In June 2022 I posted this on LinkedIn:
63 reactions. 27 comments. 2 reposts. It did fine.
Thirteen months later I posted the same idea again. Catchier hook, plus a graphic: a timeline of years of work sitting unseen on a designer's hard drive.
This time: 4,919 reactions, 345 comments, 397 reposts.
Same idea. I just repeated it better.
Why I wasn't afraid to repeat myself
I knew it was a solid idea the first time. Every designer struggles to keep their portfolio updated. When someone looks at your portfolio they're judging work you did 1, 2, maybe 3 years ago. Your best recent work is probably sitting on your hard drive right now, unpublished.
It was true when I wrote it. Low engagement didn't change that.
Your judgment of your own content is often more reliable than the engagement numbers. If you believe in the idea, it's worth sharing again.
Who actually sees your posts
I have close to 70,000 followers on LinkedIn. Most of my posts get around 5,000 impressions. That's about 7% of my audience seeing any given post.
If you have a few hundred or a few thousand followers, the math is similar. When someone opens LinkedIn they might scroll through 10 or 20 posts before closing the app. If they follow hundreds of people, the odds of them seeing your specific post on any given day are slim.
Post something today. Post a version of it again in a few months. Most of your audience won't have seen it the first time. The small percentage who did see it have consumed thousands of posts in between. The odds of them remembering yours are close to zero.
If you're worried someone will notice the repeat and think you ran out of ideas, look at those numbers again. There’s no logical reason to fear repetition.
If you haven't posted much yet
Here's what made it easier for me early on. I posted because I was genuinely excited about the ideas I was putting together. That energy came through.
And I wasn't starting from zero. If you're a senior designer you've spent years connecting with colleagues, managers, and peers on LinkedIn. Those people already know your work. They're a far more receptive first audience than strangers on a new platform.
You don't need thousands of posts before repetition becomes useful. Experiment for the first few months. Try different topics, different formats. When something connects, when the comments tell you this resonated or when you personally feel excited about an idea, that's worth doubling down on. Post it again. Refine it. Post it a third time.
The more consistently you return to an idea, the more people start to associate your name with it. That's how discoverability compounds. Clients and opportunities come from showing up with the same message enough times that when someone needs a designer, your name is the one that comes to mind.
One question before you go
What's one thing you know about design that you'd want every hiring manager or potential client to understand?
One idea you genuinely believe in is enough to start.
That's worth posting. And when you do, don't be surprised if it's worth posting again.
Trevor Nielsen
