823 | Meet the Man Who Cracked LinkedIn with AI (copy his EXACT system) | Charlie Hills

If you’re an agency owner and LinkedIn isn’t generating leads, I can almost guarantee the problem is in your content. That’s Charlie Hills, the LinkedIn growth strategist who built 200,000 followers in under two years and turned it into a client pipeline that runs on autopilot. But here’s what makes Charlie different. He’s not chasing vanity metrics. He’s seen creators with a million followers get crickets on their posts, while agency owners with just a few thousand are generating hundreds of thousands in revenue. The difference? A system. One built on frameworks, not hacks. The thing nobody told me is that the first six months feel like you’re talking to yourself.

That’s not a sign to stop. That’s the algorithm deciding if you’re serious. But here’s the thing most people get wrong. The dirty secret to LinkedIn in 2026. It’s that AI made it easier to publish and harder to stand out. The biggest growth hack for LinkedIn is to- In this episode, you’ll learn how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a conversion machine. Most people pin their top posts to their feature section, which is the biggest mistake you can make when optimizing your profile. How to use AI without sounding like AI. If a stranger could have written it, then the leader, rewrite it, has completely changed what a good creator versus a bad creator is on LinkedIn now.

And the exact nine prompts Charlie used to build his 200,000 following. My first post ended up going mega viral. 400,000 impressions within days. And that ultimately ended up changing my life.

You generated over 200,000 followers in a little over a year. How often do you post and what is the sort of the minimum posting effort that someone could expect to have to make in order to get to say their first 10,000 followers? For me personally, I post every single day. At a period, I was posting twice a day. I wouldn’t advise that personally, because if you’re just starting out, ultimately, you want to manage quality over quantity. But it is very important to get as much data as possible when you’re just starting out, because you have no idea what works. You don’t know if it’s documents or if it’s cheat sheets that will perform well for your LinkedIn.

So my advice for someone just starting out would be to post as much as is sustainable and then get as much data as possible, because then once you have the formula, then you can ultimately double down on that. I think LinkedIn is the number one channel for agency owners to generate leads, because it’s the best way to build long-term authority versus cold emails, ads. Once you reach out to people, once they see your ads, then they might be deterred. They’re not interested. Whereas LinkedIn is the one way to continually compound and grow your authority and audience and continue to reach new people for basically free versus ads, especially on LinkedIn, are incredibly expensive.

Whereas posting organic content is free. Anybody can do it. You have full control. It’s the best way to build a pipeline machine in the long-term. I’m talking years, not just a few weeks, but long-term strategic moats that give your business a safety net that nothing else can do, because AI can do almost anything now. One of the biggest moats left is distribution. If you have hundreds of thousands of followers, it’s the one way to know for sure that your services, your products will. People will be interested and ready to buy from you, because you built that goodwill and long-term trust over the years that you’ve been publishing on LinkedIn. You’re selling AI to businesses.

If your own content sounds robotic, you’ve already lost a pitch before the conversation started. If you’re an agency owner and LinkedIn isn’t generating leads, I can almost guarantee the problem is in your content. I’ve talked to a lot of business owners lately that feel like LinkedIn is harder than it’s ever been, with more creators, more AI, more noise.

What do you think the main reason is behind this feeling that things are more difficult today than it has been in the past? So, when I first started out, the LinkedIn algorithm was favourable. It was much more favourable than it is now. And that was around 2024. And literally people were still complaining about Reach back then, versus now it’s dropped off a cliff edge. Reach is down 80% versus what it was a year or two ago. And the reason for that is ultimately, LinkedIn are encouraging people to spend more on paid ads. But also, yeah, AI has just made content so saturated. LinkedIn, prior to chat duty and the AI revolution, it was very professional and people would actually write thought out posts.

But now it’s like anybody can just generate content and post. So, I’d say it’s a bit of both. LinkedIn users have shot up to over one billion now, versus a few years back, it was half of that. But then also, yeah, the AI content saturation and LinkedIn generally just wanting to cash in on their platform. I’d say it’s a three pronged reason, ultimately. And the worst way that people are using it is not just to write posts, but it’s the comments. I’d say half of LinkedIn comments now are AI generated. And that’s the quickest way to kill your personal brand, to kill your reputation. So, it makes sense to outsource it, but you have to outsource it tastefully.

