Barely a like. Yet it works.

Edition 11 of Reputation means business started with a question Laure Golly heard at least four times this month: does posting on LinkedIn lead anywhere? It looks at who reads a post without reacting to it, and why judging a first post by its likes stops people just before it starts to work.

At least four executives asked me the same question this month: does posting on LinkedIn lead anywhere?

The short answer is yes. It just takes longer than people expect.

Where they wanted it to lead was different each time. One was looking for a new role. One was growing a business. Two were taking their careers in a new direction and needed people to see them differently.

Often, there is a story behind it. Someone finally publishes a post or two. Plenty of people see them, a handful like them, nobody gets in touch, and they decide LinkedIn is not for them.

That is a long game judged on its first move, and on the few readers who said something out loud.

The people who might one day hire you, buy from you or introduce you to the right person are deciding what they think of you now, mostly in silence, and long before they need you. A post is one of the few chances you get to shape that. How many people liked it says very little about whether it did.

The people who wave.

Likes are easy to count. Each one arrives with a notification and a small rush of adrenaline, and by the next morning the number feels like the answer.

They usually come from the same people: former colleagues, friends, the loyal peer who likes everything you post. I am grateful for every one of them, and they help a post reach further. Even so, they are a small share of the people paying attention.

Different posts, different jobs.

Not every post is built to collect likes, and nor should it be. A new job, a thank-you after an event or a photo from a stage gets them easily, because a like is the quickest way to say well done.

A post that takes a position asks more of the reader. People read it, think about it, sometimes disagree in private, and move on without leaving a trace. Judging that post by its likes is a bit like judging a keynote by the queue at the coffee break.

The people who decide do not tend to announce themselves in the comments. By the time one of them gets in touch, they have usually made up their mind about you, and the posts that got them there may never have earned a single like from them.

One post is a start.

Marketers have an old rule of thumb that someone needs to come across a brand around seven times before they act. Nobody has ever proved the number, though anyone who has run a campaign will recognise the pattern.

The first list of names someone draws up comes from memory. Bain & Company reports that around nine in ten business buyers end up buying from that first list. A name gets on it because people have come across it more than once, saying something recognisable each time. One post cannot do that on its own. Ten posts on the same few subjects, over a few months, start to.

Stopping too soon.

Repetition is the part people tend to skip. They post once or twice, read the silence as an answer, and stop just before the readers they wanted had any reason to remember them.

So judge a post by what it was there to do. A thank-you worked if the right people saw it. A point of view worked if, months later, someone remembers what you think.

Those first posts may well have done their job. They simply never got the next ones to build on.