Over the past few days, I've been analyzing a unique LinkedIn account.

In the early 2010s, this person build a Facebook page with over 200,000 followers. In 2015, they wrote the #1 marketing book on Amazon. Then in 2021, they built an Instagram account to 253,346 followers.

They started taking LinkedIn seriously in 2025 and quickly went from 0 -> 10k followers (the leap most struggle to make).

And 200-300k impressions weekly 🤯

Those impression levels are what I usually see for 100k+ person accounts, so it's quite impressive.

And...it had little to do with content or viral hacks.

Who is it?

This person is Jonathan Goodman and today we're going to break down what he did and see what you can replicate.

1) Focused his account on authorship and books

He claims the focus is one of the main reasons he's grown so quickly.

And I believe him. If you choose a hyper specific niche, chances are people will follow you because your content is different. Novel. And y'already know the internet loves some novelty.

He wanted one type of follower/connection only:

Other authors and writers. That's it. Why? I'm not 100% sure, but I think he plans on being an author for the long haul and having other authors promote his book and vice-versa is the marketing strategy you need to get the book into the first 10,000 hands.

And as the saying goes - it's your job to get your book in the first 10,000 hands, then the books job to market it from there.

Anyway, regardless of intent, the focus helped him grow his account quickly.

2) Sent 150 connection requests...but not to his "ideal clients"...

Okay, this was fascinating.

Instead of sending connection requests to authors (what most people would have done), he *only* found 7 authors with large, engaged LinkedIn accounts.

Then he had his assistant connect with the people replying on their accounts.

Why?

Because the people who are actively commenting on LinkedIn drop a lot of comments. So he theorized that by connecting with them, he'd get engagement quickly. And quite clearly, it's worked.

3) Started a newsletter focused on the same niche

His newsletter, Diary of a Book Launch newsletter, goes deeper on the same topic he posts about on LinkedIn.

And as anyone who's played the game as long as he has knows, it's all about getting people off platform into your own ecosystem. So it's been his way of going a level deeper with the audience he's building.

You can see below that his LinkedIn newsletter has 3,600 subscribers. Additionally, he has a list on Substack. Not sure how he manages the two, but he's done a decent job growing the list.

If we take a quick look at his LinkedIn, he's getting subscribers in a few ways:

• His custom button "View my newsletter" shows up with every post
• He has a featured link to his newsletter
• He'll do a direct "subscribe" CTA post about once a week
• Did a giveaway that popped off

So that's the quick review.

Now, a few more things I want to note:

1) What your goal is dramatically changes your path to getting there.

If you're selling something high-ticket vs low-ticket, trying to launch a book vs a course vs a service, you're gonna have a different strategy. Many of my clients need 3-10 sales a year to make many hundreds of thousands of dollars, so we're not going broad. Meanwhile, Justin Welsh needs max reach to sell enough $150 digital products for it to make sense.

2) Go after people who already comment on LinkedIn

This was a great nugget. Find relevant competitors in your niche. Then connect with the people commenting on their posts. What a great idea.

3) It worked - I'm gonna read his book

I've been following his content now for a while and enjoyed a previous book of his, so I'm going to read the new one, Unhinged Habits, which came out today. If you want to check it out as well, you can snag it here.​

Best,

Matthew