Because this is your reputation, this is your name, this is your education, your certifications, all listed on the platform. People will instantly just not want to buy from you if you use AI tastefully on LinkedIn. Here’s something that I hear people recommend all the time, is find your voice or find your niche. But you say the biggest reason why people don’t achieve growth on platforms like LinkedIn is because they don’t have a key differentiator. How do you help someone identify things that will actually make them worth following? So, for me personally, it is that unique point of view. Because before AI, you could write a very generic how-to-style piece of content.

People would lap that up, people would love it. But since AI, anybody can now go to chatGPT and generate top 10 tips to avoid burnout, for example. Instead, it has to be a very specific way about how you did it, and how you avoided the burnout. And that’s why storytelling and how I did it versus how-to-do-it has completely changed my perception of what a good creator versus a bad creator is on LinkedIn now. If someone is just posting generic content, then I’m not going to follow them. I’m not going to want to buy from them. One of the biggest rules for me when writing LinkedIn posts is I always like to keep in mind if a stranger could have written it, then delete it, rewrite it, add more anecdotes, add more unique points of view.

But ultimately, I always say to people and clients, you are the content.

Every single moment in your day and life is content. I’ve worked with people from all sorts of niches, from kids’ wear design to sewing consultants. It’s crazy. I’ve worked with all of them, and I find that these people always surprise me because ultimately they’re tapping into their very niche expertise and reaching the right people because they’re following that how I approach versus how-to. They are sharing with the audience exactly how they did it. Before someone gets started on LinkedIn, what does their profile have to say? What’s the one thing that has to show up in their headline? For me personally, I follow a very simple formula and for all my clients too.

It’s very much I help you achieve X through this process. It’s a very simple headline, but it works for any niche, any industry, and any business. Essentially, it’s your unique way of achieving business results. For me personally, it’s I help you create authentic AI content or I help you actually use AI for content.

That’s an instant differentiator for me. Outside of that, it’s obviously your banner, your about section, especially having your core promise on your banner, which is minus I help you scale your personal brand and business through AI content systems and strategy, and then also listing social proof. With the about section, this is probably one of the biggest things that I see people struggle with is that they’ll write it in third person, which used to be a popular way to write it a few years back, but now it has to be so targeted and so clear how you help people achieve business results. So you could follow a very simple framework here, such as pass, which stands for problem as you take solution.

And ultimately, what you want to do there is really take the reader on a journey through their frustration. So it feels like you’re speaking directly to that. Outside of that, the feature section is an absolute must. Most people pin their top posts to their feature section, which is the biggest mistake you can make when optimizing your profile. You want to have ideally your website, a lead magnet, or taking people to your newsletter, because this is your opportunity to de-platform people and to actually get them to convert and buy your services. You know, this sort of three major content buckets that you’ve talked about. Can you give us examples of what some of the posts would look like, particularly if you’re thinking as an example of for an agency owner specifically?

Yeah, I like to look at LinkedIn content in these three separate ways. So there’s growth content. There’s content that is going to generate you so many views. And I think ultimately people should be doing this 70% of the time. I mean, that’s what I do personally. I’m posting to growth almost every single day. And this content, for me personally, it’s about the latest industry news. I’m talking about Nana Banana. So agency owners, they could leverage the most recent news, whether that’s AI, whether that’s anything in their industry, and share it on LinkedIn. Because the sooner you share this news, then the better the results going to be. This one did very well for me.

It generated half a million impressions. Why? Because I literally posted this the day after Nana Banana 2 came out. Then there’s also authority content. So this content will demonstrate how you do something specifically. So for me, it’s creating AI content. In this case, I demonstrated my framework, which I call the share framework. And this was my very specific process on how I advise people to achieve LinkedIn growth where they are. And in this instance, I wrote, instead of giving a very general observation about the latest industry news, I said, I’ve achieved this, and this is the framework that made it happen. That’s instantly intriguing. So that’s what I call authority content.

And I’d advise doing this somewhere between 20% of the time, maybe up to 30, potentially even 40% of the time. Because this is your differentiator. This is your unique process and expertise.

