds unbelievable but is true.]
[One-sentence reflection on what this means.]
[Sentence that implies — but doesn't state — what you're building about it.]
```
### Template 2: The Number That Stopped You
```
[A number].
That's how [many/much/long] [a specific thing] [actually is].
I learned this [where you learned it].
Everything we're building is downstream of that one fact.
```
### Template 3: The Mistake + The Money
```
I [did specific thing] and it cost us [specific amount/time].
Here's what I missed:
- [Assumption 1]
- [Assumption 2]
- [Assumption 3]
The fix wasn't what I thought. [One sentence.]
```
### Template 4: The Quiet Recruit
```
It's [time] on a [day] at [company].
[Specific, small moment that reveals the culture.]
I didn't plan this. That's the point.
```
### Template 5: The Technical Unlock
```
Most people think [common misconception].
Actually, [the counterintuitive truth].
Here's what that means in practice:
[3 short lines.]
Caveat: [the honest limitation].
```
---
## Comment Response Rules
- First hour: respond to the first 10 comments personally, in voice
- Never like your own post
- When disagreeing: "That's fair — here's where I'd push back" (never "Great point!")
- If someone writes a long thoughtful comment: respond with the same length
- Ignore trolls. Engage critics. Big difference.
---
## Cadence & Timing
- **Monday 7:45am ET:** Pillar 1 post (customer observation)
- **Wednesday 11:15am ET:** Pillar 2 post (founder lesson)
- **Friday 8:30am ET:** Pillar 3 or 4 (alternate weekly)
- **2x/month:** Comment thoughtfully on 5 industry peer posts
- **Never:** Sunday posts. Sunday LinkedIn reads as "trying too hard."
---
## Do Not Say This
- "Humbled to announce"
- "Rockstar," "ninja," "10x"
- "Hot take"
- "At the end of the day"
- "This is why I love what I do"
- "Thoughts?"
- "Let that sink in"
- Any post that starts with a number emoji
- "LinkedIn, do your thing"