After spending way too much time manually engaging on LinkedIn to grow my startup's presence, I got curious: what actually works? The Problem Most devs and founders hate LinkedIn's engagement game. You post something technical or meaningful, get 3 likes from bots, while someone posting "5 lessons from my cat about product management " gets 10,000 impressions. But here's what the data actually showed after analyzing top-performing posts: Timing matters more than we think:

Posts between 7-9 AM and 5-7 PM (local time) get 3x more initial engagement The first 60 minutes are critical for algorithmic distribution Early engagement signals quality to LinkedIn's feed algorithm

The cold start problem is real:

Without initial engagement, even great content dies in obscurity LinkedIn's algorithm uses the first 10-20 interactions to determine if your post is "worthy" Most technical posts never escape this cold start because our networks are small

What I Built I created Hyperclapper - a simple tool that helps you coordinate genuine engagement within your network. Not bots, not fake engagement, just helping real people find and support each other's content. How it works:

Connect your LinkedIn (read-only OAuth) Join engagement pods with people in similar industries Get notified when someone posts (you choose how often) Engage authentically with content you actually find valuable

Why this isn't spammy:

You control what you engage with - no forced likes All engagement is from real accounts You're helping surface good content that would otherwise be buried Think of it as a RSS feed for your network's best content

The Results After 3 months of testing with 500 beta users:

Average post impressions increased 4.2x Meaningful comments (not just "Great post!") up 6x Several users got inbound leads directly from increased visibility

The trickiest part was building the engagement pod matching algorithm. We use a combination of:

Industry tags Posting frequency compatibility Historical engagement patterns Mutual connection depth

Why I'm Sharing This LinkedIn engagement is a grind, especially for technical folks who just want to share knowledge. This tool helps solve the cold start problem without resorting to engagement bait or algorithmic hacks.

I'm launching the beta publicly this week. Would love feedback from the HN community since you folks are typically skeptical of social media growth tools (rightfully so).

Try it: hyperclapper.com

Genuine question for HN: How do you balance the need for visibility with the distaste for "engagement optimization"? Is there a way to play the game without losing your soul?