And then finally, we had conversion content. So I’m less of a fan of posting conversion content because ultimately it does get the lowest amount of views, but obviously it equates to the highest amount of leads generated. So in this instance, I was promoting a cohort that was and that I’m running at the moment. And it doesn’t start with, hey guys, I’m launching a cohort, please sign up. It started with storytelling. I said, when I started on LinkedIn, I was lost. My post used to die at 400 impressions. That’s instantly speaking to my ICPs, one of their biggest pain points. And ultimately that then intrigues them enough to hopefully click on the post, which they did.

And then after I’ve told a bit of a story, I then get into the pitch. I don’t dive straight into that immediately. And in the carousel, I’ve included client results. It’s literally just an overview of my cohort. But because I intrigue people with the hook and also the carousel cover, the two most important things, the written hook and then the visual hook, that worked. And despite not generating the most views, it did equate to the most revenue generated versus growth content like this. So that’s how I look at content, 70% growth content, 20% authority content, and then finally 10% conversion content. I was just wondering if you could walk through one of your posts and like an example of breaking it down by its different components, the hook, the retention mechanism, proof steps called action.

It’s very simple to me because I’ve been doing it for a while now. And I know for most people, it’s not just as simple as, okay, boom, here you go, here’s the post. But ultimately, the two components you want to focus on are the hook and the visual hook because the rest of the post doesn’t have to be formatted like a staircase. That’s how we write posts on LinkedIn. It’s very much like very short lines of text as you’re seeing here.

But all you need is a hook and a visual hook and then a very simple repost call to action. You could just use a simple repost call to action here or you could leave something like PS, I run an agency sign up here to book a call with me and that works too because you’re leveraging the hopefully hundreds of thousands of impressions that you’re generating here and people might see your content and like it. So there’s no like clear cut formula for writing an exceptional LinkedIn post. All I’d recommend is mastering the power of hooks and good graphics. That’s what matters the most. But for me personally, I’m noticing a big uplift in course style posts. I’ll see if I can get one up.

But last year lead magnets were the top like one of the top performing posts on LinkedIn and they did a great job at generating leads. I mean the clues in the name there. But ultimately in the past six months or so there’s been a massive shift towards these compilation style posts. Again, the hook here and what this hook has done well is that I’ve leveraged a specific number $10,000 worth of AI education, I said. And using digits and stats and numbers in the hook is a great way to really help intrigue the reader and draw their eye. But this post did exceptionally well because it didn’t generate as many views as that other growth content piece I shared with you.

But it generated nearly 1000 followers and that’s because it’s a compilation style post. There’s a ton of value here in this post with links to on how to learn Claude, which is Anthropics AI.

And these are taking over LinkedIn right now. Previously, having links in posts would have tanked your reach whereas it’s proven that if you have more than five links in the post, your reach actually goes up something like four or five X because people see immediate value in it. Yeah, this one did very well because of the links in posts but also the recency. Anthropics just dropped these courses. So that is the magic formula there. It’s recency, relevance, and also engineering it for virality with the hook and also the format here in this instance. How do you generate ideas when an idea is generated? What are the next steps? Where does the AI come from?

What are the different models that you’re using and do the different models have different jobs that you’re using them for?

So walk us through this process a little bit. Think of it like running a kitchen. AI can chop, mix, and prep at impossible speed but the menu, the flavor, and the final taste still depends on the chef because the context is me and that’s very much down to me, the human, and us to come up with. So I have a very messy notes page on my MacBook and basically this is where all of my posts live, post ideas live. And I don’t use AI to generate content ideas. Unless you’ve got a ton of context and you’re staring at a blank page, I’d advise against it because the best ideas, the most viral stuff always comes when you’re about to go to sleep or when you’re in the shower.

Literally it has to come from you to human. So I keep it on my notes page. This is not AI related. It’s just my way of keeping all of my best ideas safe. And I actually get a lot of inspiration from the likes of Instagram and X by seeing something do super well on one platform. It means why won’t it do well on another platform? Then when it comes to actually creating the content, I’m using Claude. Claude is the best LLM, especially since Opus 4.6. I love this model so much. The way it reasons, the way it replies, it’s honestly leading the pack by a big, big gap now. And ultimately what I do is I follow a strategy whereby I’m going to write a newsletter.

