Reader Request: LinkedIn ghostwriting, POV, and the future of templates

Nov 15, 2025

This week’s edition was reader-requested by Samantha Rivard, who sent in a set of questions that basically map the state of LinkedIn content as we wrap up 2025. Let’s talk about it.

1. Templates vs. originality

Do you think people should lean into these formats to get traction, or stay focused on building a truly unique style?

People love to argue about this, but the answer is boring: both matter, but in different ways.

Think of templates as scaffolding. They get you publishing faster, keep you honest, and help you avoid rookie mistakes (e.g. sanitized copy, flat hooks, emoji explosions, chaotic structure). We use template type logic to create pattern recognition, which works because the brain latches on to structure (e.g. numbers in the hook, sentence-case headlines, specificity).

But if you stay in Template Land too long, content gets the same disease as every mid-tier creator who blew up in 2023–2024: interchangeable voice, zero point of view, forgettable takes…it just feels like a homogenized feed of 85 people saying different versions of the same thing, yawn.

I use templates with my clients for cadence but never for identity. So, my advice is to use them to unlock speed (and the dreaded sitting-down-to-write-don’t-know-what-to-say warmup), then layer your style on top: your phrasing, references, micro-stories, hot takes, and tone. The “nobody can steal this because it’s me” part. One of my favorite tricks is to have a long ass list of hooks we can pull from as post starters.

2. Prioritizing the foundations

How do you prioritize the core foundations—POV and ideas, brand vision and voice, and the deeper business/competitive lens?

Sorry, there’s no shortcut for the foundations. They are boring and basic but we have to do them. What trips people up is they try to do all of them at once, so here’s how I weight them:

(a) Strong POV
This gets priority #1 because everything downstream breaks without it, and imo the lack of this is what makes people spin in trying to chase trends. It just makes your brand look super consistent and unmistakably you. It’s also the guiding light behind your controversial posts. How can you have a spicy hot take that’s YOURS without a strong POV?

(b) Brand vision + distinct voice
This is the difference between “advice” and “your advice.” Think consistency, recognition, and turning your POV into something hyper relatable.

(c) Deep business understanding
This is the multiplier that gets you away from a content calendar (lame) and into writing strategy in public (powerful). When you know your category, its incentives, a few competitive angles, audience pressure points, and so on…your vibe shifts from having an opinion on something everyone talks about to showing people parts of the market no one is paying attention to. In other words: authority, babies.

The weight breakdown I give my clients:

40% POV work
35% voice & vision
20% business depth / competitive lens
5% asks (like.. sign up for newsletter, DM me, fill form)

And then it oscillates depending on the client’s maturity. For example, early-stage founders need more POV and voice, while later-stage folks need business depth.

3. The future of LinkedIn ghostwriting

Where is LinkedIn ghostwriting headed: more personal or more educational? Who’s doing it well, and what’s your approach with clients?

LinkedIn is swinging in two directions at once: more personal and more educational. I feel like the past has been a lot of too personal and not aligned with work OR overly corporate and super boring.

Here’s what I mean:

Pure “here’s what I learned today” content is dropping off. (AKA here’s 10 things my child’s morning tantrum taught me about B2B SaaS).
Pure long-form how-to content is oversaturated and often unreadable.

What’s working nowadays is authority mixed with relatability and a personal POV. Think having a bestie who knows their shit, it feels like you know the person just from reading their content.

Getting there requires a fresh take on the process. Ghostwriting is evolving with it and here’s what I think the future looks like: