Ever felt deflated by low interaction on your posts or wondered whether your content is actually reaching anyone? This episode of is all about challenging the obsession with likes and public engagement. Anna Lundberg reveals why your true business growth might come from the quiet “lurkers” – those who never like or comment, but are listening, learning, and ready to buy when the time is right. Listen in to learn how to spot and serve these invaluable silent followers.

Key moments:

[00:00] Introduction: Low likes and hidden engagement

[01:24] Who are the lurkers and why do they matter?

[03:07] The difference between vanity metrics and quiet traction

[03:56] Sensitive topics and why lurkers might not engage publicly

[04:34] Quiet authority and sustainable business growth

[05:16] Consistency, messaging, and inviting lurkers to connect

[06:00] Tracking effective business metrics, not vanity stats

[07:11] Tools, systems, and visual tracking for sales and outreach

[08:19] Wrapping up: Celebrating the lurkers and reframing your motivation

Resources mentioned:

• Book a consultation call
• The Business Accelerator: Learn more and join the waitlist
• Connect with Anna Lundberg: Get in touch on Instagram or LinkedIn.

LinkedIn lurkers

This one’s for you if you’ve ever felt disheartened by low likes. Posts that get nothing in return. A seeming lack of engagement. And you’re wondering if your content is even landing. Because we’re talking about what really matters for business growth. What are the metrics? And often it doesn’t always look so public. Here’s to the lurkers. Enjoy.

Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle.

I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach, and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility, and the fulfilment you’re looking for. Ready to redefine success and build a business that you love.

Let’s get started. Okay, who are the lurkers? Let’s talk about the lurkers. And I’m really pleased to dedicate a whole episode to this demographic. They are thoughtful, discerning, not necessarily public in their interactions. Okay, they’re the ones who aren’t on LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever, all the time, liking commenting. Rah, rah.

So you’re not going to see them, so why do they matter? Why do we care about these lurkers? Well, they’re often your ideal clients. I’ve mentioned this, I think last week or the week before, but they don’t need convincing. They. They already know that they want to work with you and. Or they’re thinking about it and they’re off living their lives, running their business. Whatever it is, they don’t have lots of time to sit and comment and like and whatever.

They’re not fellow experts building their business. They’re actually people who are looking for the very thing that you offer. How will you ever know about them? Well, they’re going to reach out to you and say, hey, I’ve been following you for a while. Or o. That post really stuck with me. I didn’t comment. But then you have a conversation, you have a call, you work together and have a wonderful sales business relationship.

So we need to be really clear on vanity metrics versus quiet traction. Now, as ever, the caveat is that there can be value in having large following. It can, at least on the surface, give some credibility. And I’m happy with my 12k current number followers on LinkedIn. Maybe it opens to up to a higher price point to, you know, conferences, publishers want to see that you have a following, et cetera, et cetera. But engagement on a post is not the same as an effective post that reaches the right people with the right message. Virality is not the sign that it’s actual valuable content. The key one for me is, and I don’t want to call people out, but there are techniques, tactics where we’re using pre validated content, it’s called, and my sense with this is when it appears in my feed, that it’s very much performative.

Yes, it helps apparently in the algorithm and so on. But if anybody else could have written, especially often it is written by AI, right? Then what value is it adding? Why should I work with this person rather than the other 10 people who are saying the same thing? Okay, I’m sure you have examples. We had an example just the other day in the accelerator where someone said, oh my gosh, I mean, every week she’s getting inbound requests. She works in a sensitive area. So people aren’t necessarily announcing to their boss that they have this particular thing that she helps them with. Well, I’ll call that out. I don’t know why I’m tiptoeing around it. So ADHD coaching, if you are neurodivergent, you haven’t necessarily felt comfortable expressing that to your boss and therefore, you know, if you are reaching out to a coach, you’re, you’re not the one to be publicly waving that flag and so on.

So that’s really important to recognise. Maybe if you’re helping people with their business, if you’re helping with them, their health, with their relationships, they’re not going to say, yes, I feel like I’m heading down the path of divorce, Please can you help me? You know, it’s just not the case. They’re not going to say, as a business coach, if I needed help, I probably wouldn’t comment on another mentors their posts saying, hey, yeah, I’m not really getting any sales at the moment. That would sort of question my whole credibility. So people will probably be admitting these things behind closed doors, right? Quiet conversion. I guess you could quiet authority. In this case, quiet conversion is much more sustainable because you’re not at the mercy of an algorithm or a trend.

You’re building long term trust with people, not just these short term dopamine hits and it allows you to market with depth, not noise people. And so you are speaking and I hope this message has come across this whole month that we’ve been talking about this. You’re speaking to a particular client who has particular problems, desires, needs. You have a particular message and a particular solution. So you’re being consistent even when, and this is important, it feels really quiet. You’re creating content that speaks to their real questions, right? Not just what’s trending, not just 10 top leadership tips or whatever. You’re actually speaking to the kind of Microsoft moments that they’re experiencing. And maybe you’re using your own personal stories, you’re using case studies from your clients.

You’re making them feel seen. And you have a really clear imitation that when they are ready to reach out, they can message you. Not just, hey, let’s talk. Or it’s like, okay, message me to comment this, maybe not that one, because then they’re not going to do it as a lurker. Sign up here or whatever, right? But really what you want is to tease them out of their dark, shadowy world that they live in, enter the light and have a conversation with you. So it’s a short episode today, but I really wanted to celebrate these lurkers because, honestly, they’re your best asset. And I want you to reframe your metrics to motivate you as well to keep showing up. So, again, we did this exercise and it was last quarter, actually, in the accelerator where we looked at, okay, given all the scrappy stuff, we’ve kind of been experimenting and so on.

What’s working, what’s not working so much? Where is attraction and can we lean into that? The danger is, you know, if we do lots of stuff, we don’t take stock over what’s working, we just keep doing all of it. And even worse, we may do some things that aren’t getting any results far too much. And then we, we don’t have enough time for the things that are getting results. So the perfect pairing is if your posts are leading the right people to contact you, if even if they’re not commenting and liking and so on, even if it’s not going viral. And again, most of us are building a business where we don’t want to be thought leaders. We want to be a respected authority in our niche. We want to help people and have a business that allows us to take care of ourselves, our family and so on, right? In which case we don’t need the massive numbers. It’s about the quality, it’s about the right message landing with the right people.

So if you are doing any tracking, please track, rather than views and likes and impressions, track the inbound Messages track discovery, call bookings, you know, sign ups to your newsletter and any conversations you’re having where people are saying I’ve been.

Watching for a while or this really.

Resonated, just capture that. Okay. If nothing else, just look back on when you’re losing the will to keep posting. Again, I’m reluctant to give a system and we can talk about what this could look like for you, but some kind of funnelly thing on your whiteboard or on pin board or whatever you use, post its, whatever works for you online. Yes, but I like to see in front of me now I’ve got at the moment, okay, I’ve got the, let’s see, I’ve got the people I’m reaching out to. I’ve got conversations so calls, I’ve got proposals and I’ve got sales. I’ve also, I’ve got proposals out there so I can see, okay, I’ve got X amount that’s kind of in the mix. If that column is really low, then I know that I’m not going to have at least there’s, there’s no income sort of coming in in the next few weeks, months, in which case I need to go about doing something to change.

And that something is probably going to be outreach. Follow up with warm leads, conversations and so on.

And maybe posting if you haven’t been posting in a while. So just having that visibly and seeing. Okay, this month I’ve had one sales call. That’s not quite enough. Five sales calls, 10 sales calls and whatever they are, they might be discovery calls, they might be free coaching calls, business development, whatever you want to call them.

Oh gosh. My study is getting really hot and I’m getting sweaty so I’m going to end it there. Obviously an important topic what, what you’re measuring and tracking and maybe let’s do that as another one. But the key message here is let’s celebrate the lurkers. Let’s not get caught up in those performative vanity metrics and let’s really trust that the right people are seeing our message and of course keep an eye out for those messages to confirm that that’s happening. So if you’re interested in delving into this deeper, you do have a couple of options. One is my authority accelerator which is a one to one container where we’re working really on your personal brand. So if it’s more the, the marketing positioning and then how to convert that into clients, that could be a good option. You can message me or you can book a call@onestepoutside.com call or again, the waiting list is open for next intake to the accelerator.

And that’s onestepoutside.com/accelerate where we do this and more. And it’s really getting into the rhythm, the cadence of yes, posting, but also tracking and messaging and selling above all. So here’s to the lurkers. See you next week. If you’re ready to grow a business that actually works, one that pays you well, protects your time and reflects what matters most, the Business Accelerator is for you.

It’s a 12-month journey for independent experts who want strategic growth without burnout and without compromise.

Apply or join the waitlist at onestepoutside.com/accelerate.

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