I publish a newsletter to SubSack every Sunday. That will then filter into my content strategy for the entire week because I’ll write one long piece of content and then ultimately that’s going to become 3, 4, 5, 6, even sometimes a whole week of content. And what I’m doing here is I’ve got a project in Claude which is going to help me write my newsletter. So for example, this was the first draft and it’s well written because I’ve got custom instructions in there. I’ve got my own previously written newsletters. So it knows exactly how to write in my style. Not a generic newsletter that just screams AI. And ultimately what I’ve done is I’ve provided it with a lot of context here for example.

I saw a really well structured carousel on Instagram. It was about Claude Code which is, no Claude Code work which is all the rage right now. And I simply gave it a very simple prompt. I said, write a newsletter about the complete Claude guide. And then I just gave it a few other additional points that I wanted to include. And then I have a great first draft for my newsletter.

And I didn’t just stop there. This thread is incredibly long. I’m talking with the AI for a very long time to create these posts specifically for my newsletter. But then the beautiful thing about this is that then I’m using Gemini to create graphics like this. This is a great graphic which prior to the inception of Nanobanana Pro it would have been very, very hard to create this level of graphic for LinkedIn. Yeah, it’s not perfect. Some of the text is a little bit hard to read. But the way I’m looking at AI models and tools now is it’s Claude Opus for anything written. And then it’s Gemini from Google for anything visual. That’s the very simple way I’m approaching AI tools at the minute.

And this is great. I’ve been posting AI generated graphics on LinkedIn for months now. And I was actually one of the first people to really kind of push this format. There’s whiteboards going by all over LinkedIn. And why does it work? Because whiteboards and that style for very educational, very authentic, and they stop the scroll in the feed. So that’s basically my content strategy. It’s quite simple actually. But it does work incredibly well. And you’ve produced something that people can’t just generate on their own without all the different context that you’re layering in to your chat with Claude as you’re producing this content. Exactly. And everything is tested by me.

I’m not going to just copy-paste something and then publish it. I make sure that I agree with everything on here. And I’ve tested it myself first-hand. That is one of the biggest things you must do before publishing content because, yeah, it’s not a good look otherwise. Walk us through this process a little bit. I’ve built this system over two years of posting on LinkedIn. Every prompt has been refined through dozens of iterations. I’m giving you the version that works, not the first draft. First one is the LinkedIn profile optimizer. Your profile is your landing page. Most people treat it like a CV. That’s the wrong approach. This prompt turns your profile into a conversion tool.

Feed it your current profile, tell it your goal, and it rebuilds every section for that specific outcome. Book calls, inbound leads, newsletter subscribers, whatever you’re optimizing for. The prompt asks you for seven inputs, then delivers five outputs and four ready-to-use image generation prompts. You get a new headline about section, experience section, feature section strategy, and individual prompts for your banner, profile picture, and two feature tabs. I run this through Google Gemini Pro. Here’s the exact prompts. So here’s how I use it. I download my LinkedIn profile as a PDF straight from LinkedIn. You basically click the three dots on your profile card, then save to PDF.

Then you open a new Gemini chat, switch to Pro mode, enable Canvas, and upload the PDF alongside the prompts. Gemini processes the PDF and generates a full strategy brief inside Canvas. It gives you three headline options, a mobile formatted about section, storytelling experience rewrites, feature section strategy, and four image generation prompts for your banner, profile picture, and feature tabs. Copy the prompt in, and for the banner and the profile picture, upload your headshot photo alongside it. The feature tabs don’t need a photo. Save each generated image and upload them straight to LinkedIn. The full process from PDF download to updated profile picture took one session.

The written sections get you about 80% of the way there. The part you need to add yourself is your latest milestone metrics and client results. It works with what you give it. If your profile still references numbers from six months ago, the output will too. Update your inputs before you run this. For even more contextualized results, attach a notebook LM note. As part of your initial input, because the more context it has about your business, your wins, and your audience, the more specific the output gets. Each image was generated one by one, and I’ve compiled them here so you have the full set together. Here’s prompt two. This is for content ideation. This prompt turns perpexity into a research machine that surfaces the 20 most relevant stories in your niche from the last seven days.

