Becoming a LinkedIn warrior

In July 2026, Santiago (LGB, 2021) decided to post on LinkedIn once a day, for a month without using AI. After this interesting experiment, we asked him to share his feedback and top advice for young alumni on how to become “a LinkedIn warrior”.

The Why

I started posting on LinkedIn for 2 reasons mainly.

1. I was aware that I would potentially be starting a new sales role at a London Startup (Holiwise - Luxury travel concierge) that had extremely aggressive sales targets, I felt like a bit of an imposter joining the team as I was not super confident about my current network and who I could sell the service to. So, quite self-explanatory, I wanted to post on LinkedIn to grow my network, have my name show up on people's feed everyday, and ultimately, make them remember me. As I knew I would use LinkedIn for outreach when I started the role.

2. I wanted to give myself a challenge. Having finished the Swiss military in May, by July, I was getting quite bored of all my "free time" - my tutoring business was not keeping me busy given that nobody was looking for tutors over the summer - and I wanted to do something different. I knew that it would not be easy writing a post every day, even more than that, it would be extremely uncomfortable to be viewed as a "LinkedIn warrior" which is exactly why I did it, to embrace discomfort. And a final third point, I wanted to actually use my brain for once when it came to writing, at that time, I was using ChatGPT for absolutely everything. From simple follow up emails to more complex messages that I had to write. It was time to change that and stop taking the easy way out.
   
   

Authenticity as a winning factor

LinkedIn has the infamous status of "Larping". Essentially, people try to act as someone that is super qualified, has everything figured out, only highlight their best achievements, and make it seem like their professional journey has only been ups with no downs. When in reality, it couldn't be further from the truth. Sure, people only like announcing what they've achieved, who would want to announce the times they failed, or the mistakes they made? I understand where this comes from, but disliked it a lot as your feed ends up becoming quite a toxic environment as you always feel "less-than" than those around you - and I knew that the majority of LinkedIn users my age felt this way. I realised that I would find my niche by being authentic, being real, and literally just posting what came to my mind, from past experiences to thoughts about LinkedIn, to things I learnt at uni, to everything I've learnt while scaling my online tutoring business EduNova and everything in between. And my intuition was right, my first post went viral, and the majority of my posts got 30-60 likes which was not bad (definitely better than when I used ChatGPT and tried to seem like I had it all figured out)

The results

So funnily enough, I didn't actually get any sales leads for the new startup I was joining, but I did manage to get everything else aside from that. I had a bunch of people reach out to my via DM congratulating me on the challenge. I had old friends whom I hadn't spoken to in years reach out to me for a catch up and tell me they loved what I was doing. I had a Consulting society at King’s College London offer a partnership where they would 'audit' EduNova and offer us growth strategies FOR FREE. I also realised, it is really not that deep. Nobody actually cares enough about you to try to put you down for posting on LinkedIn hahahaha, the biggest blocker people have when it comes to posting is literally themselves. Get past that fear, and you'll be able to see it's benefits.

His top advice

Super simple advice, but works extremely well... Just use it. Don't just scroll as I did for about 3 years before deciding to start this challenge. Connect with people you find interesting. DM people, especially those who are at a better place (professionally speaking) than you - you might get ignored 8/10 times, but those 2 conversations that you do generate and are able to maintain will be worth it.

For example, I got to a final-stage interview for a company that raised 17M EUR from the biggest VCs in Europe. This opportunity started from a simple DM to it's CEO. Yes, I did choke the last round incredibly hard, but if I was able to get to that stage, I am 100% sure that you can too (I do not consider myself smart at all, I just work extremely hard for what I want to achieve, and more often than not I do achieve what I set my mind to).

I'm sure many of you have heard the phrase "build your own luck", I believe in that to a huge extent. You won't be able to capitalise on opportunities if you don't put yourself out there. I figured this out a bit too long into university, so I hope my words can motivate the person reading this. Now that "real life" has started for us young alumni, it is incredibly important to understand the phrase I mentioned, "build your own luck". Nothing will be handed to you after you graduate; you have to look for it, capitalise on it, and ultimately, work harder than those around you to come out on top.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you're up for a chat. As busy as I may be, I will ALWAYS make time for people who need advice, especially fellow Ecolint alumni.