Most professionals are on LinkedIn. Few are using it. Even fewer have built a system that compounds.
That is the 80/15/5:
Justin Goldstein is the 5%. Director of Corporate Relations at the Bill of Rights Institute. His LinkedIn strategy has produced 123,000 donated resources for 1,200 classrooms, new sponsors he never cold-pitched, and an organization that reorganized its entire digital strategy around what he was doing.
His approach is worth understanding in detail. Not because it is complicated. Because it works — and most people are not doing any of it. This blog is based on my call with Justin; you can listen to the interview here.
Justin's career has spanned three very different industries. A graphic arts trade association working with printing companies. Medical professionals and audiologists. Now an educational foundation serving 86,000 teachers.
Most people write off earlier networks when they change industries. Justin never did.
His second week on the job, his boss told him they had a serious funding problem. They could no longer afford to give out free pocket constitutions — a core resource for the teachers they serve. Most people would have built a prospect list and started cold outreach.
Justin thought about the printing companies he had spent seven years building relationships with on LinkedIn. People he had kept warm. Comments on posts. Genuine engagement. No agenda.
He reached out. In eighteen months, he secured 123,000 pocket constitutions donated for free, reaching 1,200 classrooms across the country.
Members got what they needed. The printing companies got visibility and recognition as partners in education. The association fulfilled its mission without spending a dollar. Members, partners, mission. All three served at once.
Your earlier networks are not irrelevant. They are assets you have not activated yet. LinkedIn is where you keep them warm until the moment they matter.
Justin uses strategic commenting — engaging on posts from people he does not know yet, with specific and relevant observations — to make himself visible before any direct conversation happens.
"It's like an advertisement," he told me. "You're tagging yourself there. Nine times out of ten, they will never delete what you put on there, as long as it's nice and professional."
He was pursuing Sharpie as a potential sponsor and started commenting on their LinkedIn posts. A director of operations at Uniball noticed — because Uniball watches Sharpie closely. The director reached out. That conversation led to the VP of Marketing at Uniball, a contact Justin had no direct path to before.
He never pitched anyone. He showed up consistently, was specific, and let the visibility do the work.
Justin secured a donation of 15,000 pocket constitutions from a printing company in Cleveland. He promoted it everywhere — LinkedIn, association groups, and regional printing organizations. Deliberately. Making sure the right people saw it.
A competitor reached out. He had seen his competition promoted across every channel he followed. He wanted in. He wanted to one-up them.
He donated 50,000. Justin still has the message.
Justin understood what the partner needed — visibility, competitive positioning, recognition — and built a situation where LinkedIn delivered it. No package. No pitch. No cold call.
That is leading with what the partner needs. The platform is the tool. Understanding human motivation is the strategy.
When Justin joined the Bill of Rights Institute, LinkedIn was owned entirely by the marketing team. No company-wide strategy. No connection between individual staff networks and organizational goals.
Within a year, he had nearly doubled the page followers. He was made a page admin — something that had never happened at either of his two previous associations. Leadership approved a company-wide sharing policy. LinkedIn became embedded in every sponsorship package.
This is the shift I see happen when one person in the 5% is given room to operate. It does not start with a sweeping initiative. It starts with results that leadership cannot ignore.
You do not need to hire a LinkedIn expert. Find the person on your team who already gets it. Get out of their way.
The most important piece of content any professional puts on LinkedIn is their profile. Not posts. Not comments. The profile. It is the foundation on which everything else is built.
Most association professionals I work with have profiles that are nearly blank. CEOs. Executive directors. People with decades of expertise and mission-driven stories that could differentiate them instantly.
Justin said it plainly: "It's dumbfounding. You never know who's watching you. To leave it blank is such a missed opportunity."
Associations have something most companies do not. A mission. A story. Real human impact. That belongs on every individual profile on your staff — not just the company page.
Start there. Before the strategy, before the outreach, before any of it.
Show up looking like the professional you are.
Colleen McKenna is the founder of Intero Advisory, a LinkedIn strategy and training firm she has led since 2011. She is a PAR GOAT Award winner and a regular contributor and speaker at Professionals for Association Revenue events. She works with professionals and organizations who want to use LinkedIn with the intention of building relationships, not contacts.