Here’s the full prompt. I ran this with AI marketing as my niche. Perplexity returned a table or themes from each past week. Each row included verified links, the platforms where the conversation was happening, and a shareable angle I could turn into a post. You take any row of the table and turn it into a LinkedIn post, and you can run this at the start of each day or each week, depending on how much content you want to share. Prompt three is content ideation part two, because prompt two surfaces trending stories from the web. This one does something different. It generates content ideas from your own expertise. This content comes from Justin Welch’s content matrix. It was created years ago, and it’s still one of the most valuable content ideation prompts available.

The matrix maps your content pillars against different content types and gives you dozens of ideas in a single output. Here’s the prompt. Fill in the placeholders before you run it. The description of who you are, what you do needs to be at least two paragraphs, and you need to be very specific. The more detail you give it, the more relevant the ideas. For the y-axis, add your content pillars. These are three to four topics you want to be known for. Mine would be AI content creation, LinkedIn growth, personal branding, and marketing automation. Claude returns a matrix table. Your pillars run down the left side. Eight content types run across the top.

Every cell contains a specific content idea tailored to a niche. So you know whether you’re writing a how-to guide, a contrarian take, or a comparison post. Prompt 4 is for captivating hooks. This is one of the simplest prompts in the library, but it’s also one of the most effective. Here’s the prompt. I gave it a topic about Claude replacing a team of 50, and Claude returned six variations. Each one followed the same structure, a short opening line that states something unexpected, then a second line that contradicts or refrains it. These hooks cooked. The right length, the right contrast, and the right amount of tension. I coach a lot of people on LinkedIn, and their hooks are the number one thing holding them back, either too long or not exciting enough.

This prompt fixes both problems. The hooks that perform best use digits, quotation marks, brackets, and a first person point of view. I replace 50 people with Claude, grabs attention versus how AI is changing team structures does not. Prompt 5 is for skimmable LinkedIn posts. The prompt creates a ready to publish LinkedIn posts. The length is correct. The structure follows proven frameworks Claude asked you three questions before writing, topic, framework, and context. The ask user question tool in Claude makes this process seamless. Answer the questions, and it generates the full post. I’m a big fan of pass, but I’ve included the top LinkedIn frameworks here, so you have options. Try a few.

They all follow best practices for taking the reader on a journey. For example, there’s BAB before after bridge, pass problem agitate solution, star situation task action result, ADA attention, interest, desire, action, and then slay, story, lesson, actual advice, you. Prompt number 6 is infographics. If you if you read my newsletter or follow me on LinkedIn, you’ve seen what these infographics look like. I got 480k impressions from free posts with this hand drawn whiteboard style all generated with this prompt. Here is the master prompt. Replace the CT at the bottom with your own name and positioning because this process starts with a brief, then you go to Gemini, provide it with whatever you want to turn into an infographic, whether that’s a LinkedIn post, a blog, research, a newsletter, the possibilities are endless.

Ask Gemini to turn it into an infographic brief with visual suggestions. The visual suggestion part is important. It makes the final output look good and appealing on the feed. Once complete, review the brief, edit it, and paste in the master prompt. Prompt number 7 is for carousels. It’s the same approach as the infographics, just applied to carousels. Paste your content, generate a brief, approve it, then generate each slide one by one. Here’s the full prompt. Again, edit the brand to match your own before running this. The colors and typography in this prompt are mine. Gemini will return a brief with side-by-side breakdowns and visual suggestions. Fine tune using follow-up prompts or copy in a Word doc and edit directly.

Once you’re happy, tell Gemini to generate. Gemini will either generate the whole carousel in one shot or slide by slide. Prompt number 8 is the lowest lift way to create content for LinkedIn. Two prompts working together, Claude generates the quote, Gemini creates the visual. Start with Gemini or Claude, give it your caption, and it returns a set of quote options grouped by category. Go for something inspirational. Once you’ve chosen your quote, take it to Gemini with a reference image. Gemini recreates the style with your chosen quote baked in. One thing to watch, make sure you generate 1080×1350 pixel dimensions. This is the optimal size for the LinkedIn feed. It takes up maximum space, anything horizontal gets lost.

The final prompt is the LinkedIn analytics dashboard. Creating content without analyzing it is a waste of time. Your top 20% of posts will drive the majority of your results. Download your LinkedIn analytics export first. Go to your LinkedIn analytics page, set the date range, and click export in the top right. Upload the file to Claude and paste the prompt. Claude reads every sheet in the export, cleans the data, and builds an interactive dashboard as an artifact.